DAF Personnel Chief on Why Diversity Should ‘Scare the Hell Out of Our Adversaries’

Think China, Russia and Iran are scared? 

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From making it easier for pregnant women to continue flying to updating its pilot candidate scoring mechanism, the Department of the Air Force has made changes big and small in the last few years with an eye toward diversity and inclusion, part of a broader push by the Pentagon to make the U.S. military more diverse.

The DAF’s top civilian on those matters, assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs Alex Wagner, is a political appointee of President Joe Biden but has spent most of his career at the Pentagon like his boss, Frank Kendall.

“I look at this institution that in some cases is more diverse than the American population,” Wagner told Air & Space Forces Magazine in an interview.

“We’ve got an increasingly diverse country; we’ve got the demographic trends creating even more diversity. We have to be, in order to succeed, a mirror of the country that we claim to and do defend.”

Such change takes time, and Wagner praised the work of his predecessors on the effort.

“A lot of good work started on these topics when I was last in the Pentagon during the Obama administration, and a steady drumbeat continued during the previous administration,” said Wagner, who served as Chief of Staff to the Secretary of the Army from 2015-2017.

“The table was really very well set for when I came back to the building, not only building on a number of the efforts that began in the Obama administration, but were resourced—fully resourced—and allowed to grow and thrive during the Trump administration.” . . . .

. . . . “My focus is building and manning a force that scares the hell out of our adversaries, that deters our near-peer competitors. And how do I do that? Well, diversity is an important part of that. And it’s one of our actual advantages, and I want to leverage that advantage to the maximum extent possible.” . . . . (read more on Air and Space Forces Magazine)

See more from him:

Biden Defense Officials Defend Diversity, Equity, Inclusion in the Military