CSAF Brown on Making USAF Look Like America

摘要

The Air Force is actively trying to make its rated career fields more diverse, by identifying and removing barriers that have blocked underrepresented communities from progressing in USAF cockpits, but also simply giving younger people more opportunities to see what the career could be like. "People only aspire to be what they can see," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said in an interview. "If they've never had the opportunity, then they're not inclined to go, 'I want to do that.'" Brown is speaking from his own experience. He said he knew about the possibility of military pilot training, but never seriously considered it until a Reserve Officer Training Corps summer camp in Texas when he got a ride in a T-37. "It changed everything I wanted to do," Brown recalled. "I said OK, now I want to be a pilot." The Air Force in the past year has increased its outreach to give younger people, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, that sort of view at what a flying career in the service could be. Using resources like junior ROTC and summer camps as ways to provide "those opportunities to experience what it's like to go fly. We've done it episodically, but we're much more committed this past year to bringing young people in so they can see well before they get into college and have that opportunity."