WASHINGTON – The U.S. military must widen opportunity and improve advancement for Black service members, who remain vastly underrepresented in some areas, including among Air Force pilots and in the most senior ranks, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Wednesday.
Army Gen. Mark Milley told a Howard University ROTC commissioning ceremony that diversity is an important strength of the military but is still inadequate. “We must get better,” he said.
As an example of the failure to increase racial diversity, Milley said that when the current chief of staff of the Air Force, Gen.
Charles Q. Brown, was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1984, only 2% of Air Force pilots were Black. Today, Milley said, the Air Force pilot