America is now experiencing what happens when its defense department is overtly politicized by its civilian leadership.
President Trump issued his Restoring America’s Fighting Force executive order in January, labelling programs aimed at inclusivity as “divisive” and “invidious” and (with echoes of McCarthyism) “un-American.” Then, during his confirmation hearing, Secretary of Defense Hegseth spoke with disdain of “more civilian professors that came from the same left-wing, woke universities that they left, and then try to push that into service academies”. Senator Tuberville, a majority member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, piled on by further asserting, without evidence, that our military service academies have become a “breeding ground for leftist activists and champions of DEI and critical [race] theory” and suggesting, without further justification, an arbitrary 80/20 military/civilian instructor target at the academies.
Note that Trump and Tuberville did not even serve in the military, whereas Hegseth chose Princeton over West Point, and subsequently reached the rank of O-4 (Major) in the Army National Guard units in Minnesota and DC before becoming a Fox News host.
With such disparaging assertions regarding the academic backbone of our military academies (red meat to the far right, spoken by political leaders with little to no military service themselves), a dangerous wave of right-wing anti-intellectualism in the US military service academies, complete with the requisite book banning, was ignited.
On March 26, upon questioning by Tuberville, the superintendents of the U.S. Naval Academy (USNA) and U.S. Military Academy (USMA) responded forcefully about the value of experienced civilian/veteran faculty in their academic programs, emphasizing the importance of their technical expertise in advanced engineering, technology, math, and science, and their essential role in providing leadership and continuity in the USNA and USMA academic programs, working in close partnership with military personnel who cycle through mostly on short 3 to 5 year rotations. With his words and actions, the superintendent of U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) has, thus far, spectacularly failed to follow suit.
Fast forwarding to today, USAFA is now in crisis. Over 50 of its civilian/veteran faculty positions were lost, permanently, in spring 2025, via a Deferred Resignation Program, causing significant concern. With these drastic cuts, USAFA simply no longer has sufficient long-term faculty to adequately support its current broad set of majors. Hard choices must be made. With some judicious refocusing of departments and the elimination of 8 to 12 majors, as briefly outlined below, USAFA might indeed be able to maintain its current level of excellence in the focused majors that remain, in the face of these cuts. Unfortunately, USAFA’s imminent planning this summer, still conspicuously concealed under Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), is to cut many more (50 to 100?) civilian/veteran faculty. According to a memo sent out to all USAFA faculty by its acting dean of faculty on July 1, “No civilian RIF is approved at this time”…. of course, once a new civilian faculty Reduction In Force (RIF) is approved, the matter is “decisional” and it is too late to change course.
A path forward for excellence in USAFA academics is not evident if such additional planned cuts happen, and a previously unthinkable slide toward academic mediocracy is all but inevitable. Basic accreditation of its majors (itself a fairly low bar) might even be at significant risk, in possible violation of U.S. Code Title 10 and DoDI 1322.22, which establish standards for academic rigor at the US military service academies.
This article is a call to action, for concerned citizens to call USAFA and their congressional representatives en masse (spread the word on social media!), and for high-ranking USAF leaders (Secretary of the Air Force Meink, Chief of Staff of the Air Force Allvin, …) to intervene. USAFA leadership must continue to Aim High, and commit that “Academic excellence will not be gutted at USAFA, not on my watch.” We are still waiting for that message to be delivered.
Notwithstanding what its website currently says, USAFA’s core mission is educating our next generation of Air and Space Force leaders to develop (together with industry partners), deploy, and effectively operate advanced weapons and ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) systems to deter aggression by potential adversaries, and to decisively win any future wars with deadly precision, while minimizing American, allied, and noncombatant casualties.
Our military’s new offensive and defensive weapons systems in air and space are increasingly autonomous, and their effective development, deployment, and operation is highly technical. The whole field of autonomous weapons is changing quickly, and our air and space forces must keep up. Gone are the days that success of the USAF is based primarily on talented pilots; success now hinges increasingly on effective deployments of defensive Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAMs; e.g. Patriots), ordinance-equipped Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPAs; e.g. Reapers), and forthcoming Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs; e.g. FQ-42 & FQ-44).
To spark open public debate, we have developed a detailed blueprint (also available in abbreviated form) for USAFA academics to refocus and thrive as America’s leading military service academy in light of the massive faculty reductions and budget cuts it has already suffered. At a high level, key features of this blueprint, motivated by refocusing USAFA on academic majors with both military relevance and financial efficiency, include:
A. Eliminate small majors and those with weak military relevance (English, Math, Meteorology, Philosophy). Mothball the Chemistry major. Combine History, Political Science, Economics, Geography, and Foreign Area Studies into a single new major, World Conflicts, focused on the development and prevention of war. Note, of course, that core classes in Chemistry, Math, and English (in addition to Physics and Engineering) are foundational to the USAFA freshman curriculum, and must continue unabated.
B. Focus available minors and exchange programs on mastering the languages of our potential adversaries, including Mandarin, Russian, Farsi, Arabic, and Spanish (eliminating French, German, and Portuguese), recruiting several candidates yearly who are already fluent in such languages, and providing military recognition for such fluency.
C. Subsume the Mechanical Engineering (Mech) major into the Aeronautical Engineering (Aero) major (there is much overlap: computer-aided design, structural materials, fatigue and failure, …), focusing “nuts and bolts” USAFA engineering on advanced aircraft instead of IndyCars and knife making. Keep Astronautical Engineering (Astro) standalone, and bolster it to provide leadership and training for the nascent US Space Force (USSF); topics include space domain awareness, 3D dynamics, orbital mechanics, control theory, etc. Note that “Aerospace” is not the right combined engineering department at USAFA; the USAF and USSF are responsible for planes and spacecraft, which warrant individual attention. Aero and Astro have very different customer bases and courses of study; the challenges of working in the air and working in space are as different as the challenges of working on the ocean and working in the air.
D. Combine departments to make EECS (Electrical Engineering / Computer Science). Working together with Aero and Astro, expand its scope to focus on a new interdisciplinary Autonomous Systems major, as SAMs, RPAs, and CCAs are increasingly where warfare is headed, keeping American warfighters out of harm’s way.
Modest reorganization and tweaking of the other militarily-relevant USAFA majors is also proposed: Acquisitions Management and Systems Engineering, Legal Studies, Military Strategic Studies, Data Science and Operations Research, Biology and Behavioral Science, Civil Engineering, Physics. A change in the leadership structure of USAFA, highlighting academics, continuity, and transparency, is also recommended.
As noted in the New York Times on May 8 by USMA professor Graham Parsons, our military service academies are “supposed to educate, not indoctrinate”. Progressive versus anti-woke is the divisive political distraction of the 21st century that may well be the very undoing of the American experiment. Let’s limit that distraction to the political arena, and ensure that our military instead remains strictly apolitical, and sharply focused on the highly technical challenge of deterring and winning our future wars.
UC San Diego Professor Thomas Bewley was a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Mechanical Engineering at USAFA for the 2024-25 academic year.
