Diversity drive: Air Force command nominee is 1st woman, non-pilot

From the Washington Times: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/17/air-force-command-nominee-is-1st-woman-non-pilot/?page=2

The military also is preparing to put women in direct land combat units.
The Navy promoted its first woman this month to four-star rank: Adm. Michelle J. Howard, a surface warship commander, to vice chief of naval operations, the Navy’s second-ranking officer.

The Air Force promoted its first woman to four-star rank in 2012, when Gen. Janet C. Wolfenbarger took over Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

The Army’s first female four-star general, Ann Elizabeth Dunwoody, has retired.
To observers, the twin moves to promote a woman to vice chief of naval operations and to place a woman in charge of a major combatant command Air Force means that female officers are destined to be elevated to the six-member Joint Chiefs of Staff, which comprises the four service chiefs, a chairman and a vice chairman.

Women make up 14.5 percent of the active force but only a small percentage of combat pilots, 21 years after the Pentagon lifted the ban on women in those jobs.
Of 3,714 Air Force fighter and bomber pilots last year, 85 — or about 2 percent — were women at the rank of lieutenant colonel and below.

I just hope the women they're promoting are competent.

Obviously there is no reason why they wouldn't be competent, except when they *have* to make promotions because of diversity...it's just like Affirmative Action - did they earn their way, or were they chosen because they had to be?