By Rob Waugh | The Daily Mail
A former space commander is on a mission to root out DEI training so American soldiers ‘can simply be focused on warfighting in a relatively apolitical workplace.’
Lt Col Matt Lohmeier led the 11th Space Warning Squadron in the Space Force in 2020 before being fired a year later for criticizing the Biden-Harris administration agenda, which also resulting in a loss of pension.
But last month Lohmeier was surprisingly rehired by Donald Trump.
The position came during a rally in North Carolina where Lohmeier thanked the now elect-president for saying that he ‘would fire those few woke generals who are a big problem.’
He then asked Trump if he would ‘setup a special task force office or position to ensure that these monsters never return to the Defense Department.’
Trump instantly responded: ”They’re gone! I’m gonna put you on that task force.’
Lohmeier told DailyMail.com that the encounter was ‘unscripted and unplanned.’ ‘I didn’t know at the time what that meant,’ he said.
‘I didn’t know if I’d simply join a larger team of people working on it, if I’d be put in charge of a task force, and I suppose all of that remains to be seen, and there’s nothing to say about it publicly just yet.’
He is now thinking of ways, ‘in which I might get involved in trying to restore accountability in the military and to eliminate the DEI diversity equity, inclusion training I was critical of. ‘
Lohmeier believes the Trump-Vance administration will energize the Space Force, driving cooperation with private enterprise in space exploration and the return to the moon.
In the wake of his encounter with Trump, he revealed that many troops in uniform have since reached out to him – including former colleagues in the Space Force.
‘They are very excited about the change in the administration and about the potential for the new Secretary of Defense,’ Loheimer said.
‘They’ve expressed excitement about, hopefully, a return to a simple sole focus on warfighting and not about politics and race discussions and political activist agendas.’
Lohmeier was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Space Force in the summer of 2020, and the aftermath of George Floyd’s death and the dawn of the Black Lives Matter.
He described the events as ‘a period of unrest where activists and political agitators and race hustlers used a man’s death as an event that they could leverage for their revolutionary political purposes.’
Lohmeier highlighted that the impact on military culture was visible and ‘immediate’.
‘You had leaders in uniform, as well as young followers in uniform, seizing that politically fraught moment for purposes of their own political worldview, purposes of spreading their own political worldview,’ he said.
‘You had, for example, at my base, a base commander, a colonel who is black, say things to his troops, like, ‘No one at my base will stand in the way of the Black Lives Matter movement.’ Well, of course, at once that was terribly polarizing.
‘I saw the demonization of the sitting commander-in-chief by that same base commander.
‘It’s illegal in the military to publicly criticize, especially from your official capacity, your sitting commander-in-chief or your chain of command.
‘I recognized that a lot of the roots of our current social justice activism were found in Marxist thought and ideology.’
Lohmeier wrote a formal complaint and was dismissed from Space Force during the transition to the Biden administration.
His book, Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military,’ was published in May 2021.
Lohmeier appeared on a podcast to promote the book and said: ‘
‘The diversity, inclusion and equity industry and the trainings we are receiving in the military…is rooted in critical race theory, which is rooted in Marxism.
‘Since taking command as a commander about 10 months ago, I saw what I consider fundamentally incompatible and competing narratives of what America was, is and should be.
‘That wasn’t just prolific in social media, or throughout the country during this past year, but it was spreading throughout the United States military. And I had recognized those narratives as being Marxist in nature.’
Lohmeier told DailyMail.com: ‘The following week, I was fired from my command for two reasons that were both false. The first reason was it was alleged that I was politically partisan while acting in an official capacity. That was false.’
‘Since taking command as a commander about 10 months ago, I saw what I consider fundamentally incompatible and competing narratives of what America was, is and should be.
‘That wasn’t just prolific in social media, or throughout the country during this past year, but it was spreading throughout the United States military. And I had recognized those narratives as being Marxist in nature.’
He explained the second reason claimed he had publicly criticized his chain of command, to which he told DailyMail.com: ‘That wasn’t true either.’
‘I was never found guilty of either of those things, and I separated from the military after a little over 15 years of service in the fall of 2021 without my pension,’ Lohmeier said.
The Space Force noted it had removed Lohmeier ‘due to loss of trust and confidence in his ability to lead’ after comments he made in a podcast while promoting his book.
Lohmeier said he was not surprised by the ‘cowardly’ response of senior defense officials.
‘They were afraid of the political climate we had created for ourselves in the country, and they were afraid to stand by a straight white male who was criticizing some of the race based political activism that was occurring,’ He said.
‘I’m talking about the three and four star generals.’
Lohmeier had a long and distinguished military career before becoming embroiled in controversy over the DEI influence within the armed forces.
He graduated from the US Air Force Academy in 2006 and was commissioned as an officer in the Air Force. He completed two Master’s degrees, one in military strategy.
Flying F-15C fighter jets and working as a T-38 jet instructor pilot, Lohmeier transferred into US Air Force Space Command after seven years.
When Trump’s administration launched the Space Force in 2019, Lohmeier knew he was a ‘natural fit.’
‘I was one of the first officers, and my unit was one of the first units that transitioned into the new Space Force,’ he said.
‘And so I was as of 2020, and 2021, a commander in the Space Force of a space-based missile warning squadron.’
Space-based missile warning systems are satellites that use infrared technology to track missile launches from a ‘geosynchronous’ orbit (meaning their orbit matches Earth’s).
The Space Force now administers Cold War ground-based radar dishes used to detect missiles and the space-based missile warning system.
‘You have a prediction of where missiles are going to land, and you call commanders down range and our allies down range, and we let them know: ‘Duck and cover. There’s a rocket headed inbound,” explained Lohmeier.
‘At first it was established in the Cold War specifically for the detection and warning of intercontinental ballistic missiles, which carry the biggest threat, but then that capability was used for much smaller heat signatures, much smaller weapons, like the rockets and smaller missiles that are often lobbed in the Middle East against the State of Israel.’
Other Space Force responsibilities involved maintaining GPS systems, which, while used by civilians, are a military system maintained by Air Force operators in Colorado that came over to the Space Force.
‘In addition to missile warning and GPS, the Space Force does strategic communications,’ Lohmeier said.
‘If there’s any kind of communication that is other that could otherwise be disrupted in the land, sea or air domains, space is one of those ways in which strategic communications can be provided to warfighters or key political leaders like a commander in chief.’
The thinking behind the Space Force is to establish space as a ‘domain’ like land, sea and air, with experts who can make decisions, Lohmeier explained.
‘You don’t want people who are used to thinking about things from a terrestrial perspective to go work in the space domain,’ he said.
‘The purpose is to deter conflict in through and from space. And if conflict does happen, then, like every other domain, you’ve got experts in that domain who know how to assist in the waging of conflict.’
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