Matthew Lohmeier appears at a congressional hearing in Washington on May 1, 2025. A former F-15 pilot who graduated from the Air Force Academy, Lohmeier was confirmed July 24, 2025, as the new undersecretary of the Air Force. (Defense Department)
A former Space Force officer who was relieved of command in 2021 over remarks stemming from a book he wrote on Marxist thinking within the U.S. military is now the No. 2 civilian leader of the Air Force.
Matthew Lohmeier was confirmed Thursday as the new undersecretary of the Air Force and is tasked with managing its day-to-day business.
He will oversee the Department of the Air Force’s budget and direct strategy and policy development, the service said in a statement Thursday.
Airmen and guardians “deserve all of the best tools, training and support they need to perform their missions in an increasingly complex and quickly evolving threat environment,” Lohmeier said in the statement.
Matthew Lohmeier, seen here as an Air Force major at Buckley Air Force Base, Colo., in 2016, was confirmed as undersecretary of the Air Force on July 24, 2025. Lohmeier, who served in both the Air Force and the Space Force, left service in 2021 after being relieved of command amid an investigation into comments he made about Marxism in the military on a podcast. (Nicholas Rau/U.S. Air Force)
Lohmeier, who speaks Mandarin, spent time in China while enrolled at the Air Force Academy as part of a cadet exchange program. He was later stationed in Japan as an F-15C fighter pilot.
Those experiences gave him an appreciation for the challenges China poses to the Asia-Pacific region, he said during a confirmation hearing.
“I understand the need for ready Air and Space forces, well-trained and equipped to meet the China challenge, to deter any aggression and, if needed, to defeat that aggression,” he said during Senate testimony in May.
Under the previous administration, he was relieved of command in connection with an investigation into comments he made on a podcast related to his book “Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military.”
In the 2021 book, Lohmeier expressed his view that the military was adopting Marxist ideology in the form of topics such as critical race theory.
At the time, Lohmeier was a lieutenant colonel heading the 11th Space Warning Squadron at Buckley Space Force Base in Colorado.
Critical race theory is an academic framework that examines the concept of systemic racism in policies and institutions. It is not typically part of U.S. military training.
The armed services did previously launch initiatives aimed at recognizing diversity and inclusion that Lohmeier has criticized as Marxist.
After leaving the service in 2021, he worked as a public speaker and consultant “on matters of Marxist ideology and tactics, (critical race theory), military culture, and the preservation of liberty,” according to his biography.
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Lohmeier’s prior service makes him an “excellent fit to help us strengthen the readiness and warrior ethos of the Air and Space Forces.”
vandiver.john@stripes.com @john_vandiver
