The last few years have been tough ones for the airmen assigned to sustain the nuclear-armed bombers and missiles of the U.S. Air Force (USAF). Several well-publicized incidents involving mishandling of nuclear weapons and components have resulted in several in-depth reviews, along with the firing of both the Secretary of the Air Force and Chief of Staff in 2008. Among the recommendations of the reviews was the establishment of a centralized USAF command authority, so that the safety, security, and stewardship of the American land-based nuclear arsenal will be assured, today and in the decades that follow.

The first step on the road to rebuilding the trust of the nation in the USAF to fulfill those goals is taking place presently, with the establishment of the Air Force Global Strike Command. Having “stood up” on Aug. 7, 2009, Global Strike Command is responsible for the U.S. force of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and strategic bombers, along with the warheads and gravity bombs that arm them. Heading this new command is a career USAF “missileer,” Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz, USAF. Klotz is a second-generation airman, USAF Academy graduate, Rhodes Scholar, and arms control specialist, and has been a leader of USAF missile forces at every level of command. He recently sat down with The Year in Defense to talk about his new duties.

The Year in Defense: You have a very interesting resume. What led you to the Air Force Academy, Oxford Universality, and then command of strategic nuclear missiles? That’s quite a career.

Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz – I was actually born into the Air Force, and have been a part of it ever since, with no “breaks in service.” My dad was an Air Force pilot, and had the opportunity to fly multiple types of aircraft – bombers, transports, fighters…the F-86 and the F-100. As a result of that experience, I became very attracted to the Air Force, its mission, its people, and its lifestyle; particularly the opportunity to move every couple of years and see different parts of our country and the world. At one point, my dad was assigned at the headquarters of the Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs, where I spent two years at Air Academy High School, which is actually located on the grounds of the Air Force Academy.

So, I already knew a lot about the Air Force Academy. I was attracted by its academic program, which had a very strong reputation then and continues to have a very strong reputation today. It also has a very broad-based core curriculum, while at the same time it gives you an opportunity to major in a field of particular interest. I was also attracted by its sports and physical fitness programs, as well as its character and leadership development program. In fact, my most formative experience at the Academy was serving as Chairman of the Cadet Honor Committee during my final year.

That sounds like an interesting position.

The role of the Honor Committee is to provide instruction on the Cadet Honor Code, which says, “We will not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate among us anyone who does.” Training is provided to new cadets during their first summer, as well as to all cadets during the entire four years. But there is also another side of it. If there is a suspected breach of the honor code, it becomes the responsibility of the members of the Honor Committee to investigate that, and if warranted, to hold a hearing.

Would I be correct in assuming that you were at the Academy when Gen. Robin Olds was running the school? He was a rather impressive individual.

Gen. Olds was the Commandant of Cadets during my first year at the Air Force Academy. I entered into the Academy in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War. On the Academy staff we had many officers and NCOs who had just come back from Southeast Asia and were able to share their experiences with us as cadets. This included Gen. Olds, who made an extraordinary, lasting impression on all of us as a great airman and combat leader.

What made you want to be a “missileer?”

I attended Oxford University immediately following graduation from the Air Force Academy. There I had the great fortune to study under some of the legends in the fields of strategic studies and in nuclear deterrence theory: Alistair Buchan, who was one of the founders of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London; Sir Michael Howard, who is the world’s preeminent authority on Clausewitz as well as just about every other aspect of military history; and Sir Lawrence Freedman, who was my thesis advisor and another expert in the field of deterrence. In fact, his book, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, is still perhaps the best and most important work in this field. That’s the academic foundation for my working this area. When I left graduate school, I came to the Pentagon to serve on the Air Staff and worked in the area of concept and doctrine development, focusing on nuclear strategy and nuclear arms control.

And this was in the years just after SALT I [Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty I, signed in 1972 between the United States and Soviet Union] was signed, when we were first looking at operating in our first regime under arms control?

That’s exactly right. I then had the opportunity to teach at the Air Force Academy, and then came back to Washington as a White House Fellow, serving on the staff of the Deputy Secretary of State, who at that time was Kenneth Dam. Based on my background, he assigned me the portfolio of following the negotiations in Geneva on strategic arms reductions as well as the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty. At about that time an Air Force general officer, Maj. Gen. Bob Linhard, who has regrettably since passed away, pulled me aside one day and said, “If you’re really serious about a career in the Air Force and a career in the nuclear field, then you need to go spend time at an operational unit and get grease under your fingernails.” So I followed that good advice and a few months later, I’m driving north out of Grand Forks Air Force Base toward Launch Control Facility Alpha-Zero to my first alert, and it is minus 20 degrees outside. I haven’t looked back since.

So in many ways, you’ve got this dual track of actually being in the missile community but also having had the diplomatic arms negotiations side as well.

I think they are two sides of the same coin in that a background in operations complements a background in policy- making. The fundamentally most important thing for any new Air Force member, enlisted or officer, is first to gain technical competence in an operational specialty, whether it’s flying airplanes, standing alert in the missile field, defending our resources in security forces, or in performing maintenance. With that knowledge then, not only do you better perform your job at the unit level, but you are also informing yourself for when you move into advisory or policy-making positions.

I had the opportunity to serve as the U.S. representative to the Nuclear Planning Staff Group at NATO headquarters in Brussels beginning in 1988. I came there shortly after being a missile squadron commander. I think that experience gave me a lot of credibility with my counterparts from other countries. The German representative, for instance, had been the commander of a Pershing [ballistic missile] squadron. So we were able to immediately establish a certain rapport and understanding based on a common shared experience.

NATO Headquarters, by the way, was an amazing vantage point from which to witness history. In 1988, there was still a Berlin Wall, still an inter-German border, with the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact arrayed on one side and the United States and its NATO allies on the other side. I left Brussels in 1991 and by that time, the Wall’s down, Germany’s been reunified, and the Soviet Union is dissolving. So quite a different world in just three years, culminating in the United States and its coalition partners fighting a war in the Persian Gulf.

It’s hard not to look at the calendar and notice it’s been 20 years since the Berlin Wall came down, in November 1989. What is the justification for deterrence forces two decades after the fall of the Wall?

That’s an excellent question. Let me start with where we were before the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War ended. For most of the post-World War II era, strategic nuclear forces were at the forefront of American national security policy. In fact, we referred to our strategic nuclear forces as “Major Force Program I,” which was indicative of their primacy. We invested enormous sums of money in developing and fielding a so-called “triad” consisting of long-range bombers, ICBMs, and sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The overall force was designed in such a way that it could withstand a massive attack by an adversary and respond appropriately, hence the deterrence aspect of its mission.

A lot has changed since then. When I first entered the ICBM business, we had 1,054 missiles at nine operational bases. Today, we have 450 at just three operational bases. Bombers no longer stand alert. Strategic Command’s [EC-135C] Looking Glass airborne command post no longer flies 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Under the Moscow Treaty, which was signed on May 24, 2002, the number of operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads is being reduced by some two-thirds, to a range between 1,700 to 2,200. So a dramatic change has taken place with already very significant reductions from our Cold War peak. That’s the good news.

The world we live in today is far more complex, and the threats to the United States and its allies are far more varied. In this world, nuclear deterrence is no longer at the center stage. That said, there are still nations that either possess or are seeking nuclear weapons, and other weapons of mass destruction, as well as the means to deliver them to their targets. As long as that is the case, we must have capabilities that deter their use against the United States. Equally important, we must assure our allies of our continual commitment to their security.

What is the state of the force today? You just were talking about the missile end of the business. There’s also a bomber element, and do you have some effect on the submarine end as well when this is all said and done?

To the latter part of the question, no. Global Strike Command is an Air Force command. It will have responsibility for two-thirds of the strategic nuclear triad – the ICBMs of the 20^th Air Force, along with the B-52 and B-2 bombers – the nuclear-capable bombers – of the 8^th Air Force. SLBMs still fall under the Navy. Now, in terms of the Combatant Command – all of those forces are presented to U.S. Strategic Command based in Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.

There are currently 450 Minuteman III (MMIII) ICBMs. We have nearly completed a several billion-dollar program to modernize and sustain the ICBM force, literally touching every inch of the MMIII missile, from the nose tip to the first-stage nozzles. The refurbishment includes re-pouring the rocket motors in all three stages, upgrading the guidance system to make it more maintainable with up-to-date electronics, and deploying a safety-enhanced re-entry vehicle on some of our MMIII missiles. Thanks to the efforts we’ve taken so far, we know we can keep the MMIII viable at least through the year 2020. But we aren’t stopping there; we are in the process of developing a road map to ensure it can remain capable through 2030.

On the bomber side, we’re confident the B-2 and B-52 bombers will be an important part of the force through at least 2035, and maybe even longer. We continue to further modernize those systems with updated communications and improved radars. So, in terms of the technical capabilities of the force, it’s in very good shape.

What do you mean by “safety-enhanced?”

One that has more advanced safety features to it. What we’re doing is basically taking the reentry vehicle that was used aboard the Peacekeeper missile, which was deactivated under the START Treaty several years ago and are configuring it for deployment on the Minuteman III missile.

What led to the incidents involving the mishandling of nuclear weapons and components? Was it just a declining focus and doing too many other things, or had we lost “the bubble” on just how important the handling of nuclear weapons is?

I think it’s probably a combination of those things. As Adm. Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has written, “It is as if we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Soviet Union collapsed and said to ourselves, ‘Well, I guess we don’t need to worry about that anymore.’” Of course, it’s not as if the U.S. military had nothing else to occupy its attention during the immediate post-Cold War period. We fought the Gulf War. There were the Balkan crises, and a host of humanitarian relief and peacekeeping operations. We’ve also been involved in long-term combat operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Understandably, that’s where a lot of our time and energy have been focused.

As the nuclear force drew down in size, the attention devoted to questions related to deterrence, as well as to the operation and sustainment of the nuclear forces themselves, unquestionably diminished. Additionally, the total number of people who we brought into the business over the years dwindled. Consequently, there’s been a shrinking pool of expertise. At the same time, we divided up authority within the Air Force nuclear enterprise. Under the old Strategic Air Command (SAC), all of the nuclear-capable bombers and the intercontinental ballistic missiles and the responsibility for their operations, maintenance, and security fell under a single Air Force four-star commander. In the early ‘90s, we made the decision to disband SAC, and we ultimately divided up the bombers and the intercontinental ballistic missiles. They both originally went to the new Air Combat Command, but a year later we decided to put the ICBMs in Air Force Space Command.

On the sustainment side, we had a single-product center that did cradle-to-grave management of the nuclear weapons and associated hardware in Air Force custody. It was located at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio. However, as a result of Base Realignment and Closure actions, Kelly was shut down and we divided up its workload among three or more product centers – resulting in additional fragmentation.

Now all of these actions were taken for what, at the time, seemed to be good, rational, and compelling reasons. However, I’m not sure we fully understood the second- and third-order effects and long-term consequences of those decisions. And, in the process, we inadvertently conveyed to our airmen that the nuclear mission was a lesser priority. The big change endorsed by the Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Staff, is to say, “No, your first priority is a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear deterrent force.”

That is the first time I have heard that said in a long while. And this of course was the result of the review that was led by Dr. Schlesinger.

The events that led up to the Schlesinger Report were a clarion call to take a very close, detailed assessment of the state of the nuclear enterprise within the Air Force and ultimately within the entire Department of Defense. In fact, a number of different internal and external reviews were done. The Air Force chartered its own Blue-Ribbon Review, and the Secretary of Defense commissioned former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger to convene a panel of nuclear experts to look closely at the situation. There was also an examination by Admiral Kirk Donald [Deputy Administrator for the NNSA Office of Naval Reactors and Director of Naval Nuclear Propulsion] of the entire enterprise, including supply chain management and production. So there were multiple looks.

Secretary of the Air Force Donley and Chief of Staff Gen. Schwartz drew from all of these reviews and developed a nuclear roadmap that laid out a number of tenets. First was that reinvigorating the nuclear enterprise is our number one priority as an Air Force. Second was a pledge to reduce the fragmentation of authority, command responsibility, and accountability. This led to the creation of an Air Staff directorate [A-10], solely focused on nuclear issues; the stand-up of a new Air Force major command, Air Force Global Strike Command; and the enhancement of the capabilities of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center at Kirtland Air Force Base. For the record, Kirtland has a long history and association with the nuclear mission, going all the way back to its proximity to the Los Alamos National Lab and the Trinity test site [in the 1940s]. In fact, it was the first product center that dealt with nuclear weapons on the part of the Air Force, which was then the Air Force Special Weapons Unit.

Please explain Global Strike Command to us. What it will be, who will it be made up of, and where will it be?

Global Strike Command will be an Air Force major command on par with Air Combat Command, Air Mobility Command, and Air Force Special Operations Command, etc. It will consist of two numbered Air Forces – 8th Air Force, which will have responsibility for the B-52 and B-2 bombers; and 20th Air Force, which is responsible for all of the nation’s 450 MMIII ICBMs. In addition, we’ll have two smaller units, including the 576th Flight Test Squadron at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, which has responsibility for operational testing of our intercontinental ballistic missiles. We’ll also have the 625th Strategic Operations Squadron at Omaha, Neb., which assists U.S. Strategic Command in targeting and mission planning.

Can you tell us how the standup of Global Strike Command has developed?

We are establishing the command in a very systematic, step-by-step approach. To use the military lexicon, Phase o was the standup of a provisional command at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., in January 2009, under the leadership of Maj. Gen. James Kowalski. The purpose of the provisional command was to develop the initial planning documents, define manpower requirements, and begin the process of assigning people. The next phase takes place on the 7th of August of this year, when we will formally activate Air Force Global Strike Command at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. We’ll spend the next several weeks after that ensuring we have all we need to function as a headquarters, including the ability to respond to emergency situations. Then, on the 1st of December, we will assume responsibility for 20th Air Force and all of the ICBMs. Finally, on the 1st of February of 2010, we’ll assume responsibility for 8th Air Force, including the B-2 and B-52 wings. At the end of the day, there will be roughly 23,000 people in the command – officers, enlisted, and government service personnel.

In terms of tasking, will you be subordinate to STRATCOM or will you be on a tier with STRATCOM? If a tasking comes down that requires you to do something operational with your assets, is it going to come from STRATCOM?

Air Force Global Strike Command is an Air Force major command. Therefore, under U.S. Title X, our responsibility is to organize, train, and equip forces for strategic nuclear deterrence operations and global strike operations, which can be conventional as well. We present those forces to combatant commanders. The intercontinental ballistic missiles are presented to Strategic Command. The bombers, because they have a conventional capability, are presented through Joint Forces Command [JFCOM], which will then provide capabilities for other combat commanders as required. The commander of 8th Air Force also works under the commander of U.S. Strategic Command as the Joint Force Component Commander for Global Strike, and will retain that additional responsibility even as Air Force Global Strike Command stands up.

Let’s talk a little bit about your nuclear warhead/bomb stockpile stewardship, because so far we’ve mostly been talking about the platforms that carry them. U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command is going to be the primary handler of USAF nuclear and thermonuclear weapons for this country for the foreseeable future…. correct?

That’s correct.

What role overall will you have in that stewardship program and the overall nuclear weapons development effort for the United States?

We were talking earlier about Kirtland Air Force Base and the National Labs. Since the very beginning of the atomic era and ultimately the thermonuclear age, responsibility for the U.S. delivery platforms and for weapons themselves has been divided between the military on the one hand, and civilian government agencies on the other. First, the Atomic Energy Commission, then the Department of Energy (DOE), and now the National Nuclear Security Administration have held responsibility for the weapons. So, it is the job of the DOE and the NNSA to develop those kinds of capabilities for us, and I’ll leave it to scientists and engineers at the National Labs to do that.

What we will do as an Air Force is define our requirements. And our requirements are that we have weapons that are reliable, weapons that are safe, and incorporate the latest safety features in them, and weapons that can be readily maintained by the airmen and civilians who service them. So, those are kind of the criteria that we will lay out to the designers. The process by which we do that is to make our views and requirements known to the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and to the Nuclear Weapons Council. The Nuclear Weapons Council is chaired by the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, and includes the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other senior DoD officials, as well as the Director of the National Nuclear Security Administration.

But you feel that you’re going to have a good voice in making the inputs that go over to Secretary of Energy Dr. David Chu and down to the nuclear security people?

The Air Force has had a very good close working relationship with the labs and civilian agencies in the past, and I would expect that that relationship will continue into the future.

One of the things that is clearly in the Schlesinger report, as well as your own [USAF] blue ribbon report, was the issue of personnel reliability and conforming to procedures. What are you going to do to get USAF Global Strike Command to that level of professionalism that looks upon the handling of nuclear weaponry the way we did during the Cold War?

For one, we’re making our overall inspection system more demanding and relevant. The nuclear surety inspection is a very tough test. It’s like taking a final exam in which there are a thousand questions. You can get 990 of those questions right, but if you miss the wrong 10, or in some cases, the wrong one, you fail the entire test. At the end of the day, it’s not about passing or failing. It’s about being able to perform the mission.

One of our principal responsibilities is to assure the senior leadership of the military, as well as the American public, that every organization knows how to conduct operations, maintenance, security and support involving nuclear forces. There’s no room for error. There are a lot of different tasks a unit has to do, and we keep adding to the “job jar.” But, an analogy that I think is particularly apt here is that any unit or any commander has to juggle a lot of balls. Some of them are rubber, so if you drop one of those, it bounces, you pick it back up, and you carry on. But some of those balls are made out of crystal, and if you drop one of those, it shatters and there’s no way you can recover. Operating, maintaining and securing nuclear weapons fall into that “crystal ball” category.

How do we prevent this from happening? We go back to the “old-fashioned” way we conducted business. Commanders and supervisors at every level must pay very close attention to the training and to the actual activities of the people under their charge to ensure that they fully understand how to do the work, that they have the right attitude, and that they’re following checklists. What we will try to take from the SAC legacy is the same intense focus on expertise, on professionalism, on excellence, and ultimately on pride and esprit, and bring those qualities to this new command.

Many people have said that what we’re trying to do is re-create the Strategic Air Command…

Is that such a bad thing?

No, it’s not such. On a purely technical point, Air Force Global Strike Command will not re-create the Strategic Air Command. For instance, we do not have, or will not have under our command the tanker force, which was a major part of Strategic Air Command. In fact, if you walk outside this office and look at the portrait of [General] Curtis LeMay as Chief of Staff and see what airplanes he chose to include in his portrait, you may be surprised to see that his hand is resting on a KC-135 tanker, because that’s how important it was to the overall mission. We will not have that, nor will we have the long-range strategic reconnaissance aircraft under us. As I indicated earlier, the times are changing. [When] Curtis LeMay was the commander of Strategic Air Command, what he used to tell his commanders was, “You need to be prepared to go to war tonight.” Happily, the world has changed dramatically since then, and while it’s still a world that’s very complex and full of threats, there is not the expectation that we will have to go to war tonight, at least not with these forces. Again, what we will try to do is take from the old Strategic Air Command the same intense focus on expertise, on professionalism, on excellence, and ultimately on pride and esprit that it had and bring those qualities to this new command.

Will that include providing adequate manpower to assure that they will be able to do the procedures?

Yes, and I’m glad you raised that. One of the things that we did as we were going through our recent internal reviews was to look very carefully at manpower in the nuclear enterprise. We surveyed our entire Air Force population, and coded individuals with a special identifier if they had nuclear experience. At the same time, we went through billets or job positions in various commands which we felt needed nuclear expertise so that we could match up the right people with the job itself. We identified more than 1,200 positions for which we consider nuclear experience to be absolutely critical, and we will keep those manned at 100 percent. In addition, we’re increasing the number of people involved in nuclear maintenance and security by about 2,500 people.

Are you thinking of making any fundamental changes to the Personnel Reliability Program (PRP), and what is it you’re looking to do in terms of maintaining personnel reliability?

The Personnel Reliability Program is absolutely key and critical to our business. The program is designed to do initial screening and then continue to train and monitor all persons who have duties associated with nuclear weapons – whether it’s operations, maintenance, or security – to ensure that they are emotionally stable, that they are in good physical health, that they have the requisite technical competence, and that they have the right attitude.

There have been challenges associated with the Personnel Reliability Program. One springs to mind from my last experience as the commander of the 20^th Air Force. In all the services we have been downsizing and de-scoping the medical treatment provided at an on-base or on-post medical facilities and relying more on medical care delivery at local or civilian hospitals…

Like commercial providers?

Like commercial providers who quite frankly are very good, with great specialists. That’s the good news. The difficulty, however, is if you are not careful, you can lose track [and control] over the medical care that your individuals are receiving. Take for example an airman who may break a wrist playing softball on a Saturday afternoon. There’s no longer an emergency room on base, so he or she will go to an emergency room at a local hospital. In the process, he or she may be prescribed some medication for the pain that would be disqualifying for performing duties under [the] Personnel Reliability Program for a temporary period. The challenge is making sure that we have the right administrative procedures and controls so that when our people are seen off-base, this is brought to the attention of the commander who has to make that call as to whether or not they can perform their duties.

It’s an extraordinarily important program; it is a commander’s program. In the past there has been a lot of administrative paperwork associated with PRP. The Air Force and the Navy, working with the Department of Defense and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, have taken steps to streamline that process. I have great hope that as we move toward greater use of electronic medical records in the military, not only will we get better care for our highly transient and mobile population of active-duty and civilians, and their family members; but we will also have immediate access to information concerning the medical or emotional condition of our people to make good, informed, timely judgments as to whether or not they meet all the criteria needed to perform nuclear-related duties. Let there be no doubt, PRP is something that every commander who serves as a certifying official must pay daily… no, even hourly… attention to, to make sure that every single member under his or her command meets the stringent requirements to perform their duties.

Obviously, we’re talking about more use of information technology systems to go ahead and streamline this and help make it easier for that commander to use PRP, not just as a security tool, but also as a personnel management tool. What are you doing in terms of information assurance and security to make sure that that information is secure in the minds of the folks actually in the program?

All of our commanders and supervisors who have responsibility for PRP are briefed by competent medical authorities on the requirements of the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, and the need for confidentiality and privacy in terms of the information they have access to. It’s important that commanders have access, because again PRP is their program, so they are the ones who have to make the calls as to whether someone should be temporarily suspended from the performance of nuclear-related duties, or removed from the program altogether.

We’re coming up on a time when it’s been 20 years since we last introduced a physics package and there’s nothing wrong with the one that we’ve got. Yet I hear a great deal about the decision coming up: Do we build a physics package for the 21^st century so that one basic package will serve all our nuclear needs? How important is that new physics package in your mind from a stewardship point of view and as head of Global Strike Command that we make the investment and do this? What are its benefits and what do you think the long-term need for it is?

From the Air Force Global Strike Command perspective, a fundamental requirement is that we have weapons that are safe, secure, and reliable. As the weapons that we currently have continue to age, there are basically two ways conceptually that you can ensure that they continue to meet these criteria. One is to refurbish the existing weapons through a life-extension program. We have been doing that. The other is to replace a few, some, or most of the components within that particular weapon. Refurbish or replace. Strictly speaking, from an Air Force perspective, it doesn’t make any difference as long as the weapon that we deal with is safe, secure, and reliable. So, we’ll leave it up to the nuclear weapons designers, the National Labs, along with the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, to decide what is the best way to pursue that. At the end of the day, that’s what we’re concerned about.

In other words, your role in this is: You state a need, and it’s up to the DOE and other people within that chain to come up with a safe, secure, and reliable package that you can count on to operate.

Our area of competence is operating, maintaining, and securing [delivery] platforms and the weapons that go on them. Their area of competence is in the design of the weapon itself. They’re the ones who have to make those calls.

We’re drawing down the number of nuclear-armed missiles and we will have a surplus of launch vehicles. Is there, in your mind, potential for using those launch vehicles for conventional strike operations, and if so, what are the downsides of doing that? Are there merits in having both ICBMs and bombers?

Let me say a little bit about reductions. As I indicated earlier, we have been on a path of significant reductions in our overall strategic deterrent force for a number of years, especially since 1991. We have taken actions both to change their alert posture as well as reduce the number of weapons. As I indicated earlier, the START treaty and the Moscow treaty are taking us to the lowest number of deployed weapons we’ve had since the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s.

We in the Air Force continue to see benefits of having a balanced triad of strategic nuclear forces, including the sea-launched ballistic missile . By the way, I am a very big fan of the Sea-Launched Ballistic Missile force, both for the capabilities it provides the nation in terms of survivability, as well as the skill and professionalism of the nuclear submariners who operate the system. I’ve had an opportunity to visit both the East Coast and the West Coast SLBM bases, and observe how they secure the weapons and how they conduct their operations. Their skill and professionalism is world-class.

The ICBM provides important capabilities. Of the three legs of the strategic nuclear triad, it is the most responsive to national leadership. Also, given the number of ICBMs we currently have, any potential adversary would have to use a large portion of his own nuclear force to disarm all of our ICBMs. If he attempted to do so, he would exhaust the majority of his nuclear capabilities and would still be subject to retaliation by our remaining nuclear forces, including the SLBMs and bombers. Faced with this prospect, an adversary would have no incentive to launch an attack in the first place and, therefore, would be deterred from doing so.

Bombers are also important in the sense that they provide great flexibility and versatility. They can avoid flying over sensitive areas in ways that ballistic missiles may not be able to. Plus, you can use them to signal resolve and intent by forward-deploying them to various parts of the world. They also have very important conventional, or non-nuclear, capabilities. We saw that play out magnificently in the early stages of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, where the B-2s were part of the opening salvos, and where B-52s were dropping massive bomb loads from 35,000 feet to within a few meters of their targets. This was a very impressive capability and very important to the combatant commanders who were conducting those military operations. So, we continue to see a need for the long-range bomber, with the capability either to penetrate enemy defenses all the way to the target or to conduct standoff attacks, depending on the circumstances.

Decisions [on the overall nuclear force structure] are being made as part of the ongoing … nuclear posture review and negotiations for follow-on to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. At the end of the day, those are the decisions that will be made by the Secretary of Defense, by the President of the United States, and by the Congress. For us in the Global Strike Command, whether the number is “X” or the number is “Y” or the number is “Z,” our mission remains the same, and that is to ensure that we can safely and securely operate and maintain those systems that are in our charge.

What message do you have for the men and women you are going to be commanding in Global Strike Command?

Those individuals who serve in 8th and 20th Air Forces have had a tough and challenging couple of years as we have gone through our self-assessment of the Air Force nuclear enterprise. They need to be assured that the Secretary of the Air Force, the Chief of Staff, and the entire senior leadership of the Air Force are extraordinarily proud of each and every one of them, and what they do. As I have said earlier, we have very, very high standards in the nuclear business. We are not going to relax those standards. We have seen encouraging developments in performance of day-to-day operations, and in performance during nuclear security inspections over the last several months. I’m absolutely delighted to have the opportunity to work with these great Airmen. I think there will be great benefit to our bomber and missile crews, and our security, maintenance and support personnel in having a single command that pays attention just to what they’re doing and serves as a single voice, as a single advocate for their needs and the needs of their families. And Global Strike Command will be that voice.

Photo:

• USAF photo by Scott Ash.

If you've enjoyed this story, please consider subscribing to the RSS Feed to have future stories delivered to your feed reader.