Air Force Command Brings Focus to Nuclear Enterprise
U.S Department of Defense
American Forces News Service
By Cheryl Pellerin
November 9, 2010
Over the past 15 months, the Air Force has built from scratch a model new command that will sustain and modernize U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile wings and the nuclear-capable bomber fleet, the general who leads the new command said today.
“Some people have likened that to trying to build an airplane while actually having to fly it,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Frank G. Klotz told a group of defense reporters here. “And at times, it has seemed like that to us.”
Global Strike Command is the Air Force’s first new major command in 27 years. It’s also part of a larger strategy that Air Force Secretary Michael B. Donley and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton A. Schwartz drafted “to bring focus and attention back to the nuclear enterprise,” Klotz said.
The command, activated in August 2009 with headquarters at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., has gone from 47 permanent staff and an equal number of temporary-duty staff to a staff of 800, plus 100 contractors. …
The command is responsible for three ICBM wings, two B-52 Stratofortress wings and the only B-2 Spirit wing. About 23,000 people assigned to the command work in locations around the world. …
In April 2009, President Barack Obama told a large audience in Hradčany Square in Prague in the Czech Republic that the United States would take concrete steps toward helping to create a world without nuclear weapons.
“We will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy and urge others to do the same,” Obama said, adding that as long as such weapons exist, the United States “will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary, and guarantee that defense to our allies.”
That position is manifest in the Defense Department’s April 2010 Nuclear Posture Review Report, Klotz said, “and in the attention to our enterprise provided by senior leadership from [Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates] on down, as well as the resourcing that goes with it.”
Still, the number of U.S. nuclear weapons is declining, from nine operational bases and 1,054 missiles to three bases today and 450 missiles, he said. During the Cold War, Strategic Air Command had more than 1,000 bombers. Today, 76 B-52s and 20 B-2s make up the bomber inventory. …
