Air Force Creates New Global Strike Command

Rachel A. Weise

Citing a lack of “clear lines of authority and responsibility” in its organizational structure, the U.S. Air Force last month announced it was establishing a new Global Strike Command to oversee all of its nuclear forces.

Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley announced the change at an Aug. 5 Pentagon briefing, saying the shortcomings had been revealed in “multiple studies.”

The new command, located at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, will combine B-52 and B-2 nuclear bombers, which are part of Air Combat Command, with the U.S. ICBM force, which was previously under Air Force Space Command in Colorado. The bombers and ICBMs make up two legs of the U.S. nuclear triad; the Navy will continue commanding its nuclear-armed submarines.

The Air Force released a “nuclear roadmap” last October that reviewed the organization of its nuclear mission. The road map was the latest element of the Air Force’s response to a series of widely publicized lapses in nuclear security. Multiple independent commissions found that the Air Force gave low priority to its nuclear mission, leading to the mishandling of components of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. (See ACT, December 2008.)

In March 2008, the Pentagon admitted that it had inadvertently shipped four nuclear nosecones, instead of helicopter replacement batteries, to Taiwan in 2006. (See ACT, May 2008.) Additionally, a B-52 bomber flew from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale in August 2007 armed with nuclear warheads when it was not supposed to be. Shortly after, the 5th Bomb Wing in North Dakota received an “unsatisfactory” grade during a week-long nuclear security inspection by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. (See ACT, July/August 2008.)

At the Aug. 5 briefing, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said, “Our expectation is high for the command’s focus on precision, reliability, and compliance in all matters nuclear.” He told the audience that he and his colleagues had “made a special effort to make the inspections more demanding, more invasive, more challenging” to ensure that “commanders in the field get good feedback” on the health of their organizations.

Nuclear forces are stationed at 10 Air Force bases and six different logistics centers. The lack of centralized control over nuclear weapons has been cited as one of the factors contributing to the nuclear security lapses.

Non-nuclear B-1 bombers will remain under Air Combat Command. The Global Strike Command nuclear bombers will also be capable of participating in conventional missions.

Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz will lead the new command and its 23,000 personnel. In December, the ICBMs from the 20th Air Force, part of Air Force Space Command, are scheduled to shift to Global Strike Command. The bombers from the 8th Air Force are due to move in February 2012. Schwartz said that the transition will be done deliberately so there are “no hiccups along the way.”

Although the Pentagon briefing was held Aug. 5, no statements were authorized for release until Aug. 7. Donley and Schwartz said this was out of respect for the 64th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, which was Aug. 6.