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New focus on nukes

The same week top Air Force generals met to decide, among other issues, how to shore up what a Defense Department report described as an eroding nuclear mission, the head of U.S. Strategic Command told Air Force Times his command has not lost its focus on the nuclear mission.

Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, head of StratCom since 2007, said nuclear problems have been isolated to the Air Force, which with the Navy provides the “organize, train and equip” functions of the nuclear mission. “Now, that’s not to say that over the last 15 years, the attention at StratCom has stayed at the same levels,” Chilton told Military Times reporters and editors, acknowledging a trend throughout the Defense Department of de-emphasizing the nuclear mission over the same time period.

To combat this, he said, StratCom will make its own changes to ensure the focus stays on nuclear weapons, including:

* Having inspectors from StratCom’s inspector general team join nuclear inspections of Air Force and Navy units and report directly to Chilton.

* Forming a Nuclear Enterprise Board and Nuclear Enterprise Council. The board will be headed by Rear Adm. Doug McClain, StratCom director of global operations, and the council by Vice Adm. Carl Mauney, StratCom deputy commander.

* Creating a nuclear flag officer position under StratCom’s directorate of operations.

* Expanding StratCom’s major nuclear exercise, Global Thunder, from a command post exercise to one that includes force generation and flying operations.

Reorganization suggested

StratCom stood up in 1992 after Strategic Air Command and Tactical Air Command disbanded. The nuclear mission was divided among StratCom and multiple Air Force commands.

A Defense Department task force has recommended the Air Force’s nuclear and bomber missions be put under Air Force Space Command and then that it be renamed Air Force Strategic Command. It would be a far-reaching reorganization unlike any since StratCom began.

Air Force leaders had planned to make a final decision on the reorganization during the Oct. 1-4 Corona leadership summit, with a senior nuclear official saying some kind of restructuring needs to occur.

“It’s clear that we have fragmentation of authority across the Air Force nuclear enterprise,” the official said.

Chilton headed Air Force Space Command, responsible for intercontinental ballistic missiles, and 8th Air Force, responsible for the nuclear bomber mission, before he took over StratCom last year, giving him a unique perspective on the reorganization.

“I’ve been in consultation with the Air Force leadership on this, and what I have told them is not what to do, but what I would ask as just fundamental principles, and that is take the decisions you feel necessary to make sure you organize, train and equip a force appropriately to present me forces that I can do the mission with,” Chilton said.

But Chilton still wears an Air Force uniform at the helm of a joint nuclear command, at a time when internal and external reports have unilaterally given the Air Force’s nuclear mission a failing grade.

Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said Chilton was one of many Air Force generals who let nuclear priorities slide to fulfill the more pressing conventional missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, while his commands had connections to two Air Force nuclear incidents discovered last year — the sensitive ballistic missile components mistakenly being shipped to Taiwan in 2006 and the six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles accidentally flown on a B-52 from North Dakota to Louisiana — they were not directly responsible.

Chilton had left 8th Air Force two years before the missiles got mistakenly flown on the wings of the B-52, and inspectors faulted Air Force logistics officials rather than Space Command leaders for the Taiwan incident.

In fact, Col. Les Kodlick, who worked with Chilton at Space Command, said the general consistently made it a priority to stress the nuclear mission’s importance. He “carried that forward to Strategic Command,” Kodlick said.

Chilton said he will work with his fellow Air Force generals to try curing the service of its nuclear ills.

The senior Air Force nuclear official said a lot of work needs to be done before the service can take a proactive instead of reactive approach to its nuclear problems.

“This is an uncomfortable position to be in. Problems get exposed and you chase the problem. There is a need of a sense of vigilance, such a sense of focus and being self-critical, that we [should be] proactively getting in front of these challenges,” the official said. “When you see weaknesses you [should be] overcoming weakness before it becomes a problem. We’re not there.”

Inspections

To catch those weaknesses, leaders in the Air Force and at StratCom have instituted changes to provide more oversight to inspections.

Internal and external reports on the Air Force’s nuclear enterprise — including one headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger —described the Air Force’s nuclear inspection process as degraded.

The Air Force already announced it will move to no-notice inspections and will form a core team in its inspector general’s office to attach IG teams who inspect nuclear bases to major commands.

Chilton said StratCom used to send its own inspectors on nuclear inspections but has gotten away from the practice over time.

That will stop, he said, vowing that StratCom inspectors will again join the Air Force’s and Navy’s teams — not to inspect nuclear units, but to inspect the inspectors.

“They don’t have an inspection role, but they have an oversight role,” Chilton said.

Organization

The new Nuclear Enterprise Board will deal with day-to-day nuclear decisions, while the Nuclear Enterprise Council addresses more senior-level nuclear issues, Kodlick said.

Both the board and council have been established for the past six months and have had several meetings.

McClain, who heads the board, had been responsible for the nuclear mission, but now he’ll have a one-star general whose sole job will be the nuclear enterprise, Kodlick said.

The one-star position will be filled in the next couple of months, Chilton said.

Global Thunder

The Task Force on Nuclear Weapons Management headed by Schlesinger also faulted leaders for not holding enough nuclear readiness exercises.

“No large-scale, end-to-end exercise of the nuclear capability has been accomplished since 1995,” the task force wrote in its report.

“Owing to the infrequency of these exercises, units tend to focus on mastering procedures and tasks rather than developing operational proficiency.”

Chilton has similar concerns saying that Global Thunder — StratCom’s major exercise — had become a command post exercise and wanted to broaden it to include flying operations.

He has discussed this with Air Force officials who have been preparing to include B-2s and B-52s in the exercise, Kodlick said.

The next Global Thunder will not take place until next spring, Chilton said.

“I’ve been watching the Air Force and all the things they’ve been doing to lead up to prepare for [Global Thunder], and I’m very pleased by their performance,” he said.

Related reading:

Q&A with Gen. Kevin Chilton

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