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Cyber, Space work on merger details

The leaders of Air Force Cyber Command (Provisional) and Air Force Space Command are working on a new road map for merging the organizations.

The new Program Action Directive, which will outline an architecture for the merged organizations, will likely be approved by early next year and take effect next spring or summer, Maj. Gen. William Lord, commander of Air Force Cyber Command (Provisional), said Monday.

Lord said he and Air Force Space Command boss Gen. Bob Kehler are working together closely on the road map, and neither expects the merger to be particularly difficult.

“There’s great synergy between the space business and cyber business and even … some similar kinds of expertise evolving around both disciplines,” Lord said. “It’s not nearly as [difficult] as you read in all the media.”

The Air Force announced Friday that ACC’s nuclear-capable B-52s and B-2s and AFSPC’s intercontinental ballistic missile forces will move to the new Global Strike Command, which will stand up by September 2009. Air Force Cyber Command will be renamed 24th Air Force and will move from ACC to AFSPC.

The shake-up, prompted by two nuclear incidents that embarrassed the Air Force and eventually cost former Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley and Secretary Michael W. Wynne their jobs, is the largest reorganization in the service since Strategic Air Command disbanded in the early 1990s.

Lord said he expects 24th Air Force to have between 5,500 and 6,000 personnel and two to four wings.

But 24th Air Force will now be able to rely on the headquarters functions of AFSPC rather than create its own major command organization, he said.

“The difference is now … we have an established major air command that already has those functions and processes,” Lord said. “Now it’s merely inserting them.”