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Gates: Air Force nuclear work ‘vital’ to U.S. security

MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. — Defense Secretary Robert Gates didn’t jet to Afghanistan or Iraq after he accepted President-elect Barack Obama’s invitation to stay on under the new administration.

His first stop was Minot Air Force Base, N.D., making him the first defense secretary to visit what the base commander describes as the Air Force’s “prairie outpost.”

Gates’ visit comes five months after he fired the service’s chief of staff and secretary in part for the mistaken transfer of six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles from Minot to Barksdale Air Force Base, La.

Minot airmen have since been under the microscope working many 12-hour days and seven-day work weeks to fix flaws found with its handling of nuclear weapons and prepare for inspections to ensure such a mistake doesn’t happen again.

More than a year later, Gates told a crowd of about 1,000 Minot airmen standing and sitting inside a B-52 hangar he’s pleased with the progress made at Minot and across the Air Force.

“Based on everything I have seen, heard and learned in recent months, I strongly believe that the Air Force is now moving in the right direction to reclaim the standards of excellence for which it was known throughout the Cold War,” he said.

Much of what the defense secretary’s seen and heard include the report done by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger on the service’s nuclear enterprise that found “this critical mission, and the career field associated with it, did not receive the attention, the funding or the personnel it deserved,” Gates said.

That lack of attention is what brought Gates to Minot in a trip planned well before reports circulated that Obama would announce Gates as his defense secretary the same day, said Geoff Morrell, Gates’ spokesman.

He decided to come after Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz alerted Gates — who served as an Air Force intelligence officer at a nuclear missile base in the 1960s — that no defense secretary had been to Minot.

“We owe you the attention, the people, and the resources you need to do the job right. For your part, you must never take your duties lightly,” Gates said.

Both the 91st Missile Wing and 5th Bomb Wing commanders said Minot airmen were excited about the defense secretary’s visit and provided a morale boost.

“We’ve been busy this year and especially with the visit, but this was a good busy because we get an opportunity to show how well things work at Minot,” said Col. Joel Westa, the 5th Bomb Wing commander, as he watched a B-52 crew show Gates the inside of the cockpit.

After his speech, Gates opened the floor to questions from airmen, which included questions on how Gates plans to reshape the Air Force’s aging fleet and bolster the military’s cyber defenses during his extended term.

Gates decided to pass many key decisions on aircraft acquisitions to the future administration, but now that he is staying on with Obama he said he will sit down with leaders from each service and establish priorities.

“It’s not just the cost and the cost overruns and the delays … the worry I have is that we are putting more and more capabilities on fewer and fewer platforms and if you lose one of those platforms it has a significantly greater consequence than if you have many copies of the same,” he said.

Gates also said cyber is one of his most significant concerns and service leaders must continue to make it a priority much like Schwartz has for the Air Force.

Following the cyber attacks made on Georgia and Estonia, Gates said it’s clear the military needs more cyber experts inside the military.

“We need a lot more people who are specialists in cyber and unfortunately not all the slots in the so-called cyber schools have been filled … and I have told [the service chiefs] filling those slots are the highest priority,” Gates said.

Despite these other interests, Gates said the Air Force and military can’t again lose focus on the nuclear mission, telling the Minot airmen they have the “most sensitive mission in the entire United States military.”

“I wanted to tell you in person that, as stewards of America’s nuclear arsenal, your work is vital to the security of our nation,” he said.

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