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Nuclear wings set to join Global Strike Command

Three nuclear missile wings will transfer from Air Force Space Command to Global Strike Command on Tuesday while the service again addresses more inspection failures and firings in its nuclear operations.

It will mark the first time nuclear units will fall under Global Strike Command since it stood up in August to help solve the problems the Air Force has had handling nuclear weapons the past two years.

About 9,600 airmen at the missile wings are set to rip off their Space Command patches and replace them with Global Strike Command’s.

Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz, head of Global Strike Command, will to travel to each wing Tuesday, starting at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo. — home to the 90th Missile Wing and 20th Air Force — and then fly to the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., and the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to speak to airmen.

“I want them to know they have an extraordinarily important and enduring mission,” Klotz said. “The Cold War may be over, but as our commander in chief said during his speech in Prague, as long as nuclear weapons exist, we need to maintain this arsenal to deter attacks on the United States and guarantee the same defense for our allies.”

The transfer comes a week after two wings at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., failed their nuclear surety inspections. Those wings, the 377th Air Base Wing and the 498th Nuclear Systems Wing, will remain under Air Force Materiel Command.

In October, the service fired both wing commanders at Minot. Service officials said they lost confidence in 91st Missile Wing commander Col. Christopher Ayres and 5th Bomb Wing commander Col. Joel Westa after their units failed nuclear surety inspections.

Despite the failures, Klotz said he has confidence in the airmen and commanders of the nuclear wings coming under his command.

“I have extraordinary faith in the leadership at all three of the missile wings as well as all three of the bomber wings,” he said. “I also have great confidence and great pride in the airmen that work for them … This is a tough and demanding business and it’s the business of nuclear surety inspections.

“I liken it to a final exam in college with a thousand multiple choice questions. If you get 990 of them right … but you miss the wrong ten on a nuclear surety inspection you fail the entire test. That’s just the way we structured it. We want it to be a tough and demanding test. We want to be able to identify any issues that are out there.”

Three bomber wings — the 5th at Minot, the 2nd at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., and the 509th at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo. — are set to follow the missile wings to Global Strike Command and transfer Feb. 1 out of Air Combat Command. Service officials chose to delay the movements of the wings to ease the transition.

“We want to minimize the turbulence at the units,” Maj. Gen. James Kowalski, then the command’s provisional commander, said in May. “The last thing we want to do is create a situation where a unit is talking to multiple headquarters because one headquarters didn’t want to pick up everything yet.”

As the command continues through the transformation, Klotz said the biggest challenge remains hiring the right people. It’s a challenge Kowalski highlighted before Klotz took over.

“As we begin to build up … we have to make sure we can recruit and hire unique and important experience in the nuclear enterprise whether it is prior service experience or retirees or government civilians or people who have had background in this business,” he said. “I am very impressed and excited about the people we have been able to hire so far … For the people who grew up in an earlier era it’s an opportunity to go back. For other people, it’s a chance to do something entirely new.”

Results might not be immediate Klotz warned, but it will not take long before the Air Force sees a return on its investment of re-organizing the nuclear wings under one major command. The general read Good to Great — a book by Jim Collins that tries to answer how a company goes from good to great. Klotz said Collins’ message applies to Global Strike Command.

“To achieve transformation from good to great in any organization takes constant, continual pressure everyday,” he said. “At first you might not see immediate results. You will see some results, but over time the momentum begins to build and finally reaches a point of velocity that you are able to achieve break through. We are going to work the issues of reinvigorating the nuclear enterprise one task at a time, one dispatch at a time, one alert tour at a time, and one sortie at a time to make sure we get it right.”

Related reading:

Two wings get F on nuclear inspection