The U.S. Air Force is set to formally stand up its new nuclear weapons command today at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, Agence France-Presse reported .
The Global Strike Command would assume control of the nation's ICBM fleet as well as its B-52 and B-2 bomber aircraft, which are capable of delivering nuclear weapons. The new organization, led by Gen. Frank Klotz, would encompass 23,000 Air Force personnel.
The service established the command in response to a series of nuclear-weapon mishaps in recent years years, including the accidental transfer of six nuclear-armed cruise missiles across the country in 2007 and last year's discovery that the Pentagon had mistakenly shipped ICBM fuses to Taiwan. The errors led to the 2008 sacking of the Air Force's top military and civilian leadership.
"We needed to refocus on the nuclear mission and not lose sight of that," Air Force Secretary Michael Donley told journalists. The service has learned some "painful lessons," but today's change will "reinvigorate our nuclear enterprise," he said.
The 20th Air Force is expected to turn over control of the country's ICBMs to the new command in early December, according to officials. Next February, the command would take charge of the country's nuclear-capable bombers, a responsibility now held by the 8th Air Force, they said.
The command would also be capable of deploying some conventional weapons , including a massive bunker-buster bomb slated to be commissioned in 2010, said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz .
The new command intends to carry out tough inspections of the service's nuclear operations, which would also be subject to independent scrutiny, Schwartz added.
"We have made a special effort to make the inspections more demanding, more invasive, more challenging," he said. "My judgment was that perhaps the inspections had not been as rigorous as we needed in the past. So we adjusted that."
The new command also raises the profile of the Air Force's nuclear work, placing it on par with the service's other responsibilities. Nuclear weapons played a more central role in the Air Force prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to AFP.
"The key thing here is we ended up focusing on other things and understandably perhaps, but we are now wiser," he said
(Agence France-Presse/Google News, Aug. 7).
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