Will that include providing adequate manpower to assure that they will be able to do the procedures?
Yes, and I’m glad you raised that. One of the things that we did as we were going through our recent internal reviews was to look very carefully at manpower in the nuclear enterprise. We surveyed our entire Air Force population, and coded individuals with a special identifier if they had nuclear experience. At the same time, we went through billets or job positions in various commands which we felt needed nuclear expertise so that we could match up the right people with the job itself. We identified more than 1,200 positions for which we consider nuclear experience to be absolutely critical, and we will keep those manned at 100 percent. In addition, we’re increasing the number of people involved in nuclear maintenance and security by about 2,500 people.
Are you thinking of making any fundamental changes to the Personnel Reliability Program (PRP), and what is it you’re looking to do in terms of maintaining personnel reliability?
The Personnel Reliability Program is absolutely key and critical to our business. The program is designed to do initial screening and then continue to train and monitor all persons who have duties associated with nuclear weapons – whether it’s operations, maintenance, or security – to ensure that they are emotionally stable, that they are in good physical health, that they have the requisite technical competence, and that they have the right attitude.
There have been challenges associated with the Personnel Reliability Program. One springs to mind from my last experience as the commander of the 20th Air Force. In all the services we have been downsizing and de-scoping the medical treatment provided at an on-base or on-post medical facilities and relying more on medical care delivery at local or civilian hospitals…
Like commercial providers?
Like commercial providers who quite frankly are very good, with great specialists. That’s the good news. The difficulty, however, is if you are not careful, you can lose track [and control] over the medical care that your individuals are receiving. Take for example an airman who may break a wrist playing softball on a Saturday afternoon. There’s no longer an emergency room on base, so he or she will go to an emergency room at a local hospital. In the process, he or she may be prescribed some medication for the pain that would be disqualifying for performing duties under [the] Personnel Reliability Program for a temporary period. The challenge is making sure that we have the right administrative procedures and controls so that when our people are seen off-base, this is brought to the attention of the commander who has to make that call as to whether or not they can perform their duties.
It’s an extraordinarily important program; it is a commander’s program. In the past there has been a lot of administrative paperwork associated with PRP. The Air Force and the Navy, working with the Department of Defense and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, have taken steps to streamline that process. I have great hope that as we move toward greater use of electronic medical records in the military, not only will we get better care for our highly transient and mobile population of active-duty and civilians, and their family members; but we will also have immediate access to information concerning the medical or emotional condition of our people to make good, informed, timely judgments as to whether or not they meet all the criteria needed to perform nuclear-related duties. Let there be no doubt, PRP is something that every commander who serves as a certifying official must pay daily… no, even hourly… attention to, to make sure that every single member under his or her command meets the stringent requirements to perform their duties.
Obviously, we’re talking about more use of information technology systems to go ahead and streamline this and help make it easier for that commander to use PRP, not just as a security tool, but also as a personnel management tool. What are you doing in terms of information assurance and security to make sure that that information is secure in the minds of the folks actually in the program?
All of our commanders and supervisors who have responsibility for PRP are briefed by competent medical authorities on the requirements of the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, and the need for confidentiality and privacy in terms of the information they have access to. It’s important that commanders have access, because again PRP is their program, so they are the ones who have to make the calls as to whether someone should be temporarily suspended from the performance of nuclear-related duties, or removed from the program altogether.
We’re coming up on a time when it’s been 20 years since we last introduced a physics package and there’s nothing wrong with the one that we’ve got. Yet I hear a great deal about the decision coming up: Do we build a physics package for the 21st century so that one basic package will serve all our nuclear needs? How important is that new physics package in your mind from a stewardship point of view and as head of Global Strike Command that we make the investment and do this? What are its benefits and what do you think the long-term need for it is?
From the Air Force Global Strike Command perspective, a fundamental requirement is that we have weapons that are safe, secure, and reliable. As the weapons that we currently have continue to age, there are basically two ways conceptually that you can ensure that they continue to meet these criteria. One is to refurbish the existing weapons through a life-extension program. We have been doing that. The other is to replace a few, some, or most of the components within that particular weapon. Refurbish or replace. Strictly speaking, from an Air Force perspective, it doesn’t make any difference as long as the weapon that we deal with is safe, secure, and reliable. So, we’ll leave it up to the nuclear weapons designers, the National Labs, along with the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, to decide what is the best way to pursue that. At the end of the day, that’s what we’re concerned about.
In other words, your role in this is: You state a need, and it’s up to the DOE and other people within that chain to come up with a safe, secure, and reliable package that you can count on to operate.
Our area of competence is operating, maintaining, and securing [delivery] platforms and the weapons that go on them. Their area of competence is in the design of the weapon itself. They’re the ones who have to make those calls.
We’re drawing down the number of nuclear-armed missiles and we will have a surplus of launch vehicles. Is there, in your mind, potential for using those launch vehicles for conventional strike operations, and if so, what are the downsides of doing that? Are there merits in having both ICBMs and bombers?
Let me say a little bit about reductions. As I indicated earlier, we have been on a path of significant reductions in our overall strategic deterrent force for a number of years, especially since 1991. We have taken actions both to change their alert posture as well as reduce the number of weapons. As I indicated earlier, the START treaty and the Moscow Treaty are taking us to the lowest number of deployed weapons we’ve had since the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s.
We in the Air Force continue to see benefits of having a balanced triad of strategic nuclear forces, including the sea-launched ballistic missile . By the way, I am a very big fan of the Sea-Launched Ballistic Missile force, both for the capabilities it provides the nation in terms of survivability, as well as the skill and professionalism of the nuclear submariners who operate the system. I’ve had an opportunity to visit both the East Coast and the West Coast SLBM bases, and observe how they secure the weapons and how they conduct their operations. Their skill and professionalism is world-class.
The ICBM provides important capabilities. Of the three legs of the strategic nuclear triad, it is the most responsive to national leadership. Also, given the number of ICBMs we currently have, any potential adversary would have to use a large portion of his own nuclear force to disarm all of our ICBMs. If he attempted to do so, he would exhaust the majority of his nuclear capabilities and would still be subject to retaliation by our remaining nuclear forces, including the SLBMs and bombers. Faced with this prospect, an adversary would have no incentive to launch an attack in the first place and, therefore, would be deterred from doing so.
Bombers are also important in the sense that they provide great flexibility and versatility. They can avoid flying over sensitive areas in ways that ballistic missiles may not be able to. Plus, you can use them to signal resolve and intent by forward-deploying them to various parts of the world. They also have very important conventional, or non-nuclear, capabilities. We saw that play out magnificently in the early stages of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, where the B-2s were part of the opening salvos, and where B-52s were dropping massive bomb loads from 35,000 feet to within a few meters of their targets. This was a very impressive capability and very important to the combatant commanders who were conducting those military operations. So, we continue to see a need for the long-range bomber, with the capability either to penetrate enemy defenses all the way to the target or to conduct standoff attacks, depending on the circumstances.
Decisions [on the overall nuclear force structure] are being made as part of the ongoing … nuclear posture review and negotiations for follow-on to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. At the end of the day, those are the decisions that will be made by the Secretary of Defense, by the President of the United States, and by the Congress. For us in the Global Strike Command, whether the number is “X” or the number is “Y” or the number is “Z,” our mission remains the same, and that is to ensure that we can safely and securely operate and maintain those systems that are in our charge.
What message do you have for the men and women you are going to be commanding in Global Strike Command?
Those individuals who serve in 8th and 20th Air Forces have had a tough and challenging couple of years as we have gone through our self-assessment of the Air Force nuclear enterprise. They need to be assured that the Secretary of the Air Force, the Chief of Staff, and the entire senior leadership of the Air Force are extraordinarily proud of each and every one of them, and what they do. As I have said earlier, we have very, very high standards in the nuclear business. We are not going to relax those standards. We have seen encouraging developments in performance of day-to-day operations, and in performance during nuclear security inspections over the last several months. I’m absolutely delighted to have the opportunity to work with these great Airmen. I think there will be great benefit to our bomber and missile crews, and our security, maintenance and support personnel in having a single command that pays attention just to what they’re doing and serves as a single voice, as a single advocate for their needs and the needs of their families. And Global Strike Command will be that voice.
This article was first published in The Year in Defense: Summer 2009 Edition.