Step Two

Step Two: The

governors of the 18 states in contention to host the permanent location for USAF's new Cyber Command have now received a second letter from William Anderson, the service's point man on the effort, asking for more details on why their states should get the new unit. In his recent letter, Anderson, the assistant secretary for installations, environment, and logistics, invites the governors to review the initial basing criteria provided and make a case for X as an "ideal host location" for either the new command's headquarters or supporting organizations or both. (The Air Force laid out its notional organizational structure in March.) Anderson wants the governors' inputs by July 1. For Step 3 in the process, which will begin sometime later this summer, the service will send teams to visit each potential location, where team members will meet with local officials and verify the states' claims. After analyzing the data, writes Anderson, the service will narrow the field "to a short list that consists of a preferred location and several alternative locations" that it expects to announce publicly in mid-November. As the dust settles, the Air Force then must begin environmental assessments, working toward a final permanent choice that it hopes to reveal by September 2009.

5/21/2008

Verbatim

Preemptive Action
"Since the [Defense] Department's acceptance of the independent estimates last fall, we've been, in just about every respect, acting as if the program were in a Nunn-McCurdy breach. ... We've been taking all of the mitigating and corrective action that we would take as if there were a Nunn-McCurdy breach."
—Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, discussing with reporters the restructure of the F-35 strike fighter program announced in February 2010 and the probability that the program will soon exceed Nunn-McCurdy cost-monitoring thresholds that would necessitate, per US law, a program review and corrective steps, Washington, D.C., March 2, 2010.

Verbatim

Message for Grandma
"She has working for her as a citizen in the United States an Air Force Reserve that has some very talented, capable, patriotic, and willing individuals doing the business to keep this nation free. Just like her generation—the 'Greatest Generation'—was, I am very proud of the folks that we have got. If not the second greatest, then they are an extension of the greatest generation and they are ready, willing, and able to do the things that she would want them to do to make sure we keep our freedoms."
—Lt. Gen. Charles Stenner, Air Force Reserve chief, responding to a reporter's question on what the reporter should tell his 85-year-old grandmother to convey to her the importance of Air Force Reservists to the nation's security, Orlando, Fla., Feb. 19, 2010.