Kehler Sees Natural Fit With Cyberspace

Kehler Sees Natural Fit With Cyberspace: Air Force Space Command will lose about 3,000 slots as it divests itself of its ICBM mission and absorbs the growing cyberwarfare role, taking on the new 24th Air Force, the service’s new cyberspace central. The Air Force is placing the ICBM force under the new Air Force Global Strike Command, along with nuclear-capable bombers. AFSPC boss Gen. Robert Kehler, speaking with reporters during a Space Foundation symposium in Colorado, said AFSPC would shift some 10,000 ICBM slots over to AFGSC over the next eight to 10 months and pick up some 7,000 positions with acquisition of 24th AF. “We think there are synergies,” Kehler said of the space and cyberspace mission areas, adding that much of what currently is performed in 14th Air Force (headquartered at Vandenberg AFB, Calif.) could be considered cyberspace operations. “It’s about moving and protecting ones and zeroes,” he added. Of the 7,000 cyber slots flowing into AFSPC, a portion will be Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve Command as well as contract support personnel—many of whom are currently working in other areas, such as the Air Force Communications Agency. As for the 24th AF headquarters location, Kehler said he anticipates the bed down location announcement in “the next couple of weeks” and is anticipating achieving initial operational capability in the fall.

—Marc V. Schanz

4/1/2009

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No Dog, Just Concern
"You know it concerns me that we keep hearing, 'Well this is something that the military doesn't want. They didn't ask for,' and all that. Then I go over there [Southwest Asia theater], and that's not their attitude at all. They have needs over there. Our lift capacity is in dire straights. … Now on the F-22—just yesterday we read about the T-50 … a fifth generation [fighter] that the Russians have. … I'm concerned about this. And I guess, you know, if we're down to 187 F-22s, and I think out of that only—what 120 are actually combat ready and used for combat. … I look at our committee—the Senate Armed Services Committee—and on these two vehicles I mentioned—the F-22 and the C-17—in Oklahoma. I don't have a dog in that fight. We don't have any parochial interest there. But it's the capability that we're going to need."
—Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), speaking during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Fiscal 2011 defense budget, Feb. 2, 2010.

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Taming Expectations
"Every QDR disappoints those who look for radical reallocation of resources. The current fiscal environment is compounding that trend."
—Jim Thomas, vice president for studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, briefing reporters in Washington, D.C., Jan. 26, 2010.