Posted on 06/26/2002 7:18:45 PM PDT by WakeUpChristian
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (June 26, 2002 3:18 p.m. EDT) - Merging the military's commands over its space and nuclear forces will get rid of overlapping duties, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday in announcing a plan aimed at making it easier to respond to attacks.
"Merging the two into a single entity will eliminate the redundancy and streamline the process," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news conference.
President Bush recently approved the proposal.
The new command, which is yet to be named, would combine the U.S. Space Command and the U.S. Strategic Command. It is expected to be based at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, where Strategic Command is headquartered now, Rumsfeld said.
Space Command is based at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, which is to be the home of the new Northern Command when it begins operations in October. Northern Command was created to oversee defenses of the United States. Bush has nominated the head of Space Command, Gen. Ralph Eberhart, to oversee the Northern Command.
Rumsfeld said a nominee will be offered soon to head the combined military commands, but he did not mention any contenders.
The Pentagon said the goal of combining the commands is to get rid of some bureaucracy and to make it easier to respond to attacks.
"To bring those two together would have some obvious economies and it would obviously make sense," Brig. Gen. John Rosa Jr., deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday.
Many details of the plan have not been worked out, however. Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, head of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, said Tuesday he did not know if his agency would be put under the merged command.
Officials had been studying whether to put the missile defense program under Space Command.
The new joint command is part of the restructuring of the nation's security system that began after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Strategic Command, also called StratCom, oversees the nation's nuclear arsenal. Space Command is responsible for defending U.S. interests in space.
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., applauded the plan.
"Offutt is prepared to deal with this new command as its new headquarters," Hagel said. "It's good news for the state of Nebraska."
Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo., chairman of the House Armed Services military readiness subcommittee, said he had received assurances that certain functions and staff would stay in Colorado Springs.
He said the consolidation would end plans for an Army-Air Force "space campus" at Peterson, which will host the Northern Command.
Northern Command, created to oversee the military's role in domestic defense, eventually will have 500 to 1,000 military and civilian workers, compared to the roughly 800 workers assigned to Space Command.
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Tsk. Tsk. It will be in Roswell, where it's always been.
Not true in the least. Space Command is chartered to support the Warfighter CinCs using space assets. This is the first I've seen of this merger, so I am speaking off the cuff but this does not look like a good thing for US interests. Space Command supports many aspects of our nations defense beyond nuclear deterrence/launch warning. The list includes GPS, large numbers of communications networks for all armed services around the world, classified intel collection programs that we can't discuss here, world wide weather forecasting for the warfighter, and more. If this move is to provide momentum to ballistic missile defense, it does so at the cost of placing many other vital programs in an office that may not have those other interests as a priority. I will be interested to hear more about this.
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