The U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command assumes responsibility for the U.S. Air Force's nuclear-capable bomber force today.
This action completes the step-by-step transfer of all Air Force long-range, nuclear-capable assets to the Air Force's newest major command.
The nation's intercontinental ballistic missile force became part of Global Strike Command on Dec. 1, 2009. The command will gain the 8th Air Force and its three bomb wings, one each at Barksdale AFB, La.; Whiteman AFB, Mo.; and Minot AFB, N.D.
Those organizations control all of the United States' B-52 and B-2 bombers and are transitioning from Air Combat Command as a key component of the Air Force's "Nuclear Roadmap."
"We've worked very closely with Gen. Will Fraser and his ACC team every step of the way," said Lt. Gen. Frank G. Klotz, AFGSC commander. "They have been truly magnificent partners in this endeavor. Even after Feb. 1, we'll still have strong and long-standing ties to ACC as we work closely with them in their special role as lead command for the Combat Air Forces."
The transfer once again places all Air Force assets with a strategic nuclear deterrence and global strike mission--missiles and bombers--under one command.
According to General Klotz, this action will provide for "more focused and effective oversight of this important and enduring mission." General Klotz also noted that the bombers of 8th Air Force "remain critically important to our nation, as well as to our friends and allies around the world."
The B-52 provides "unique, unmatched stand-off capabilities," and the B-2 has the ability to attack heavily defended targets, the general added."Both bombers also offer combatant commanders important non-nuclear, or conventional, capabilities as they so convincingly demonstrated in both Operation Enduring Freedom and in Operation Iraqi Freedom."
To mark the transfer of the bomber mission to Global Strike Command, General Klotz is scheduled to visit all three bomber bases on Feb. 1. He will be accompanied by the commander of 8th Air Force, Maj. Gen. Floyd Carpenter, and the AFGSC Command Chief, Chief Master Sgt. Jack Johnson Jr.
At each of the bases, the leadership team will conduct a base-wide commander's call to formally welcome the Airmen into the command. They will also meet separately with unit commanders and their first sergeants, civic leaders and local media representatives.
The addition of the bomber units brings Air Force Global Strike Command's force to more than 23,000 people, with about 900 full-time staff expected at the Barksdale headquarters by the end of summer.
Air Force Global Strike Command stood up in August to provide combat-ready forces to conduct nuclear deterrence and global strike operations in support of the president and combatant commanders.
When the command took over the ICBM mission Dec. 1, it gained the 20th Air Force mission, with missile wings at Malmstrom AFB, Mont., F.E. Warren AFB, Wyo., and Minot AFB, N.D.
The command also gained the 576th Flight Test Squadron at Vandenberg AFB, Calif., and the 625th Strategic Operations Squadron at Offutt AFB, Neb.
An improper stabilizer trim setting caused the July 21 crash of a B-52 Stratofortress aircraft northwest of Guam, according to an Air Combat Command accident investigation board report released Feb. 13.
Analysis of aircraft parts found during salvage operations revealed the aircraft's stabilizer trim was set between approximately 4.5 and 5.0 degrees nose-down at impact. According to the investigation board, this indicates an improper stab trim setting of an aircraft in a nose low descent at low altitude.
The stabilizer trim is a control function used in conjunction with the aircraft's elevator to control the pitch of the aircraft. Pilots will first push or pull on the aircraft yoke to use the elevator to change pitch. They will then use stabilizer trim to ease handling of the aircraft. The stabilizer trim moves the stabilizer so that the desired pitch is held with the elevator in a neutral position.
Through extensive interviews, and using radar data with simulator and computer modeling, the accident board was able to simulate the turn, descent and aircraft crash. With this modeling, they were able to rule out multiple other causes and scenarios due to lack of supporting evidence.
Based on the generated profile and recovered aircraft parts, the board focused on possible problems with the stabilizer trim function. With no surviving aircrew members, no emergency radio calls and with minimal recovered aircraft control systems or instruments, the specific reason the stabilizer trim was mis-positioned could not be determined by the AIB.
The AIB president also found that the combination of low altitude with a descending left turn of the mishap aircraft and late recognition of the serious nature of the situation by the aircrew contributed to the mishap. The board noted that any experienced aircrew could have found it difficult to recognize, assess and recover from the rapidly developing situation involving the stabilizer trim setting.
Six Airmen perished in this accident: Maj. Christopher Cooper, aircraft commander; Capt. Michael Dodson, copilot; Maj. Brent Williams, radar navigator; 1st Lt. Joshua Shepherd, navigator; 1st Lt. Robert Gerren, electronic warfare officer; and Col. George Martin, flight surgeon. Their remains were laid to rest in a ceremony Nov. 14 at Arlington National Cemetery.
The B-52 aircrew was flying a training mission that included a flyby in support of the Guam Liberation Day celebration. The B-52 was assigned to the 20th Bomb Squadron, Barksdale Air Force Base, La., and temporarily assigned to the 20th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, Andersen AFB, Guam. The aircraft was deployed to Guam as part of the Department of Defense's continuous bomber presence mission in the Pacific.
All the crewmembers were assigned to Barksdale AFB, except Colonel Martin, who was assigned to the 36th Medical Group, Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, at the time of the accident.For the AIB report click here
The U.S. Air Force is going back to the future, by creating a new B-52 squadron, so that it will be possible to give all squadrons time to train for nuclear bombing missions. With a max takeoff weight of 240-250 tons, the BUFF (Big Ugly Fat Fellow) is basically a large aircraft designed to carry bombs cheaply and efficiently.
Currently, the B-52 force is limited, by law, to 76 aircraft. The current four squadrons each have 14 bombers and 17 crews. The remaining aircraft are assigned to a training squadron, or idle while awaiting upgrades. Twenty B-52s will get electronic and mechanical upgrades that will make all 76 of equal capability.
To obtain the aircraft for the fifth squadron, each unit will now have 13 aircraft and 15 crews. The active duty training squadron will become the fifth operational squadron, and the reserve training squadron will take over all the training duties it used to share with the active duty squadron.
The B-52 is the cheapest, to operate, heavy bomber in the air force, and one of them can cover all of Afghanistan. B-52s are based on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia when they are supporting operations in Iraq or Afghanistan. With five squadrons, there will be time available for squadrons to train each year for nuclear missions (using nuclear armed cruise missiles), while still covering overseas obligations.
During the Afghanistan war in late 2001, ten B-52s dropped a third of the bomb tonnage. That's a remarkable record for a fifty-year-old aircraft design. The B-52 carried that much of the load because it's the most cost-effective heavy bomber we have. The B-52 has a lower accident rate than the B-1 and B-2. Compared to the supersonic B-1 and high-tech B-2, the B-52 is a flying truck. Thus the B-52, despite its age, was the cheapest, safest and most reliable way to deliver smart bombs over Afghanistan.
Lacking the supersonic speed of the B-1, or the stealth and automation of the B-2, the B-52 can carry up to 150 tons of fuel, and normally carries 12-20 tons of bombs (max load of 35 tons). What made the B-52 so useful in the Afghanistan war is its ability to stay in the air for so long. The B-52s flying out of the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia to Afghanistan typically stayed in the air for some 16 hours. Since it can refuel in the air, the B-52 can fly anywhere in the world with a load of bombs or missiles.
Over Afghanistan, carrying a dozen 2000-pound JDAM (GPS-guided bombs), or a larger number of smaller bombs, a B-52 could circle a combat area for hours, waiting for the special forces guys or Air Force controllers on the ground to send them the coordinates of a target. The JDAM landed (over 90 percent of the time) within 50 feet of the location the ground troopers wanted it. Better yet, most of the bombs arrived within ten minutes of the request.
Surviving enemy troops admitted that they were demoralized once they realized how this was working. At that point, the enemy fighters knew that if they saw Americans looking at them with binoculars (that included a laser range finder, to provide the B-52 with precise location data for the target), they had ten minutes to run away, or die. And often the enemy troops didn't know they were being set up for a JDAM. No place was safe from the one ton JDAMs. If you ran into a cave, it had better have another exit, because the JDAM would permanently close the one you just entered.
The B-52 can carry a large variety of weapons, including eight Harpoon anti-ship missiles and 20 cruise missiles. The B-52 has seen a lot of action in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War, in the Balkans and over Afghanistan. The B-52 prototype first flew in 1952. The last one built, a B-52H, was in late 1962.
It's a large aircraft, with a wingspan of 185 feet, a length of 159 feet and a height of 17.5 feet (to the top of the fuselage, 40.6 feet to the top of the tail). Empty weight is 86 tons. It has a crew of five (pilot, copilot, navigator, electronics warfare officer and radar navigator). There used to be a gunner for a rear-firing 20mm cannon, but this was eliminated in the 1990s. Automation can reduce this even more. The 1970s era B-1 has a crew of four, and the 1980s era B-2 has a crew of two. The only B-52s flying are the B-52H model, all built in the early 1960s.
A true replacement for the B-52 was never built because no one foresaw the development of such accurate smart bombs, and the ability of the U. S. Air Force to destroy most anti-aircraft defenses. Indeed, even when faced with heavy defenses, the B-52 was able to fight its way through.
During the twelve days of Linebacker II raids against North Vietnam in 1972, 15 B-52s were shot down by Soviet-built SAM-2 missiles. The 150 B-52s stationed in Guam flew 729 missions, for a loss rate of two percent. But because of the number of sorties flown, ten percent of the B-52s involved were brought down. Of the 92 airmen in the downed aircraft, 33 died.
After Vietnam, the B-52s received several generations of new electronic warfare equipment, learning much from the experience during Linebacker II. But there never was enough money to keep the B-52 completely up to date, especially with the equipment needed to use some of the newer bombs. Some B-52s got their JDAM equipment just before the 2001 war in Afghanistan. And this was mainly because the upgrade was cheap - wiring from the weapons officer's station to the bombs so GPS location data could be changed in flight. The 50-year-old B-52 became the weapon of choice over Afghanistan, able to hang around for hours and drop one-ton JDAM bombs on demand. The B-52 was upgraded to use JDAM before the B-1B because the B-52 is more reliable.
Currently, the Air Force has the capacity to shut down the high-altitude missiles systems of just about anyone, and then bring the B-52s in at high altitude to avoid low-altitude anti-aircraft guns and mobile antiaircraft missile systems.
The B-1 and B-2 were built to deal with even more intense antiaircraft defenses. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, no one else has such a system.
China is build another such formidable antiaircraft defense system.
For the moment, because of the lack of first rate air defenses to stop it, the B-52 can still hack it in the combat zone, even delivering nuclear weapons.
The U.S. Air Force announced on 18 Dec 2008 that Brig. Gen. James Kowalski, deputy director for global operations on the Joint Staff, will lead the provisional Global Strike Command, the precursor to a new organization that will comprise all of the service's nuclear-capable B-52 and B-2 bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The creation of Global Strike Command is a key component of Air Force efforts to centralize diffuse nuclear assets and operations, and restore credibility to its deterrence mission after a string of highly publicized failures drew attention to the service's deteriorating expertise and management of nuclear materiel.
Kowalski is a decorated bomber pilot who has held a variety of leadership positions, including commander of the 405th Air Expeditionary Wing in early 2003 when the unit provided strike, battle management and aerial refueling for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The provisional command is scheduled to be activated on Jan. 12 at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington. A permanent location for the command has not been decided yet, said Air Force spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Aptekar. Kowalski will play a role in making that decision, but he is unlikely to lead the permanent command when it stands up later next year. That position will go to a three-star general, and it would be highly unusual for a one-star to be elevated to three-star rank in that period of time, several sources said.
Kowalski will be responsible for determining the personnel and resource needs of Global Strike Command and the components across the service from which they will be drawn. As such, he will work closely with other major commands and the headquarters Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration Office, a newly created organization led by Maj. Gen. C. Donald Alston.
Alston led a task force earlier this year that developed a roadmap to improve nuclear operations across the service. Among other things, the task force recommended the creation of Global Strike Command and changes in inventory control and management.
The Air Force has a clear understanding of where its weaknesses are in the nuclear mission, Alston said in a November interview. "We have the right focus in the field now," he said.
The Air Force plans to select a provisional location and interim leadership for a new Global Strike Command by the end of the year, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said Wednesday.
The Air Force will not officially launch the command -- one of several efforts to correct deficiencies affecting the service's nuclear weapons arsenal -- until September.
A defense source said Louisiana's Barksdale Air Force Base is among the most likely candidates to become home to at least the provisional command.
"This stand up is significant not only because it restores our focus on the nuclear mission and culture, but because it demonstrates our clear commitment to restoring excellence in nuclear matters," Donley said during an appearance Wednesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The new command is one of many changes the Air Force is making in an attempt to correct flaws outlined in a report this summer that uncovered widespread problems with the service's handling of its most dangerous weapons. The investigation, sparked by the mistaken delivery of ballistic missile fuses to Taiwan in 2006 that was not discovered until March, led to the firings in June of then-Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff Michael Moseley. In addition, the Air Force mistakenly and unknowingly flew nuclear weapons from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to Barksdale in August 2007.
The point of the new command, Donley said, is to place a single commander in charge of all Air Force nuclear operations, including training and equipping for all B-2 stealth bombers, B-52 bombers and intercontinental ballistic missile missions.
Essentially, the 8th Air Force, which falls under Air Combat Command, and 20th Air Force, part of Air Force Space Command, would report to the new Global Strike Command.
The B-1 bomber fleet will remain under Air Combat Command, reflecting the Air Force's use of the B-1 only for conventional missions, Donley said.
"This approach restores the necessary focus on the nuclear mission [and] provides a clear chain of command for all Air Force nuclear forces," Donley said.
Meanwhile, Donley said the Air Force -- and the Defense Department as a whole -- has spent months preparing for the transition to the next administration.
"Today, we're involved in two shooting wars as well as 24/7 international efforts to track down terrorists, so it's tremendously important that we make this transition as smooth as possible," Donley said.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked the department's political appointees to "consider staying on as long as possible to assist the transition teams," Donley added. "His hope is to avoid the bathtub [drain] in leadership that typically accompanies changes in administrations, especially as we remain a nation at war."
Advisers to President-elect Obama have not ruled out the possibility of Gates staying at the helm of the Pentagon into the next administration.
The U.S. Air Force wants to maintain its current fleet of B-52s at 76 aircraft, despite a Congressional mandate to reduce that number to 56. That's because the B-52 has become the cheapest way to make war these days. With the development of GPS guided bombs (JDAM), heavy bombers have become the most cost-effective way to deliver support to ground forces. The B-52 is the cheapest American heavy bomber to operate.
In the last fifty years, the air force has developed six heavy bombers (the 240 ton B-52 in 1955, the 74 ton B-58 in 1960, the 47 ton FB-111 in 1969, the 260 ton B-70 in the 1960s, the 236 ton B-1 in 1985, and the 181 ton B-2 in 1992.) All of these were developed primarily to deliver nuclear weapons (bombs or missiles), but have proved more useful dropping non-nuclear bombs. Only the B-70 was cancelled before being deployed.
The well maintained B-52s are quite sturdy and have, on average, only 16,000 flying hours. The air force estimates that the B-52s won't become un-maintainable until they reach 28,000 flight hours. The B-1 and B-2 were meant to provide a high tech replacement for the B-52, but the end of the Cold War made that impractical. The kinds of anti-aircraft threats the B-1 and B-2 were designed to deal with never materialized. This left the B-52 as the most cost effective way to deliver bombs. The B-1s and B-2s are getting some of the same weapons carrying and communications upgrades as the B-52, if only because these more modern aircraft provide a more expensive backup for the B-52.
Of the 744 B-52s built, only 94 are still fit for service. Nearly fifty have already been donated to museums (including one in Australia and one in South Korea.) Because of the Russia-U.S. START treaty, hundreds of B-52s in the "bone yard" were stripped of any useful equipment in the 1990s, and, since then, chopped up for scrap. This was all done out in the open, so that Russian spy satellites could confirm it.
The U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command assumes responsibility for the U.S. Air Force's nuclear-capable bomber force today.
To mark the transfer of the bomber mission to Global Strike Command, General Klotz is scheduled to visit all three bomber bases on Feb. 1. He will be accompanied by the commander of 8th Air Force, Maj. Gen. Floyd Carpenter, and the AFGSC Command Chief, Chief Master Sgt. Jack Johnson Jr.
