Back to the Future

Any day now, senior Air Force leaders will announce the details of their plan to establish a major command to manage nuclear and deterrence missions. The far-reaching restructuring is aimed at restoring global confidence in U.S. nuclear stewardship following a string of security lapses and unacceptable mistakes that led Defense Secretary Robert Gates to sack the service's senior civilian and military leaders in June.

As service leaders iron out the critical details inherent in establishing a new command structure, it's worth remembering that the Air Force used to have an organization that did exactly what it now needs to do. The Strategic Air Command was once the pride of Cold War airmen, for whom the nuclear mission was synonymous with national preservation. The service's decision to dismantle the command in 1991 following Operation Desert Storm in Iraq, the first major post-Cold War military engagement, is a cautionary tale in the unintended consequences that can result from a major reorganization.

There's no question that the nuclear mission today and its deterrence role have evolved considerably from Cold War days. But as James Schlesinger, chairman of the Task Force for Nuclear Weapons Management, said during a September briefing at the Pentagon, the mission remains vital to national security.

When it reorganized its command structure in the 1990s, Air Force leaders allowed the mission to atrophy through inattention and budget cuts. Bomber forces lost their focus on nuclear expertise, concentrating on conventional operations instead. It was an understandable shift -- those forces had not been prepared intellectually or logistically for the first Gulf War. But it proved to be an overreaction, as seen through the service's mistakes over the last few years.

Today in the nuclear arena, "There is a shortage of security personnel. There is a shortage of maintenance people. There is a shortage of those who supervise the nuclear establishment and there has been a noticeable lack of nuclear expertise," Schlesinger said.

How did the pride of the Air Force turn into a cause for alarm in less than two decades? The Schlesinger task force issued a report in September citing several causes. Among them, "The makeup of senior Air Force leadership gradually began to shift: the nuclear weapons-focused, bomber-experienced officers who had previously monopolized senior positions became a minority, and those remaining had to adapt to the ascendant group drawn from conventional weapons-focused fighter pilots. As a result, the special culture that had surrounded the nuclear enterprise dissipated."

That dissipation had concrete results. The service scaled back, consolidated and eventually eliminated training programs focused on the nuclear mission. By 2006, bomber crews commonly reported for duty with only conventional combat certification. The Air Force slashed nuclear deterrence resources by 65 percent between 1990 and 2005 -- cutting them far more sharply than other areas of the budget. Where general officers and members of the Senior Executive Service previously held oversight positions, now colonels and mid-level civilians hold sway. Not surprisingly for an institution that no longer valued its nuclear mission, promotion rates for those with nuclear expertise were as much as 14 percent lower than for those with conventional expertise.

"This decline took place gradually as changes were made to organizations, personnel, policies, procedures and processes. Many of these changes were done as independent actions and seemed unremarkable at the time. The overall impact on the nuclear mission, however, has been more pronounced than realized and is too extreme to be acceptable," the task force found.

As Schlesinger observed and Air Force leaders now seem to understand, the nuclear mission is no less important today than it was during the Cold War.

More than 30 nations stake their security on the U.S. nuclear umbrella, Schlesinger said. "The confidence that they have in that umbrella will determine whether or not they themselves may seek to acquire nuclear weapons," he noted. "Some have expressed increasing misgivings about whether or not they feel comfortable under the umbrella. Part of the task of the Air Force and the Department of Defense will be to resuscitate their confidence in the credibility of the nuclear mission."