35-Year Veteran Tapped To Lead Air Force

After Firing Top Air Force Brass, Gates Recommends Gen. Norton Schwartz As Next Chief

(AP)  Defense Secretary Robert Gates recommended Monday that Gen. Norton Schwartz, a 35-year veteran with a background in Air Force special operations, be the next Air Force chief.

In a sweeping shake up of the Air Force, Gates also formally sent former Air Force official Michael Donley's name to the White House to be the next secretary of the beleaguered service. President Bush quickly announced he would nominate Donley, and designated him as acting secretary until he is confirmed by the Senate.

Gates announced last Thursday that he was removing Air Force Gen. Michael Moseley from the chief's job and Michael Wynne as its top civilian. Gates held them accountable for failing to fully correct an erosion of nuclear-related performance standards.

In an effort to get at least part of the new team in place right away, Gates also asked Bush to designate Donley as the acting secretary effective June 21 - a move that would allow him to begin work without waiting for Senate confirmation. Wynne's resignation is effective that day.

Schwartz had been thought to be in line for retirement, and his replacement as head of Transportation Command, Lt. Gen. William Fraser III, had been announced in April. But on Monday Gates recommended that Fraser be nominated as the next vice chief of the Air Force.

And he said that Gen. Duncan McNabb, the current vice chief, should move to the Transportation Command job.

Later Monday Gates is planning to visit Langley Air Force Base, Va., to address airmen and underscore the depth of his concern about weaknesses in service's leadership.

He is expected to stress the importance of leadership accountability and emphasize that despite his well-publicized tensions with the Air Force, he strongly supports the service and appreciates its many wartime contributions.

On Tuesday, Gates plans to make similar speeches at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., home of Air Force Space Command, which has responsibility for the service's nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile force, and at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., home of Air Mobility Command, whose tanker refueling aircraft are part of the nuclear bomber mission.

When he announced last Thursday that he was firing Wynne and Moseley, Gates expressed disappointment that shortcomings in the Air Force's handling of its nuclear mission had been allowed to persist.

"I believed that we needed a change of leadership to bring a new perspective and to especially underscore the importance of accountability in dealing with these kinds of problems," Gates told reporters Thursday.

He said at the time that his decision was based mainly on the damning conclusions of an internal report on the mistaken shipment to Taiwan of four Air Force fusing devices for ballistic missile nuclear warheads. And he linked the underlying causes of that slip-up to another startling incident: the North Dakota-to-Louisiana flight last August of a B-52 bomber that was mistakenly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

The report asserted that slippage in the Air Force's nuclear standards was a "problem that has been identified but not effectively addressed for over a decade."

Gates said the Taiwan mistake did not compromise U.S. nuclear weapons technology and did not pose a physical danger, but it "raised questions in the minds of the public as well as internationally."

Tony McPeak, the retired general who was Air Force chief of staff during the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, said in a telephone interview Monday that he welcomed the selections of Schwartz and Donley.

"It's not a mainstream kind of thing" to choose an officer with Schwartz's extensive background in special operations, McPeak said. But Schwartz also has a variety of other experience, including holding senior positions on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "It's good to have that" broader perspective on the Air Force, said McPeak.

McPeak worked with Donley when Donley was the acting Air Force secretary in the early months of the first Clinton administration in 1993.

"Donley is a solid, solid guy and very experienced," McPeak said.

Donley served as acting secretary of the Air Force for seven months in 1993 and was the service's top financial officer from 1989 to 1993. He is currently the Pentagon's director of administration and management, and has held a variety of strategy and policy positions in government, including a stint on the National Security Council from 1984 to 1989.

Before that he was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee staff. He served in the Army from 1972 to 1975. He earned bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Southern California.

Schwartz has held several high-level assignments on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and has been commander of the U.S. Transportation Command since September 2005.

Schwartz, a pilot with more than 4,200 flying hours, served as Commander of the Special Operations Command-Pacific, as well as Alaskan Command, Alaskan North American Aerospace Defense Command Region, and the 11th Air Force. Prior to assuming his current position, Schwartz was Director, the Joint Staff, Washington, D.C.

He attended the Air Force Academy and the National War College, and he participated as a crew member in the 1975 airlift evacuation of Saigon. In 1991, he served as chief of staff of the Joint Special Operations Task Force for Northern Iraq in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

[rf35]

You realize that when we got o war with Iran, Bush will invoke "emergency war powers" to remain in office. It won''t matter if they exist or not. He can also legally suspend the Constitution. That was last done by Lincoln during the American Civil War. Actually, it was never officially unsuspended...

[omded]

One-American,
I disagree. I think a lot of people care. You probably hope nobody else cares, but, America is much better than that. It would certainly appear the vast majority of Americans don''t think the Bush Administration is doing a very good job at anything. Maybe you should spend more time in the street yourself. It sounds like you spend a lot of time playing video war games. You see, in real life, the people who get killed don''t just get back up again when you start a new game. The people who get a leg or an arm blown off don''t suddenly become whole again when you start a new game either. They go to Walter Reed Medical Center for rehabilitation to try to salvage what they can from what''s left of their lives. Speaking of Walter Reed, that''s another good case in point where the Bush Administration hasn''t made such a good choice of leaders. Their bad choises are pretty well spread out through the entire military. It''s entirely possible this is because the Administration only wants "yes men".

[one-american]

The Bush administration are making good decisions regarding our military command and control, and all the liberals can do is whine.

Nobody really cares what you think, liberals, so go play in the street.

[omded]

SgtRDS-E4,
I hope to God you''re not right, but, you make a lot of sense. All the Chef needs to do is get somehting started, and leave it to someone else to figure out how to bring an end to it. Meanwhile, he and all his buddies will be making big bucks from it.

Chef Bush needs more soldier meet for his diner. He''s developing a recipe for meat loaf.

[republic1776]

Cool 35 year Veteran.
But, throw away with the "doo" if I were him....

[antoniof123]

Gates is such an odd member of the Shrub administration.

He believes in and acts to ensure that his department and its leaders are accountable for their acitons or lack thereof...this is so unlike the President Shrub that we have all grown oh so disappointed with over the last 7 and a half years...

Posted by ozilot at 01:56 PM : Jun 09, 2008

Agreed what a mess this country has with neo con incompetance.

[forthepeopl1]

The two majority Shi''''ite Muslim countries fought an eight-year war in the 1980s, in which 1 million people were killed, but ties have improved since Sunni Arab strongman Saddam Hussein was ousted in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

"The two parties, stressing the importance of defense cooperation in the balanced expansion of ties ... called for development of this sort of cooperation with the aim of strengthening peace and stability in the region," IRNA said.

Earlier on Monday, Iran''''s supreme leader told Maliki that the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq was the biggest obstacle to its development as a united country.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hit out at the "occupiers" in Iraq at a time when Baghdad is negotiating with the United States on a new agreement aimed at giving a legal basis for U.S. troops to stay in Iraq after December 31, when their U.N. mandate expires.

Iran blames the presence of U.S. troops for the violence that followed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq five years ago.

IRAN AND IRAQ. UMMMMM,

THINK MAYBE WORKING TOGETHER TO GET OUR BOYS KILLED???

[uscitizenvet]

I''m totally surprised at the lack of QC that has been going on and even more surprised that the top brass let it go on for too long. It was not that way when I was in SAC back in the 60''s. The SAC I was in would never have let this happen, heads would have rolled !

[sgtrds-e4]

Kick out anyone that might resist a new war with Iran and bring in those that will go along with it. that''s what this "shake-up" is all about. Preparations for war with Iran BEFORE the fall elections.