US Strategic Command seeks a new command and control complex and nuclear command, control, and communications node at Offutt AFB, Neb., said Gen. Robert Kehler, STRATCOM’s boss. The new complex would replace Offutt’s “aging and fragile” Curtis E. LeMay building and co-located facilities, said Kehler. The current buildings “lack the capacity to support current mission demands,” and they “occasionally experience serious heating and cooling problems, electrical failures, and other outages,” he told House defense overseers in prepared testimony last week. “The new facility,” he continued, “will ensure an [electromagnetic pulse]-protected, flexible, sustainable, reliable, and collaborative environment,” with a more robust infrastructure. The Air Force will fund the $564 million project, starting with a $150 million increment in Fiscal 2012, followed by $250 million in Fiscal 2013, and the remainder in Fiscal 2014, according to Maj. Gen. Alfred Flowers, USAF’s deputy assistant secretary for budget.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III chaired a China-focused military briefing Oct. 27, part of a biweekly series of briefings with senior military commanders about China’s growing threat in the wake of an orbital hypersonic weapon test that elicited public worries from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “What we…