The Air Force plans to hold a selective early retirement board—SERB—targeting lieutenant colonels and colonels beginning on Jan. 8. In July, the service said it must shed in Fiscal 2007 some 8,000 officers, including hundreds of twice-deferred 0-5s and 0-6s not already selected for promotion to brigadier general. It wants to get volunteers to leave the service by Sept. 1, 2007 (not Sept. 30, as we reported earlier), but, if not, the SERB will identify the officers that must go.
After years of describing to lawmakers and Pentagon leaders the nature of that threat and the key role spacepower plays in deterring conflict in the domain and enabling the rest of the joint force, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman told reporters during AFA’s Warfare Symposium here that the message appears to…