One lesson generated from Air Force Global Strike Command’s Force Improvement Program is that officials could do more to broaden the ties between the command’s bomber and ICBM forces at the operations level, said Brig. Gen. Michael Fortney, AFGSC’s director of operations. Officials are beginning specific efforts to do just that, he told Air Force Magazine during a recent interview at AFGSC headquarters at Barksdale AFB, La. “The bomber guys learned things about ICBMs from the FIP,” said Fortney. While the ICBM community is adopting “flying side” procedures from the bomber side in many areas, the “sharing went both ways … and I think we can do better,” he said. This month, Fortney said, the operations group commanders from the bombers of 8th Air Force and the ICBMs of 20th AF will gather at Barksdale for a two-day conference. They will look at their respective operations, training, and evaluation challenges and other aspects of the mission “we have to think about every day,” said Fortney. The command is still “relatively new,” he pointed out. “Now, figuring out what we can learn from each other is the next step,” he said.
United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket is slated to fly its second national security mission in February—nearly six months after its first operational launch and almost a year after it was certified to fly military payloads for the Space Force.
