Cost 
will play “more and more significantly” in the realignment of US military forces in Japan, South Korea, and Guam, said Adm. Mike Mullen, Joint Chiefs Chairman. “The affordability aspect of this is much more intense in this discussion than it’s been in the past,” he told reporters in Washington, D.C. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), and Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) last month called the Defense Department’s current plan to shift some Marine forces on Okinawa, Japan, to Guam, and make additional posture changes in East Asia “unrealistic, unworkable, and unaffordable.” They urged DOD to consider ideas, like moving some Air Force assets from Kadena Air Base on Okinawa to places like Guam. “I appreciate their focus on this,” said Mullen of the Senators’ engagement during his June 2 media event. “We need to be as open as we possibly can to solutions now” and “work our way through in terms of preserving the kind of both influence and stability that our presence in that that part of the world has [created] for 60-plus years.”
The Air Force has spent more than two years studying cancer risks to Airmen who work with the service's intercontinental ballistic missiles. Now lawmakers in Congress are placing fresh scrutiny on the issue and have prepared legislation that would direct the service to clean silos and launch facilities.