The Defense Department announced Tuesday that Lt. Gen. William Shelton has been nominated by the White House to be the next Air Force assistant vice chief of staff. Shelton has served since last December as chief of warfighting integration in the Air Force Secretariat. If confirmed by the Senate, he would replace Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz whom the Senate last week confirmed as the commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, the service’s nuclear-centric major command that is standing up in the fall. Filling Shelton’s current post would be Maj. Gen. William Lord, who was also nominated Tuesday for appointment to the rank of lieutenant general for that role. Lord has been commander of Air Force Cyber Command (Provisional) at Barksdale AFB, La., since October 2007.
A new Air Force plan for how many fighters it needs in the next decade marks a sharp upturn from what it thought it needed just seven years ago. But analysts worry that the aspirational plan now in Congress' hands doesn’t make a tight enough connection to national strategy.
