The announcement of the Air Force’s selection for the permanent location of its new Cyber Command could extend beyond the end of the year, according to the service’s installations, environment, and logistics chief William Anderson. He doesn’t believe the Air Force will have narrowed the list of 16 or so potential locations to its short list of four or five “probably until the end of the year, if we want to do this right. Although Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a budget hearing last week that he expects to name the spot in December, Anderson may be closer to the action. At a House Armed Services readiness panel hearing on Feb. 28, Anderson said, “We are going to take this step by step, making sure that we give the communities adequate time to talk to us.” He added that he planned to send a letter out this month to alert governors that the Air Force would be issuing a “call for information … somewhere in early May” and that he expected to have the information “back in the July timeframe.” Service teams would visit the various locales in the summer and fall, he said. The “wickering down” to the short list, Anderson estimated, wouldn’t happen until “February or March of 2009.”
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.