As US Cyber Command continues defining how it will operate across all of the worldwide geographic combatant commands, the Pentagon may tap the Air Force to add more than 1,000 new cyber experts to its payroll, said Gen. William Shelton, Air Force Space Command chief. About 70 percent to 80 percent of the additional personnel would be civilians, said Shelton during a meeting with reporters in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 17. He said he does not expect the Air Force’s current freeze on civilian hires to affect this initiative since the directive to add these personnel is not likely to come down until Fiscal 2014. The new personnel would be responsible for operating and defending Defense Department networks. There already are about 6,000 personnel conducting a similar mission with 24th Air Force, the Air Force’s cyber operations arm, based in Texas, said Shelton. (For more from Shelton’s roundtable, read Keeping Eyes on North Korea.)
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.