US Strategic Command seeks a new command and control complex and nuclear command, control, and communications node at Offutt AFB, Neb., said Gen. Robert Kehler, STRATCOM’s boss. The new complex would replace Offutt’s “aging and fragile” Curtis E. LeMay building and co-located facilities, said Kehler. The current buildings “lack the capacity to support current mission demands,” and they “occasionally experience serious heating and cooling problems, electrical failures, and other outages,” he told House defense overseers in prepared testimony last week. “The new facility,” he continued, “will ensure an [electromagnetic pulse]-protected, flexible, sustainable, reliable, and collaborative environment,” with a more robust infrastructure. The Air Force will fund the $564 million project, starting with a $150 million increment in Fiscal 2012, followed by $250 million in Fiscal 2013, and the remainder in Fiscal 2014, according to Maj. Gen. Alfred Flowers, USAF’s deputy assistant secretary for budget.
The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.