Gates offers Bush new Air Force leadership team

Defense Secretary Robert Gates Monday offered President Bush recommendations for a new Air Force leadership team after the forced resignations last week of Secretary Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff Michael Moseley amid concerns about the service's handling of its nuclear weapons arsenal.

Gates recommended Michael Donley to serve as the Air Force's top civilian leader and Gen. Norton Schwartz as chief of staff. Donley serves as the Defense Department's director of administration and management and has held senior level positions within the Air Force, including a seven-month stint as acting secretary in 1993.

Gates has also advised Bush to designate Donley as acting Air Force secretary effective June 21.

Schwartz serves as commander of U.S. Transportation Command but had planned to retire later this year.

In addition, Gates recommended the Air Force's current vice chief of staff, Gen. Duncan McNabb, to take over Schwartz's post at Transportation Command. McNabb has more than three decades of experience in airlift, refueling and logistics, making him "an ideal candidate to assume the helm of this command," Gates said in a statement. Gates wants to promote Lt. Gen. William Fraser to take over as vice chief.

Fraser, who had been nominated in April to fill Schwartz's slot at TRANSCOM, now serves as the assistant to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen and also has extensive wartime and humanitarian relief operational experience. "I am confident that Mike Donley, General Schwartz and the new Air Force leadership team have the qualifications, skill and commitment to excellence necessary to guide the Air Force through this transition and beyond," Gates said.

On Thursday, Gates made the surprise announcement that he had sought the resignations of Wynne and Moseley after an investigation found widespread problems with the service's handling of its most dangerous weapons. The investigation, sparked by the mistaken delivery of ballistic missile fuses to Taiwan in 2006, led him to conclude there has been a "decline in the Air Force's nuclear mission focus and performance," Gates said. The Taiwan fiasco, which was discovered in March, was merely a "symptom of a degradation of the authority, standards of excellence and technical competence" of the country's intercontinental ballistic missile inventory, Gates said.

The discovery of the shipment of missile fuses came just months after the Air Force mistakenly and unknowingly flew nuclear weapons from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to Barksdale Air Force Base, La. Gates suggested that other senior Air Force officials may be stripped of command but so far has refrained from announcing any disciplinary actions.