Hickam AFB to Get Warfighting HQ

From Air Force Times

Hickam to get warfighting headquarters

By Nicole Gaudiano

Times staff writer

A new warfighting headquarters will activate at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, in May, and 13th Air Force, currently assigned to Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, will relocate to form its core.

The moves are part of the Air Force’s plan to establish a continuously operating network of 10 warfighting headquarters to support geographic and functional combatant commanders. The new Hickam-based headquarters will include functional experts and an Air and Space Operations Center capable of command and control operations 24-hours a day, year round.

Officials said that 77 jobs will move from Andersen to Hickam, but that the change does not alter plans for major infrastructure improvements in Guam.

“This in no way signals a change in the importance that PACAF places on Andersen,” Gen. Paul V. Hester, Pacific Air Forces commander, said in a March 22 announcement.

The new warfighting headquarters will focus exclusively on planning and executing military operations in the Pacific, with the exception of the Korean Peninsula, while Headquarters Pacific Air Forces will continue to focus on the daily management of Air Force facilities.

PACAF spokesman Capt. David Faggard said one lesson learned from the Dec. 26 Tsunami was that the joint forces concept — with the joint forces air component commander at Hickam — worked well.

Having an established warfighting headquarters “is going to reduce the amount of time to build the command and control element to a joint task force in times of crisis, in times of humanitarian responses,” he said.

PACAF is calling the headquarters “provisional” for now, because it is an interim step until office space is coordinated and permanent staff arrives. The commander will be a three-star general, but no nomination has yet been made.

“Reorganization is never easy, but the men and women assigned to 13th Air Force are working hard to ensure the transitions are as smooth as possible for the affected families,” said Maj. Gen. Edward Rice Jr., commander of 13th Air Force.