Senate confirms Troy Meink, former air crewman and space expert, as the new Air Force secretary

WASHINGTON – The Senate connected Tuesday easy confirmed Troy Meink arsenic the caput of the Air Force, putting a erstwhile KC-135 tanker craft navigator and abstraction adept successful complaint of the service.

The ballot was 74-25.

Meink has astir 4 decades of acquisition successful the subject and successful government, including managing immoderate of the nation’s astir delicate outer quality capabilities and the military’s abstraction portfolio.

He antecedently served arsenic a lawman of the National Reconnaissance Office. While helium is the past of the military’s 3 work secretaries to get confirmed, Meink is the 1 with the astir extended nationalist information and subject experience.

“Your enactment is precisely what we request to refocus the Department of Defense connected its halfway mission—lethality, readiness, and putting the warfighter first,” said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said successful a societal media post.

Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll served a abbreviated stint successful the Army, but worked mostly arsenic a lawyer and concern banker. Navy Secretary John Phelan had been a backstage concern enforcement and businessman, and is the archetypal person of the oversea work since 2006 not to person been a veteran.

Meink assumes power of some the Air Force and U.S. Space Force, which was established by President Donald Trump during his archetypal word and conscionable deed its 5th twelvemonth successful existence. And his confirmation comes arsenic the Trump medication is moving to reshape the nation’s abstraction capabilities, including the improvement of the “Golden Dome” rocket defence system.

The futuristic strategy was ordered by Trump during his archetypal week successful office. If successful, it would for the archetypal clip alteration the U.S. to spot weapons successful abstraction that are meant to destruct ground-based missiles wrong seconds of launch.

Many countries, including Russia, China, North Korea and the U.S., are developing caller ways to disable of support the tens of thousands of satellites that ringing the Earth arsenic a mode to cripple a imaginable adversary without warring a accepted land-based war.

Meink is from Lemmon, South Dakota, and joined the Air Force arsenic an ROTC cadet astatine South Dakota State University successful 1988. In his erstwhile presumption astatine the National Reconnaissance Office, Meink oversaw a much than $15 cardinal fund to get caller outer capabilities.

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