If showed through the Senate, Troy Meink will prevail Air Power Secretary Frank Kendall.
President-elect Donald Trump mentioned on Thursday that he has selected Troy Meink, a former Air Power navigator and trainer, to transform the following U.S. Air Power secretary.
Trump said that Meink recently serves as essential deputy director of the Nationwide Reconnaissance Administrative center (NRO), the company accountable for development and launching The us’s intelligence satellites.
He joined the Air Power in the course of the Reserve Officials’ Coaching Corps program at South Dakota State College in 1998 and served as a navigator at the KC-135 tanker. The South Dakota local additionally held the position of lead check engineer for ballistic missile check automobiles.
“Troy will paintings with our fantastic Secretary of Protection Nominee, Pete Hegseth, to make certain that our Country’s Air Power is among the finest and fatal drive within the Global, as we protected PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH,” the president-elect said in a Fact Social publish.
Throughout his time on the Division of the Air Power, Meink served because the undersecretary of the Air Power for house, in addition to the director and govt agent for house personnel in Washington. He additionally held the placement of assistant director of nationwide intelligence for programs and useful resource research, in step with the NRO’s site.
His position on the NRO incorporated managing the cheap of greater than $15 billion for the purchase of nationwide geospatial intelligence satellite tv for pc programs, the company said.
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In step with his biography at the Air Power’s site, Meink finished 100 sorties supporting operations Barren region Defend, Barren region Hurricane, and Supply Convenience. He constructed and operated two experimental airplane, and authored 20 articles that have been printed in skilled journals and convention publications.
If showed through the Senate, Meink will prevail Air Power Secretary Frank Kendall, who has held the placement since 2021. Kendall delivered his farewell cope with on Jan. 16.
“I believe I’ve began us at the proper trail,” Kendall mentioned in his farewell cope with. “If I’m nonetheless round in twenty years, what I might in point of fact love to peer is that we saved on that trail.”
Kendall defined safety demanding situations within the “Division of the Air Power in 2050” document, printed in December 2024, with a specific center of attention on threats posed through China. The document projected that house would transform the “decisive area” for many army operations through 2050.
“China is doing the whole thing it may possibly to milk the alternatives that rising applied sciences are offering to box forces designed to defeat america within the Western Pacific, particularly in house and within the air,” the document said. “Through 2050, if no longer neatly sooner than, the Air Power and House Power is probably not aggressive except we make considerable enhancements in how those forces are provided, skilled, and function.”