Lt. Gen. Anthony Cotton, a former commander of Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base, will be nominated to lead the command overseeing the Air Force’s nuclear assets.
The Air Force Times reported last week that President Joe Biden will nominate Cotton to head the Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC), responsible for the branch’s nuclear bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Cotton currently serves as deputy commander of AFGSC, the descendant of the Cold War-era Strategic Air Command.
Cotton, if confirmed by the Senate, would replace Gen. Timothy Ray, the current AFGSC commander, who is retiring. Cotton’s assignment would come with a promotion to four-star general.
Cotton headed Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base from Feb. 2018 to October 2019. In a speech at Leadership Montgomery’s Education Summit in August 2018, Cotton said the area’s struggling public schools led more than half of those enlisting in the Air War College coming to Montgomery without their families. He cited the greatschools.org website, which at the time ranked just 28 public schools in the Montgomery area and no private ones.
“There is not a spouse in the United States Air Force that doesn’t pull up that website … and when you have schools that don’t even show up on it, it scares the heck out of people and they decide they’d rather separate their family and have them stay in other locations than come here,” he said at the time.
The general also said the situation made it difficult to attract faculty to the college, and that he had taken to hiring adjunct instructors who did not have to bring their families with them.
Cotton was assigned to AFGSC after his time at Air University. He has been based at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana since 2019.
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