by MATTHEW GAULT

On March 27, the U.S. senate confirmed Air Force general Robin Rand as the next leader of Global Strike Command. He’s the first four-star general in GSC history to take on the role — and that’s just what the flying branch wants.

Air Force chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh said he appointed Rand because he hopes that a four star general in charge of America’s nuclear command will give the flyers greater influence over the country’s nuclear policy.

“We lead and execute two-thirds of the nuclear triad, for Christ’s sake,” he told a crowd on April 2. “We should be in the middle of the policy debates on this issue.”

Which is true. America’s nuclear triad consists of its intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and nuclear-armed bombers. GSC operates the ICBMs and the bombers. It makes sense that the Air Force would want more say over how to use those weapons.

But what Welsh said next is troubling — and serves as a reminder why the Air Force doesn’t have a greater say in the nuclear debate.

“I told Robin Rand … go become the next Curtis LeMay,” Welsh said. “Bring this nuclear mission … back to the front edge of Air Force attention every single day.”

That’s a terrible idea. The last thing the Air Force — to say nothing of America as a whole — needs is another Curtis LeMay. He was a brilliant strategist who helped win World War II with overwhelming and brutal force. But he also pushed America close to nuclear war with the Soviet Union and crafted policies that led to almost all the military’s major nuclear disasters.

Without LeMay, America may have never pursued a Cold War strategy based on preemptive strikes and it may never have lost dozens of nukes.

Global Strike Command is the direct descendent of Strategic Air Command, a division of the flying branch that stood up just after World War II. LeMay was its chief architect, defender and commander … even after he left to become the Air Force chief of staff.

LeMay possessed a big personality, a creative mind for strategy and a strong opinion about the power of the Air Force in general and bombers specifically.

During World War II, LeMay commanded Allied forces’ bomber wings in the Pacific. He was unhappy with the kill counts from high-altitude bombing runs. Bombs went off course too easily and didn’t do enough damage.

So he switched tactics. LeMay and his flyers piloted hundreds of B-29s at low altitude over Japanese cities and dropped bombs packing phosphorus, napalm and magnesium. Japan burned and millions died. LeMay earned the nickname “the Demon.”

“Killing Japanese didn’t bother me very much at that time,” LeMay admitted later. “I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.”

When America developed the nuclear bomb in World War II’s final months, LeMay helped plan the atomic attack. He suggested that a single bomber would be more effective than a group would, reasoning that the Japanese were already so devastated by his firebombing campaign that they’d assume a single plane was just a reconnaissance vehicle — and leave it alone.

He was right.

Washington remembered him when the war ended and it needed someone to lead America’s new nuclear bombing force. In 1948, LeMay took control of Strategic Air Command.