President Biden on Sept. 21 nominated Melissa Dalton as the new undersecretary of the Air Force–the number two civilian in the Department of the Air Force (DAF) behind Secretary Frank Kendall.
Dalton would replace Gina Ortiz Jones who resigned in March.
If confirmed, Dalton may bring a larger DAF focus on upgrading the U.S.-Canadian North Warning System (NWS).
In her current position as assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, Dalton has spoken of U.S.-Canadian collaboration to update NWS with “Crossbow,” which the Canadian government has described as a “network of sensors with classified capabilities, distributed across northern Canada” (Defense Daily, Feb. 9).
In the longer term, Dalton has cited plans to build over-the-horizon radars in both the U.S. and Canada to further improve NWS “and enhance NORAD’s ability to perform its airspace warning, control and maritime warning missions.”
The Air Force has said that it is considering reuse of the previous Over the Horizon Backscatter (OTH-B) radar sites to augment NWS (Defense Daily, April 20).
In fiscal 2024 the Air Force wants more than $423 million for rapid prototyping of OTH-B, including funds to satisfy a classified U.S. European Command requirement, $360 million to fund the first two OTH-B sites in the U.S., and funds for the detection of stratospheric balloons and unidentified aerial phenomena.
OTH-B is to have transmit and receive arrays 40 to 120 miles apart in four areas of the country–the Northeast, Northwest, Alaska and the South.
Before her current job, which Dalton began in March last year, she was the acting assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans, and capabilities–a position in which she led the Biden administration’s Nuclear Posture Review.
A Center for Strategic and International Studies alumna, like Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, Dalton has also served as policy adviser to the commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul; country director for Lebanon and Syria in the office of the undersecretary of defense for policy; and an intelligence analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to her DoD biography.