The Senate on Tuesday afternoon confirmed Troy Meink as Secretary of the U.S. Air Force on a 74 to 25 vote.
Democrats voting to approve Meink include Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee; Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), ranking member of the SASC airland panel; Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), ranking member of the SASC seapower panel; and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), ranking member of SASC’s emerging threats and capabilities subcommittee. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) did not vote.
President Trump has yet to nominate an Air Force acquisition chief.
Before Meink’s nomination in January as Air Force secretary, he served, since October 2020, as the principal deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). There, he spurred acceleration of NRO’s use of fixed price contracts. Some national security analysts have said that Meink has had a close working relationship with SpaceX founder Elon Musk and have expressed conflict of interest concerns because of that relationship.
Meink has said that he favors multiple competitions over defense modernization programs’ lifetimes and an examination of direct, “big” investment in industrial capacity akin to the post-WWII Air Force Heavy Press program (Defense Daily, March 28).
In 1946, the U.S. built its first heavy press and then received more presses from Germany as WWII reparations. In 1955, Pittsburgh’s Mesta Machinery, now Alcoa [AA], built a 50,000-ton heavy press in Cleveland at Air Force Plant 47–a factory that the Air Force has used for its aircraft, including the F-15.