March Decision for Cyber Command

My colleague Bill Harrison attended the BWI Partnership meeting on Tuesday where Senator Barbara Mikulski and Senator Ben Cardin were the featured speakers. During her presentation, Senator Mikulski mentioned that a final decision as to location of the new US Cyber Command won’t be made until March.

I mistakenly thought that this was already a done deal. Back in June, the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, recommended that the new command be headquartered at Fort Meade under Lt. General Keith Alexander, the Director of the National Security Agency. Gates had expressed a desire for this command to be fully operational by October 2010.

This would be a pretty significant addition to Fort Meade. Some analysts predict it could bring as many 15,000 new jobs on top of the approximately 20,000 jobs already coming to Fort Meade as part of BRAC.