WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Thursday announced his nomination of US Air Force Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to replace the Pentagon’s current top general, Army Gen. Mark Milley.
If confirmed by the Senate, Brown would become Biden’s closest military adviser at a time when the United States is hastening to modernize the military’s joint force to head off potential conflict with China following two decades of counterinsurgency wars in the Middle East.
As the first Black chief of staff of the US Air Force, Brown has become known as an innovator who pressed the service to trim down on bureaucracy while adapting to new capabilities in joint warfare.
“Since [Operation] Desert Storm, the US Air Force has enjoyed a historically anomalous period of dominance,” Brown wrote in a 2020 manifesto entitled “Accelerate, Change or Lose.”
