The Navy appears poised to retain its 62-year mostly uninterrupted lock on U.S. Pacific Command with the president’s nomination of Adm. Robert Willard — a veteran Pacific hand — to lead the oldest and largest of the United States’ unified military commands.

The Pentagon today announced the nomination of Willard, who for the past two years has been the four-star commander of the Navy’s U.S. Pacific Fleet based at Pearl Harbor.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates in March said he was recommending Willard to head up Pacific Command, which encompasses about half the earth’s surface, stretching from the west coast of the U.S. to the western border of India, and from Antarctica to the North Pole.
The command also has within its borders 36 nations, 3.4 billion people, 3,000 different languages, and the world’s six largest militaries — those of the United States, China, India, Russia, North Korea and South Korea.
China and its growing military and intentions in the Pacific, along with North Korea’s nuclear threat, are key concerns for the command headquarters that sits above H-3 freeway at Camp Smith.
U.S. military personnel in the region number about 250,000, or about one-fifth of total U.S. military strength. Navy and Marine forces are numerically the largest elements in the region.
Willard still has to be confirmed by the Senate for the military’s top job in the Pacific.
Willard became the 31st commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet — a lineage that includes Adm. Chester Nimitz's service during World War II — in May of 2007.
An F-14 Tomcat aviator and the former vice chief of naval operations, Willard already commands a region that spans half the globe and includes more than 170 ships and submarines, 1,300 aircraft and 122,000 sailors, reservists and civilians.
Willard also was deputy and chief of staff for the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor from October 2001 to June 2002.
His call sign is “Rat,” and Willard appeared in and was a consultant on the 1986 Tom Cruise movie “Top Gun.” He piloted the Soviet Mig-28 that received a “salute” from Cruise and another pilot.
Adm. Timothy Keating has been the head of U.S. Pacific Command since March 23, 2007. Among U.S. PACOM commanders, only two were non-Navy, and only for brief periods.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Daniel P. Leaf was an acting commander in March of 2007 until Keating came aboard. In 1994, Army Lt. Gen. Harold T. Fields also briefly held the post in a similar capacity.
In 2004, President Bush’s pick to lead U.S. Pacific Command was Air Force Gen. Gregory “Speedy” Martin, but in October of that year Martin asked that his name be withdrawn after being fiercely questioned in a U.S. Senate committee about his role in a tainted Boeing Co. contract.
Martin’s nomination temporarily broke with the tradition of naming Navy admirals to lead Pacific Command and reflected then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s desire to transform the military for 21st-century warfare and to break the services from any sense of ownership of regional commands.
Rumsfeld also did away with the long-standing practice of calling the top commanders “CINCs,” shorthand for “commander-in-chief,” based on the contention there was only one commander-in-chief, the president. It was replaced with “combatant commander.”
Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaiçi, at the time of Martin’s nomination, said the Pacific Command was “water command” and should be led by an admiral.
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