Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, is a self-effacing delegator who extols the heartland as America's best hope and looks to the skies for its best defense.
Colleagues say Myers' tours in Asia and as head of the U.S. Space Command are just the right experience to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
"Ballistic missile defense is a priority with this administration, and this is a guy the secretary can bang ideas and concepts off of," said Gen. Merrill McPeak, the Air Force chief in the early 1990s, when Myers was one of his senior staff.
Myers, 59, would be the first airman to head the military since 1982, but McPeak said he defies flyboy cliches.
"There are fighter pilots who are hair-on-fire, kick-down-the-door, rip-your-face-off kind of guys -- I'm that kind of guy," he said. "Dick is not. He's quietly effective. He gets an awful lot done without leaving fingerprints."
President Bush was expected to nominate Myers Friday to become the new chairman after discussions with Pentagon officials on how to revamp the military. Myers must now be confirmed by the Senate.
Unsettled by a Pentagon that has fiercely resisted his plans to substitute space-based missile defenses for its favored "two-war" capability, Bush may have found a like thinker in Myers.
"We've been looking for someone who will bring the highest standards of excellence to the office, someone who is willing to think differently about the missions of our military," Bush said Thursday.
The Air Force chief told reporters earlier this month that the debate on Bush's plans to reduce forces and increase modernization was not split according to a strict military-civilian divide -- a hint that he favored Bush's position.
Myers has been among Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's closest advisers on the planned changes, and has joined talks with Russia aimed at lifting treaty restrictions on missile defenses, a cornerstone of Bush's defense policy.
While he has not explicitly endorsed Bush's plans, Myers' experience and past statements place him squarely in the corner of a space-based missile defense system.
As commander of the Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado from 1998-2000, he heartily endorsed satellite defenses, even though three satellite launches famously failed on his watch.
Speaking last year to his alma mater, Kansas State University, he called satellite systems essential to modern warfare and cited "the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the missiles that deliver them to our cities." He compared the airmen who guide the systems to World War II heroes.
He has made similar entreaties to Congress, quoting Gen. Douglas MacArthur last year in a Senate appearance: "We must hold our minds alert ... to the application of unglimpsed methods and weapons."
Myers also has experience in the Asian theater, useful to an administration that perceives China and North Korea as posing the greatest threat to American interests.
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, a Bush ally on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Myers' Asia experience would serve him well.
"This leads me to believe that he understands that China is probably our greatest next threat," he said "He knows more about China and Asia than probably anyone else who would have been chosen."
Ending his three-year stint as the commander of U.S. forces in Japan in 1996, Myers encouraged Japan to raise its military profile, citing the North Korean threat.
As commander in Japan, Myers was at first taken aback by local hostility after three U.S. servicemen in Okinawa raped a 12-year-old girl in 1995. Within a year, however, he had quietly persuaded Washington to cede 20 percent of the land U.S. forces used on the island, a concession that helped pacify the Okinawans.
Col. Don Black, Myers' chief spokesman from 1997-2000, said his ex-boss' strength is in delegation.
"He lets the staff, the people who work for him, know what his priorities and expectations are, and lets people do their job," said Black, who is now retired.
Myers and his wife, Mary Jo, were close to his staff, Black said, often having them over for dinner and parties.
Myers speaks affectionately of growing up in Merriam, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, calling it the heartland and "my Kansas home" and extolling its hard work and high values. A room in his high school, Shawnee Mission North, is named for him.
His family teases him for being petrified of aircraft as a child -- he was unnerved when a plane crashed near his home. His parents took him to watch takeoffs whenever they could so he could overcome his fears.
It worked: He enlisted in the Air Force in 1965 through the Reserve Officer Training Corps, and eventually flew combat missions in Vietnam.
Myers is a family man, Black said, but he noted the general's single concession to the fighter pilot image: his beloved Harley.
