Skip to footer

Top Gun: Christine Fox now highest-ranking woman in US Defense Dept.

Top Gun: Christine Fox, the woman who was the inspiration for the lead female character in the movie "Top Gun," (played by Kelly McGillis), is now acting US deputy defense secretary.

|
US Department of Defense
Christine Fox, acting US deputy secretary of defense.
  • By David Alexander Reuters

| Washington

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Tuesday named the former head of the Pentagon office for cost assessments as acting deputy secretary of defense while the search continues for a permanent replacement for departing Deputy Secretary Ashton Carter.

Christine Fox, the former director of the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office, will be the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in the Defense Department. She will formally take over as acting deputy defense secretary on Thursday, Hagel said.

"Christine ... is a brilliant defense thinker and proven manager," Hagel said in a statement, noting that she had helped to lead his Strategic Choices and Management Review earlier this year looking at how best to tackle the huge budget cuts facing the Pentagon.

"She helped identify the challenges, choices and opportunities for reform facing the department during this period of unprecedented budget uncertainty," Hagel said. "She knows the intricacies of the department's budgets, programs and global operations better than anyone."

The Pentagon is struggling with how to implement nearly $1 trillion in cuts to projected defense spending over the next decade.

The selection of Fox as acting deputy defense secretary will enable Hagel to fill the key post with someone who is already familiar with the issues until a permanent replacement for Carter can be found and confirmed.

Fox, who was the inspiration for the lead female character in the movie "Top Gun," left the Pentagon earlier this year after finishing Hagel's strategic review and has been working since then as a senior adviser to Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, a senior defense official said.

Before she moved to the Pentagon, Fox worked for the Center for Naval Analyses, developing tactics for aircraft carrier defense, similar to Kelly McGillis' character in the movie which also starred Tom Cruise.  Top Gun. Except at the time, they didn't call Fox "Charlie." Her call sign was "Legs," reports UPI.

The White House and Pentagon are continuing to evaluate candidates as a permanent replacement for Carter, whose last day is Wednesday, the senior defense official said. Fox has indicated she is not interested in assuming the job permanently, the official said.

(Editing by Bill Trott)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Top Gun: Christine Fox now highest-ranking woman in US Defense Dept.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/1205/Top-Gun-Christine-Fox-now-highest-ranking-woman-in-US-Defense-Dept
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe