The State - News from July 4, 1986

Maj. Gen. Donald O. Aldridge, the Joint Chiefs of Staff representative to the strategic arms reduction talks in Washington and Geneva, has been named commander of the 1st Strategic Aerospace Division at Vandenberg Air Force Base, 130 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Aldridge, 53, will replace Maj. Gen. Jack Watkins, who announced in May that he would be retiring from the command he assumed in November, 1980. The date for the change of command was not established. The 1st Strategic Aerospace Division, the host unit at Vandenberg, test-fires intercontinental ballistic missiles and trains Air Force combat missile crews. A native of Solo, Mo., Aldridge was a deputy U.S. representative to the military committee of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Belgium before assuming his current post in November, 1983.