Next Round of Military Base Closings May Favor West, South - Yahoo! News

Next Round of Military Base Closings May Favor West, South - Yahoo! News
WASHINGTON — The new round of military base closings expected to begin with a Pentagon announcement this week is shaping up in part as a struggle between base advocates in the Northeast and the Sun Belt. The process for consolidating more than 400 major U.S. military facilities is being influenced in part by the potential threats posed by North Korea and China, a consideration that favors the West Coast. And decisions also are being driven partly by the need for locations that allow troops to train relatively unfettered on sea and open land, favoring the South and West, at the expense of the Northeast, defense analysts and Capitol Hill policymakers said this week.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and West Coast lobbyists who have joined in the scrum on Capitol Hill have made training space and national security threats a centerpiece of their campaign to keep endangered Pacific bases in business. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has declined to discuss base closures with Schwarzenegger or any other governor, is expected to reveal his list of proposed closings to Congress on Friday.

West Coast bases are expected to lose some tasks, and it remains unclear whether California will continue to lose a greater proportion of bases than other regions, as it did in earlier base closing rounds dating to 1988. But in some cases, Pacific bases are expected to gain troops and tasks as the Base Realignment and Closure Commission downsizes other bases and transfers their functions elsewhere.

Some Pentagon insiders and officials close to the commission, which will take up the list Rumsfeld produces, say the West Coast argument appears to have had some influence.

"A lot of the commissioners are saying we have too much base structure on the East Coast and not enough on the West Coast," military analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute said. "When Rumsfeld says he wants the basing system to be better matched to future threats, he means that he wants the military to be closer to where it's actually going to be used."

Thompson predicted San Diego would gain jobs from the new round of base closings, along with Hawaii and Washington state. He said the upper Midwest and Northeast were likely to lose jobs related to the military.

A May 3 report to the commission by National Intelligence Council Chairman David Gordon that described growing potential military threats from Asia — notably North Korea and China — reinforced the pitches of lobbyists who insisted western bases needed to remain as the first line of defense in the Pacific.

A southward migration of bases would continue a trend from four previous rounds of base closures that began in 1988. Eighteen states that have banded together in a Northeast-Midwest coalition saw active duty military personnel drop 41% — as high as 92% in New Hampshire — compared with a national average of 24%.

But for California, anything other than massive losses would mark a reversal. The number of active duty troops in California has dropped 40% since 1988, from 206,495 to 123,948. California absorbed 24 of the 97 major base closures in past rounds. Nearly half the related job losses from those closures were in California, according to the governor's office.

Schwarzenegger recently sent a 50-page report on California bases to President Bush and followed up Thursday with a call to White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., pointing out California's advantages.

"The threat from the Pacific Rim, California's vantage point on the West Coast, is one of them," said Vincent Sollitto, a spokesman for the governor. "Others include some of the larger swaths of land — air, sea training facilities — and access to technology, particularly around the L.A. Air Force base."

The Los Angeles Air Force Base, whose air space is hemmed in by a crush of residential and commercial buildings in El Segundo, is considered among the state's most vulnerable bases.

Any gain for the South or the West is likely to come at the expense of the Midwest and Northeast, lobbyists from those regions fear. Eastern lobbyists argue that additional cuts in their areas could result in military vulnerability and a drop-off in enlistments.

"For many years the trend toward military spending has been toward the South and West," said Dick Munson, executive director of the Northeast-Midwest Institute, a nonprofit regional interest group in Washington. But if the Pentagon continues to slash bases in the Northeast, he said, "I think the military then abandons the Northeast as a place to recruit."

Availability of land and access to water account more for the geographic shifts than rising threats in Asia, said Steve Grundman, a former deputy undersecretary of Defense for installations during the Clinton administration now with CRA International, a Boston consulting firm.

"What's driving the geographic movement of forces to the South and particularly the West is the need for elbow room," Grundman said. "Forty years ago it might have been possible to station an armored division in New England. These days, given the range and lethality of the forces, those don't make very practical training and basing areas."

After Rumsfeld introduces his list, the commission can alter it. Previous panels changed 15% of the Defense Department's recommendations in past rounds.

Bush can then send the list back to the commission with recommendations or certify it and send it to Congress, which can approve or reject the list but cannot change it. If the list is approved, closures could begin as soon as the beginning of next year.

Base Closings Would Transform Military

Base Closings Would Transform Military: "COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The next round of military base closings will save money by paring the budget. But experts at a seminar here last week said the bigger gain would be in transforming the armed forces into a leaner, meaner tool.
Next May, the Pentagon will issue a list of bases to be closed under a process known as BRAC, for Base Realignment and Closing.
The Pentagon says it has 25 percent more base capacity than it needs. In this round of BRAC, the Pentagon says, every base is on the table.
'BRAC will be the most important thing the Department of Defense will do in 2005 to further transformation,' said former Navy Capt. Kenneth Beeks, now with a nonprofit group called Business Executives for National Security.
'Transformation' is the Pentagon's buzzword for reshaping a military force that was designed to counter a threat that no longer exists - the Soviet Union. Today's challenges come from the likes of the insurgents in Iraq.
The insurgents lack Soviet-style tanks, fighter planes and heavy artillery pi"

NPR : BASE CLOSINGS

NPR : BASE CLOSINGS

April 2, 1998 · Defense Secretary William Cohen today said that $20 billion annually could be spent on updating America's military prowess if lawmakers approve two new rounds of closings. Releasing a report to Congress at a Pentagon briefing, Cohen said that unless cuts are made, "It will effect our capacity to have the finest military in the world." NPR's Martha Raddatz reports.

Towns affected by the BRAC Base Realignment and Closings

May 11, 2005 : 2:37 am ET

GUARD UP: State officials are challenging Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's view that he can close Army and Air National Guard facilities without the consent of the states in which they are located.

ON WATCH: The Pentagon's list of military bases earmarked for closing is being released on Friday. One state, Illinois, is threatening to go to court to stop Rumsfeld from shutting down either of its two Guard installations.

SAVING DOLLARS: Closing and downsizing some domestic bases would save the government billions of dollars a year. Losing a base, though, could be a blow to a community's economy.

Military Base Closings - BRAC The List

Military Base Closings: "How large should America�s peacetime military establishment be?
The question reminds us that America�s founders wanted no 'standing army' at all. In fact, they solemnly promised supporters and skeptics alike there would never be one. The clause 'but no Appropriation of Money for that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years' was surely more than a mere bookkeeping reminder, back in 1787, that ongoing budgets and allocations needed to be rubber stamped again ever 24 months.
Would mere bookkeeping procedures merit 17 words and all those capital letters, placed in the same sentence for all the world as though they were somehow supposed to restrict the congressmen�s newly delegated power 'to raise and support Armies'?
Deeply concerned about the risk of armed federal troops coming to be used as domestic police, the founders in fact meant that every two years the public and its delegates should look around, determine whether the nation was at war, and � if not � have any remaining troops stack their arms in the armories, pay them off, and send them home.
One suspects that, today, folks like Mr. Jefferson would have added to the list of those to be regularly cashiered such armed (and now often uniformed, in frightening black) paramilitary forces as the DEA, the BATF, the FBI Hostage Elimination Team, and the IRS 'Criminal Division,' as well.
(Is it 'criminal' to decline to voluntarily subject oneself to a tax on individuals,' when 'individuals' are defined for purpose of the statute as (a) aliens living domestically or (b) aliens living abroad?)
Interestingly, the authority to fund a Navy is listed separately from the 'no more than two years' provision in the Constitution�s First Article, and thus does not fall under it. This makes sense; one could h"

Base Closing List

Brac List: List of Bases to be closed.

Here is the current buzz on the BRAC Base Closing.