The Miami Herald February 5, 2003
At air base helping search, the talk of war still main topic
Louisiana's Barksdale housing debris collected from shuttle
BY JONI JAMES
BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. - Somewhere on this 22,000-acre base in one of its countless mammoth hangars sits the collected debris of space shuttle Columbia.
But for the 8,200 active-duty and reserve military who serve there, it's not the big story. War is.
This high-security base, after all, was the place where President Bush retreated on Sept. 11 from a visit to Sarasota, until national security officials deemed Washington, D.C., safe for his return. It's got a bunker-style command center that would have allowed him to direct troops if necessary.
But more important right now, Barksdale is home to roughly one-quarter of the U.S. Air Force's bomber fleet. And the base has already sent reservists and active-duty airmen as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, the post-Sept. 11 actions in Afghanistan. About 1,000 airmen from here are deployed now.
A MATTER OF TIME
With war in Iraq looming, the sense in neighboring Bossier City, La., is that it's only a matter of time.
''We have no deployment orders, but we're ready to carry out whatever our commander-in-chief wants,'' said Capt. William Manley, a University of Florida graduate who is now public affairs officer for the Second Bomb Wing, one of three Air Force units headquartered on the 72-year-old base.
Less than 24 hours after the shuttle Columbia blew apart Saturday morning across east Texas and west Louisiana, federal officials designated Barksdale, 100 miles north of where the heaviest concentration of debris has been found, as its temporary warehousing site for the debris and human remains.
But the process has been far from overwhelming for the base: NASA officials estimate only about 1 percent of the debris has been brought to Barksdale in everything from rental cars to helicopters.
Far more omnipresent is talk of deployment to the Persian Gulf.
A KEY ROLE
''Barksdale is going to be extremely important,'' said Patrick Garrett, associate analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, a nonprofit military analysis firm. ``I think you'll see a lot of aircraft shipping out of there at night in the next few weeks.''
The main reason: Barksdale is home to about 50 of the nation's 90-some aging B-52 bombers, the workhorse of the Air Force fleet first pressed into service 51 years ago.
MEAN MACHINES
Ugly and loud, the dark-gray ungainly aircraft are behemoths: 40 feet high, 182,000 pounds, with a 185-foot wingspan.
What they lack in beauty they make up for in function. They can fly high and drop huge munitions -- a characteristic that made them the bombers of choice in Operation Desert Storm, in which officials feared the newer, lower-flying B-1 bomber wouldn't be able to survive surface-to-air missile attacks, Garrett said.
The B-52 is ''going to be around for the 21st century, no doubt. It's the aircraft that won't go away,'' Garrett said.
The base is the Air Force's sole training facility for B-52 teams, and home to the only reserve unit that flies the bombers, the 917th Wing.
''We like to say we deliver any munition the Air Force has, anytime, anywhere and in any weather,'' boasted radar navigator Lt. Col. John Mooney, a former active-duty officer who now is deputy operations group commander for the reserve wing.
Some of Mooney's reserve air crews, along with another 60 from the Second Bomber Wing, have helped this week with shuttle recovery efforts. And the base has provided NASA, other federal agencies and an independent investigative panel with office space aside from the hangar for debris collection.
But Lt. Col. Larry Hahn, staff director for the Second Bomb Wing, implied earlier this week that the debris efforts can't be first priority on base officials' minds right now.
'We'll provide behind the scene support, but this is pretty much the NASA and other federal agencies' show now,'' Hahn said.
Herald staff writer Phil Long contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2003, The Miami Herald
