Gannett News Service March 4, 2005
Mountain Home awaits word on base realignment
By Faith Bremner
WASHINGTON -- A record number of military bases will be targeted for closure this year and that's making the boosters of Idaho's Mountain Home Air Force Base a little nervous.
During four previous rounds of what is known as the Base Realignment and Closure process -- in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995 -- Mountain Home was not cut. In fact, it gained a new mission, the 726th Air Control Squadron, in the last round.
The Idaho base's most prominent feature is its 366th Fighter Wing and its three squadrons of F-16 and F-15 fighter planes, which have seen action in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Local boosters say that once again, the base appears to be well positioned to emerge unscathed -- thanks to its mission, amenities, location and community support. But those still might not save it from being consolidated with other Western bases that have similar training ranges and are home to the same type of aircraft.
"It's still a nerve-wracking process to go through," Mountain Home Mayor Joe McNeal said. "No matter how safe you feel, until it's done, everybody is on pins and needles."
There's a lot at stake for the city of Mountain Home and Idaho. With nearly 4,465 active-military personnel and 828 civilian employees, the base is the largest employer in the city and the eighth largest in the state.
It's an important economic engine in southern Idaho, with an $862 million impact on the local economy, according to the base's 2004 economic impact statement.
Why change?
This final round of base closure and realignment will be the biggest yet. The Pentagon estimates that about a quarter of its capacity, now spread across 400 bases in the United States, is not needed.
"If this round is as big as they are saying, it would blow the others out of the water," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense and security Web site.
The Bush administration hopes that the annual savings from this last round will match the annual savings of the previous four rounds combined, or $7 billion a year.
This round of base closures will be different in that the military will use the process not just to pare down, but also to transform itself from a force still geared toward fighting the defunct Soviet empire to one capable of swiftly reacting to multiple threats.
Military forces "need to adjust to a world where the threat is not from one superpower but from rogue regimes and extremist cells that work together," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month. That means making the military more agile and more expeditionary and forcing the four branches -- the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines -- to better coordinate their efforts, Rumsfeld said.
The process has been under way for three years as Pentagon officials have quietly taken stock of their facilities and reassessed new threats.
On March 15, President Bush will send to the Senate for confirmation the names of the nine commissioners who will review the Pentagon's list of military installations it wants to close, shrink or expand.
That list will be released in mid-May.
The commission will review the list, make changes and submit its recommendations to the president by Sept. 8. If the president rejects the report, the commission has until Oct. 20 to submit its revised recommendations.
If the president approves the list, Congress has 45 days to reject or accept the entire list. If Congress rejects the list, no bases are closed.
Where Idaho fits in
The Pentagon says that all domestic bases are under consideration for closure or realignment. The primary consideration will be a base's military value, including its adaptability and capacity to support future needs.
Experts say the most vulnerable are old and small installations used by only one of the four services.
One thing working in Mountain Home's favor, boosters say, is the fighter wing has already fought battles against rogue regimes.
The base's three fighter squadrons have fought in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The 391st Fighter Squadron did a four-month deployment in Iraq beginning in March 2003. Two squadrons -- the 389th and the 391st -- fought the Taliban in Afghanistan from September 2001 to February 2002. The 390th Fighter Squadron has participated in Operation Noble Eagle -- military air patrols over major American cities -- six times since February 2002.Also on the plus side is the base's high-tech training range over the Owyhee Desert. The range was upgraded in the late 1990s when the 11,300-acre Juniper Butte bombing range was added to supplement the 109,466-acre Saylor Creek bombing range. Located just a few flight minutes away from the base, the two bombing ranges allow pilots to hone their skills against lifelike targets, such as a simulated airfield and building complexes, and evade simulated threats.
The training range is far from the most heavily traveled commercial and private airplane flight lanes, which means military pilots pretty much have the sky to themselves. And other branches of the military use the training range, which is in keeping with Rumsfeld's goal of increasing joint operations.
"We've worked to make it one of the best training ranges in the Air Force," said Bill Richey, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne's special assistant for military affairs and a retired Air Force colonel. "Not only do they train locally but you have joint training missions take place -- like Navy and Air Force AWACS from Tinker Air Force Base."
Yet another positive for Mountain Home, is that its infrastructure is in good shape. In recent years the Air Force has rebuilt all the base's ramps and runways and much of its housing.
"From an operational standpoint, that Air Force base has some of the most modern and updated facilities in the inventory," said the governor's spokesman, Mark Snider. "When it comes time to assess the strength and weaknesses, certainly that would be in the plus column."
It also has room to grow. The base has unused hangar space after losing its squadron of six B-1B bombers and six KC-135 Stratotankers three years ago. City and county zoning laws have kept potential civilian encroachments away, a factor the Pentagon will consider.
Potential minuses
One possible liability for Mountain Home could be the proximity of the base's training range to other sophisticated training ranges. The Air Force maintains the Utah Test and Training Range west of Salt Lake City and the Navy maintains the Fallon Range Training Complex in northern Nevada.
"If money can be saved by shifting the training mission to one large base in Nevada rather than have multiple bases doing it, it's possible there will be some shifting around," said Loren Thompson, who specializes in defense and security at the Lexington Institute, a Virginia-based public policy think tank.
Another possible danger for Mountain Home and other bases with F-15s and F-16s is the fact that the airplanes are becoming obsolete. The Air Force plans to purchase fewer replacements, which means that eventually there won't be enough fighter planes to go around. Other bases with F-15s and F-16s include Hill Air Force Base in Utah, Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico, and Luke Air Force Base in Arizona.
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank that tracks military equipment, the Air Force has nearly 3,000 F-16s and 950 F-15s. Rumsfeld plans to purchase only 180 F/A-22s to replace the F-15s, and only 1,000 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to replace the F-16s, Thompson said.
During the Cold War, fighter planes were considered crucial to fight other countries' planes to gain air dominance, Thompson said. But today's enemies tend not to have fighter planes let alone air forces.
"The most important role fighters play today is either to destroy surface-to-air missile batteries or attack targets on the ground, like the Republican Guard," Thompson said. "That is important, but during the Cold War when we were facing an entire Red Army with a huge air force, fighters were the centerpiece. Today their numbers are declining and buying new ones is controversial."
(Contributing: GNS reporter John Yaukey)
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