The Shreveport Times March 13, 2005
Base restructuring shifting into high gear
President must name realignment commission by Tuesday.
By John Andrew Prime and Ana Radelat
Gannett News Service
Boosters of military installations throughout the nation will grab their score cards and pencils this week as President Bush and Congress dive deeper into a controversial round of wartime military makeover.
Tuesday, Bush must submit his nominations for members of the 2005 Base Closure and Realignment Commission, which Congress must approve or disapprove, moving along a process of defense liposuction optimists hope will cut military facilities by as much as a quarter.
"Are we waiting with bated breath?" said Murray Viser, the Shreveport businessman who heads Barksdale Forward, which promotes the work and value of Barksdale Air Force Base locally and in the halls of power in Washington, D.C. "No. Obviously, we are interested in who is chosen. But our main goal is to support Barksdale and its mission."
In the same breath, however, Viser and other observers will say the makeup can make a difference, as the 1993 BRAC round that led to the formation of Barksdale Forward demonstrates.
In that BRAC, conventional wisdom and talk on the defense street said McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey would close. That base has an elderly infrastructure, is crowded by civilian communities and its airplanes were gasping for flight space in New York City's busy air corridors.
But a former New Jersey congressman headed that commission.
And McGuire not only stayed open but snatched away a coveted and prestigious KC-10 tanker mission that had been a bragging point for Barksdale.
"Once the list is announced, who they are is going to be important because they're the ones who are going to be making the decisions," Viser said. "We're very interested in who is on list and what their backgrounds are so we'll understand some of the questions that will be asked and what they'll be looking at if they visit Barksdale, if Barksdale makes the list."
Some observers say earlier rounds of base closures and realignments -- which pared scores of facilities from the national landscape, including Alexandria's England Air Force base in 1991 -- cut away the fat and what's left is bone and muscle.
"There are no planned force reductions for B-52s, so there will be no base closure of B-52 bases," said John Pike, founder of the military and defense think tank and clearinghouse GlobalSecurity.Org. "I am puzzled as to where (Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) thinks he will find 25 percent surplus bases, but it is surely not among the bomber bases."
What appears to be duplication among facilities is, in some cases, more efficient use of assets or filling training needs.
Louisiana's Fort Polk is home to the Joint Readiness Training Center and, therefore, one of the showcases of the current "joint use" thinking trendy in defense circles. It might at first seem to duplicate training acreage at Fort Hood, Texas, Fort Irwin, Calif., and Fort Lewis, Wash.
But as Louisiana soldiers now in Iraq learned at the Texas and California forts, each base offers unique exposures to different weather, terrain and maneuver opportunities, preparing them for the woodland, high desert, arid steppes and tundra environments they could easily face over years to come.
Likewise, the duplication seemingly offered by Barksdale and Minot, its sister base in North Dakota, evaporates when you study the number of B-52s in the fleet and defense needs. There are 93 B-52s, more than either base could comfortably support, even with about a third of them in a reserve status -- ready to fly but with no assigned crews.
And two bases not only provide security by having the vital bombers nested far from one another, but also allow one wing to deploy while the other refits and trains. It also allows for simultaneous taskings to other theaters as the world situation dictates.
Bombers from Barksdale and Minot have deployed in shifts to such remote places as Guam and Diego Garcia. And in days to come, Barksdale bombers will fly out of Minot for several weeks as annual runway maintenance is performed here. This past week, Barksdale crews practiced loading cruise missiles on a visiting Minot airplane. People and planes from the two bases work like outfielders for a good baseball team.
"We're looking at an operational issue. And strategically, it doesn't make much sense to close either," Viser said.
"It is not a competition with another base. In fact, we work with the North Dakota (congressional) delegation. With them, we have three more voices that can speak for the B-52 and the long-range strike mission."
"The North Dakota political contingent is very strong," said retired Brig. Gen. Peyton Cole, a former 2nd Bomb Wing commander who, in the late 1980s, had a ringside seat in Washington, D.C., into the inner workings of the first round of BRAC. "They know how to get into the political fray and have gone there, protecting their base."
Barksdale has not only survived but thrived since the most recent BRAC. "We gained the B-52 training mission, and that was a very good thing," Viser said.
One of Barksdale's major tenant units, 8th Air Force headquarters, has opened several intelligence processing and strategic planning units that perform vital missions for other arms of combined services, including U.S. Strategic Command. "The 8th Air Force is a huge part of the military mission and the mission of the Air Force," Viser said.
Barksdale bombers also have played pivotal roles in ongoing military actions, including the destruction of the Taliban and pursuit of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Still, whether Barksdale grows or shrinks will have an effect on the local economy. Don Jagot, general manager of Pierre Bossier Mall in Bossier City and Mall St. Vincent in Shreveport, watches Barksdale personnel and their families shop at his malls every day. There's no question how much he depends on military trade. "It's huge. There are natural spikes on payday."
Barksdale contributes an estimated $450 million to the local economy each year. Fort Polk, the state's largest military presence, contributes as much as $1 billion in direct and indirect payments to central Louisiana.
"It has tremendous impact on our community," said Elton Pody, executive vice president of the Central Louisiana Chamber of Commerce.
And communities are spending millions of dollars to hire lobbyists to make the case that local bases are important to national security.
Under the BRAC law, the Pentagon has until May 16 to submit a list of recommended closures and realignments affecting dozens of bases throughout the country. Defense officials hope to save $7 billion a year.
The nine-member commission Bush will name this week will review that list, make some changes and give the president a final list in September.
Pody said the communities around Fort Polk have worked to ensure Louisiana continues to improve roads between Alexandria and the base -- especially state Highway 28. Louisiana's congressional delegation also is trying to find a way for the state to buy about 500 acres of U.S. Forest Service land near Fort Polk to give the post more maneuvering space and room to grow.
Shreveport, Bossier City and other local governmental bodies have tried to help Barksdale by barring construction that would limit military air space and by entering into joint operating agreements to share ambulance and firefighting services with the base, Viser said.
Like many communities, the Shreveport area has hired a Washington, D.C., lobbyist -- Spectrum Group, headed by Paul McManus. Shreveport has contributed $112,500 and Bossier City $75,000 to hire Spectrum and pay Viser's salary as head of Barksdale Forward.
Louisiana also hired Spectrum Group for $400,000 to prepare reports on how well each of the state's bases meet the Pentagon's criteria for this BRAC round and to step in as needed to defend Louisiana facilities as the BRAC progresses.
"We really, really have done our homework," said retired Marine Col. Dell Dempsey, who works for the state Economic Development Department. She hopes Louisiana will be a gainer, not a loser, in this round of closings. And in that hope she is not alone.
"Unlike previous rounds of base closures, though, this round is not driven by a need to reduce overall force structure," Yvonne Dawson wrote in "When an Installation Grows: The Impact of Expanding Missions on Communities," a white paper for the Washington, D.C., think tank NAID, An Association of Defense Communities. "This BRAC round is instead anticipated to bring about a series of realignments in which operations are moved to receiving installations. For communities with receiving installations, this growth will not only bring an influx of additional troops and/or missions, but also families and, potentially, federal civilian employees and contractors."
A major factor, one not present in earlier BRACs, "is the Bush administration's decision to move up to 70,000 overseas troops back to the United States, primarily from Germany and South Korea," Dawson wrote. "These troops will consume some of the military's excess domestic capacity."
She cites a Pentagon planner for this interpretation. In her paper, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Installations and Environment Raymond Dubois said "... the new global posture strategy and BRAC 2005 are tightly linked. The overseas moves will inform the domestic BRAC decisions."
Even if a base closes -- the worst nightmare for a community dependent on military paychecks -- the hit may not be as mortal as feared. Louisiana again illustrates this.
England Air Force Base near Alexandria, selected for closure in the 1991 BRAC, lost 682 civilian jobs, the GAO said. But the Pentagon gave the base to the local community, which turned it into a private air park with various businesses occupying the vacated buildings. That created 1,530 jobs, the GAO said. The agency also reported the area's unemployment rate as nearly a full percentage point under the national average of 5.8 percent.
But even if a base remains open, missions and personnel can be lost; and that edge of realignment is "what we have to guard against here," Cole said.
"We're not going to close down, but we have to be careful. They keep peeling the layers off the onion."
© Copyright 2005, The Shreveport Times
