Pentagon Seeks to Shut Dozens of Bases Across Nation

The New York Times
May 14, 2005
Pentagon Seeks to Shut Dozens of Bases Across Nation
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, May 13 - The Pentagon on Friday recommended closing nearly 180 installations and offices, including 33 big bases, from Hawaii to Maine in the first major restructuring of the nation's vast military network in a decade.

Ranging from tiny Army Reserve centers to sprawling Air Force bases that have been the economic anchors of their communities for generations, the proposed closings, consolidations and reductions of more than 800 military facilities in all, which could cost several thousand civilian jobs nationwide, sent shock waves across all 50 states. The plan also underscored the Pentagon's far-reaching effort to revamp the armed services into a leaner, more agile force.

In the New York area, the Pentagon wants to shut the Navy's submarine base in Groton, Conn.; the Army's Fort Monmouth in New Jersey; and the Air National Guard Station in Niagara Falls, N.Y. The Groton base had the largest single loss of jobs in the proposal.

Other bases proposed for closing include some familiar names in military history, including Fort McPherson in Georgia, the Pascagoula Naval Station in Mississippi and Fort Monroe, Va. And in South Dakota, the state's second-largest employer, Ellsworth Air Force Base, would be shut.


The military also wants to move thousands of military and civilian workers out of leased commercial high-rise buildings near the Pentagon in Northern Virginia to more secure locations at bases around the country.

Closing bases, though, does not mean shrinking the military, just rearranging it.

"Our current arrangements, designed for the cold war, must give way to the new demands of the war against extremism and other evolving 21st-century challenges," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said. The plan is proposed to save $48.8 billion over 20 years.

The Pentagon sent its findings on Friday to the independent Base Realignment and Closure Commission, or Brac, which will spend the summer reviewing them in public hearings and installation visits. Mr. Rumsfeld will testify to the panel on Monday.

If the past four base-closing rounds are a guide, most of the Pentagon's plan will prevail: previous commissions have endorsed 85 percent of the recommendations. And Congress and two past presidents have approved the panel's plans.

While the list of proposed closings and consolidations was smaller than initially expected because of the planned return of troops from Europe, the reaction from communities and their political leaders was furious and intense.

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, attacked the Pentagon's plan to close the base in Groton, a submarine base since 1916 that stands to lose more than 8,000 military and civilian jobs.

"It is shortsighted," Mr. Lieberman said in a statement. "It is cruel and unusual punishment that Connecticut does not deserve and our national security cannot afford."

Lawmakers and local officials in Maine, one of the hardest-hit states with three closings, including the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, vowed to challenge the Pentagon's plans that would cost nearly 7,000 military and civilian jobs.

"In arriving at these inexplicable decisions, the Defense Department and the Navy must have been operating in a fog so thick they couldn't even see the facts in front of them," said Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine.

The recommendation to close Ellsworth revived an issue from one of the most fiercely contested Senate races last fall.

During the campaign, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, appeared outside the base with John Thune, the Republican challenger, and promised to use his clout to spare Ellsworth if South Dakotans turned Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader, out of office. Mr. Thune won. On Friday he called the Pentagon's decision "flat wrong."

Pentagon officials said that politics played no role in a process that made military value the top priority. President Bush's home state, Texas, for instance, would gain a net total of 6,150 military and civilian jobs if the military's recommendations stand. But inside the state, there are winners and losers. The redeployment of 11,000 soldiers from the First Armored Division in Germany to Fort Bliss would be partially offset by the closing of 15 installations, including the Red River Army Depot and Ingleside Naval Station.

California, which in the past four rounds had 29 bases closed or realigned, got off relatively lightly this time, losing only about 2,000 military and civilian positions under the proposal, including 1,630 positions at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, which would be shifted to an expanded medical center in San Antonio.

Since the last round of base closings 10 years ago, Congress approved provisions that make it harder for the independent, nine-member commission to add a base to the Pentagon's list. Now, seven members must approve the addition of a base to the list instead of a simple majority, which remains the standard to drop an installation from the list or make any other alteration.

The commission, headed by Anthony J. Principi, a former secretary of veterans affairs, must present its recommendations to Mr. Bush by Sept. 8. The president and Congress must then accept or reject the list by Nov. 7. Once Congress approves the decisions, the Pentagon must begin to carry them out within two years and complete them by 2011.

This round's proposal to close 33 major bases and reduce another 29 is roughly in line with the four previous rounds - in 1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995. But this year's list recommends 775 minor base closings or consolidations, more than three times the total number of changes to smaller bases in the four previous rounds combined.

Christopher Hellman, a military analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a research group in Washington, said roughly three-quarters of these smaller installations belonged to the National Guard and Reserve. "This would indicate a desire on the part of the Pentagon to better integrate these units into the active force," Mr. Hellman said in a statement.

Mr. Rumsfeld said on Thursday that the military had only about 5 percent to 10 percent excess capacity once it took into consideration the space it would need to accommodate 70,000 troops returning from Europe and Pentagon agencies moving from leased space, as well as the need to preserve the military's ability to surge operations at ammunition plants and maintenance depots in times of crisis. The Pentagon had earlier estimated it had 20 percent to 25 percent more capacity than it needed.

Even with fewer closings than once expected, Mr. Rumsfeld said the proposed changes would save about $5.5 billion a year after initial closing costs were paid, and $48.8 billion over 20 years. The previous four rounds of base closings saved a total of $29 billion through 2003, according to the Government Accountability Office, leaving some base-closing specialists to question the Pentagon's analysis.

"The math doesn't add up," said David Berteau, a former Pentagon official whose responsibilities included overseeing base closings and who was a consultant for the State of California this round.

But Defense Department officials who worked on the base-closing process for the last two years said that much of the savings would come from merging maintenance depots, arsenals and similar functions that each armed service now does on its own. New pilots from all services flying the Joint Strike Fighter would train at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. In the Washington area, the Pentagon plans to close the existing Walter Reed Army Medical Center and build a $1 billion national military center with the same name on the campus of the naval medical center in Bethesda, Md.

Each service has proposed consolidating functions to improve efficiencies. The Army would move its armor center from Fort Knox, Ky., to Fort Benning, Ga., home of the infantry school, to create a Maneuver Center there. The Army would close 176 Army Reserve centers and 211 Army National Guard facilities, but it would build 125 multiservice Reserve centers in places better suited to help their flagging recruiting efforts.

"By closing or divesting ourselves of inefficient facilities and moving to places where we have better demographics and constructing joint facilities, I think we give better opportunity to the members of the Reserve component, make it more convenient and give them more choices," said Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau.

The military services planned for what they need to fight adversaries 20 years from now. The Air Force projected having 20 percent fewer fighter jets but possible new threats in the Pacific, so it has proposed alterations to 75 percent of its 154 installations. "We saw this as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reset our forces," said Maj. Gen. Gary Heckman, co-director of the Air Force's base-closing analysis.