With mid-term elections out of the way, the Pentagon is ready to start work on a prickly political issue-closing down military bases.
Last year, Congress gave the Defense Department permission in the fiscal 2002 Defense Authorization Act to close more military bases in 2005. (The last cycle of base closures took place in 1995). Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld led an aggressive lobbying effort to win approval, arguing that the military services have 25 percent excess base structure and could save $3.5 billion annually by closing down bases. As in previous rounds of base closures, an independent commission will hold public hearings on what bases should be closed and then make recommendations to the president and lawmakers.
Neither the Pentagon nor the military services have begun the actual planning for the next round of closures. However, defense analysts expect the Office of the Secretary of Defense to kick off planning within the next three months by starting work on the criteria that will be considered in deciding what bases to close. Most of 2003 will be spent developing those rules, which will be conveyed to the services late next year.
Once guidelines are place, the services will draw up a list of bases that they think could be closed, then send the list to the Office of the Secretary by late 2004. The Pentagon will then review and finalize those recommendations before forwarding them to the base closure commission in the spring of 2005. In turn, the commission will hold hearings throughout the summer of 2005 and, by fall, make its final recommendations to the president and Congress. According to the rules, those recommendations would have to be accepted or rejected in their entirety.
Since the last round of base closures, most states and communities with a military presence have worked hard to promote the interests of their bases. States with a large military presence, including California, Texas, Florida and Georgia, have spent millions of dollars upgrading roads and other infrastructure near bases. Military communities, such as Barksdale Air Force Base, La., and Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., have organized and put money toward grassroots lobbying efforts to ensure their bases are not on the commission's list.
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have offered bases a new argument for remaining open, some state and community base backers said.
"Clearly it has provided ammunition for those opposed to BRAC [Base Realignment and Closure] because the argument can be raised 'Should we be closing facilities while we are engaged in a war on terrorism?" said Dale Ketcham, director of space and defense programs for Enterprise Florida, a state office that promotes and protects military interests in Florida. But Ketcham added that the argument could also backfire because a new war could lead to eliminating bases built for the Cold War. "Ultimately, I do not think this argument will make any difference," he said.
Others, however, are already making that argument. Murray Viser, head of Barksdale Forward, a Shreveport, La.-based nonprofit organization that promotes Barksdale Air Force Base, said the war on terrorism underscores the need for the base, because it's home to Air Force B-52 bombers. Before the war, Viser said, base backers were concerned about Barksdale's future because the service was relying less on the aging bombers. Now, he said, the success of bombers, particularly B-52s, in the war on terrorism has "validated" the aircraft and allayed concerns that the base would be phased out with the bombers.
Homeland security considerations also have become part of the base closing debate. Charles Thomas, chairman of the Kirtland Partnership, which spends about $100,000 annually promoting Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, N.M, said one of the base's largest tenants, Sandia National Laboratories, plays a key role in homeland security. He said the Energy Department laboratory develops homeland security technologies, such as sensors and decontamination foams, and has long worked with other nations to secure materials that could be used to build weapons of mass destruction.
"We've become even more important with homeland defense," Thomas said, adding that last year Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge saw some of those technologies on a tour of Sandia.
Other states also are focusing on homeland security. Texas is arguing that military facilities there could be used to guard against a possible attack on the Gulf Coast and also protect key oil refinery pipelines. The 2003 Defense Appropriations Act contains $1.5 million for examining whether military facilities on Cape Cod, Mass., could be used for homeland defense training. Another $5.5 billion has been earmarked for upgrading Rome Air Force Laboratory in New York, where researchers devise plans to thwart cyberattacks on the nation's computers. And in Pennsylvania, lobbying is under way to bring antiterrorism work to the Letterkenney Army depot.
Indeed, the elections may be over, but the politics of base closure is under way.