GAO tallies savings from base closings

The Defense Department has more military bases than it needs and will save money by closing bases in 2005, according to the General Accounting Office.

"The potential exists for significant savings to result from the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure round, [but] it is difficult to conclusively project the magnitude of the savings because there are simply too many unknowns," the watchdog agency said in a new report, "Military Base Closures: Assessment of DoD's 2004 Report on the Need for a Base Realignment and Closure Round." (GAO-04-760).

Congress has agreed to allow the Pentagon to close more bases in 2005, but only if Defense showed that closings were needed and would yield savings. Earlier this year, the Pentagon sent lawmakers an assessment that found that the military services and Defense Logistics Agency have on average 24 percent more space than needed, and predicted that shutting down and realigning bases could save as much as $5 billion annually by 2011.

Lawmakers had asked GAO to evaluate Defense's case for another base realignment and closure round.

"Although we identified some limitations with DoD's assessment of excess capacity and factors that could affect the timing and amount of savings from a future BRAC round, we found no basis to question DoD's certification of the need for an additional BRAC round," the report stated.

For example, GAO auditors said, the ongoing realignment of military forces overseas and chances that some may be returned to bases in the United States could mean the military would have less excess space.

The GAO report likely will be cited this week as Congress debates the fiscal 2005 Defense authorization bill. The House version contains a provision to delay BRAC until 2007 because of the pending overseas realignment and ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.