Move 'Em Out

Andrew Hoehn, the architect of the Pentagon's plan to reposition U.S. troops around the globe, likens the challenge of managing the military's largest shift of forces in five decades to playing three-dimensional chess.

Old allies must be reassured as new alliances are forged. Cold War bases will be shut down, while new home stations must be found for tens of thousands of troops and their families. Civilian personnel will have to decide between relocating, or perhaps leaving the Defense Department altogether. Warfighting equipment will have to be repositioned worldwide. Billions of dollars will need to be found to carry out the changes.

"It's a management and implementation challenge," says Hoehn, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy. "It's a management challenge with the U.S. government itself how we are going to work the pieces. It's a challenge within the Department of Defense how we arrange for personnel issues, support issues and financial issues. This is a very complex problem."

The Big Shift

President Bush announced in August that about 70,000 troops, plus 100,000 family members and civilian workers, would be withdrawn from Europe and Asia over the next decade. Many will return to the United States, while others will move to new bases overseas. U.S. troops have been stationed in Europe since the end of World War II in the mid-1940s and in Korea since the early 1950s.

"More of our troops will be stationed and deployed from here at home," Bush said. "We'll move some of our troops and capabilities to new locations, so they can quickly deal with new threats. We'll take advantage of the 21st century military technologies to rapidly deploy increased firepower."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee in late September that the repositioning of forces would result in closing 200 overseas facilities, about 35 percent of all bases abroad. The Pentagon provided a classified plan to lawmakers outlining several options for withdrawing and relocating troops.

Hoehn says two major factors are driving the strategic shift: the emergence of more unpredictable threats, such as terrorism, and a far more powerful U.S. arsenal. Today's global situation requires smaller, more agile U.S. forces to move rapidly to fights, rather than larger stationary forces, Hoehn says. Increasingly, troops are called on for short deployments, such as the Marines' recent stint in Liberia, rather than, for example, providing a massive deterrent to a Soviet invasion of Europe.

Also, Hoehn says, more powerful weapons require fewer troops. For example, about 90 percent of the bombs dropped and missiles launched during Operation Iraqi Freedom were precision munitions, as opposed to only about 10 percent during the Iraq War in 1991. "The notion that you can measure commitment and military power by some estimate of the number of people-the boots on the ground, if you will-is no longer a valid estimate," Hoehn says.

As a result, the United States will begin moving troops out of foreign nations where they have been stationed for decades. The withdrawals will not result in any cuts in strength. Instead, forces will relocate to existing bases in the United States, or move to facilities in Eastern Europe or Asia, and closer to emerging threats and possible future battlefields.

Service Plans

The Army will shift the largest number of troops among the armed services, mainly in Germany and Korea, where more than half of the 250,000-plus U.S. troops based overseas are stationed. (The roughly 145,000 military personnel in Iraq are not counted in that total because they are on temporary duty overseas.) The Army has 67,000 soldiers in Europe and 30,000 in Korea.

The Army will move two divisions of 15,000 soldiers out of Germany and replace them with a single 4,000-troop Stryker brigade, one of the newly created agile units that replace tanks with lighter battle vehicles. In Korea, about 12,500 personnel will move out and not be replaced. Most of those will return to the United States. Some are likely to be relocated to smaller bases in former Warsaw Pact nations-such as Bulgaria, Poland and Romania-and to the Balkans. There are only 44 U.S. military personnel in those three countries today, while thousands are serving in Bosnia and Kosovo on peacekeeping missions.

Hoehn says it's "inevitable that we are going to be training, operating and exercising in places that we hadn't in the past," such as Eastern Europe. He says the Army, however, is not likely to build big bases such as those currently in Germany, but will set up smaller installations and establish partnerships with nations that would allow the U.S. military to store equipment, rotate in and out for training exercises, and move troops around as threats develop. The Air Force and Navy also are considering changes in European force structure.

The Air Force has almost 37,000 personnel in Europe, mainly in Germany, Great Britain and Italy. Service leaders would like to move some fighter planes closer to the Middle East, stationing them at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. But such a move likely would require extensive negotiations with the government of that nation, where 90 percent of the population is Muslim. Several Eastern European nations also are being eyed for aircraft bases because they have less crowded airspace and fewer environmental restrictions than Western European countries.

In Germany, where more than 16,000 Air Force personnel are stationed, the service will continue with plans under way before Bush's August announcement to close Rhein-Main Air Base and consolidate work at Ramstein and Spangdahlem air bases. In England, which has about 10,000 Air Force members, the service is considering moving fighter planes from Royal Air Force bases Lakenheath and Mildenhall to Eastern Europe. But no final decisions have been made. Aviano Air Base in Italy is viewed as less likely to lose personnel or aircraft because of its strategic location in southern Europe.

The Navy, meanwhile, plans to merge its two top European command centers, Naval Forces Europe in London and the headquarters of the 6th Fleet in Gaeta, Italy, into a single European command at the Naval Support Activity in Naples, Italy. About 500 military and civilian personnel from the two existing posts will be moved into the new organization. The Navy also is considering moving forces out of Iceland into other European commands, while naval forces in Rota, Spain, are unlikely to move-also due to their Southern European location. The Navy has more than 12,000 sailors stationed in Europe.

The Pentagon has revealed few details about how the 90,000 personnel in the Asia and Pacific regions will be reorganized, other than the shift of 12,500 soldiers out of Korea over the next two years. Hoehn says Defense planners are looking at increasing the Navy and Air Force presence in the region, particularly in Guam, a U.S. territory located between Hawaii and the Philippines. Today, there are 3,300 personnel in Guam, most of them in the Navy and Air Force.

The Navy is considering moving a second aircraft carrier to the region-possibly based in Hawaii or Guam-while the Air Force may beef up its presence at Guam's Andersen Air Force Base. Additional air and naval power could allow for further cuts in ground forces in Korea and in Japan, where more than 40,000 ground and air troops are stationed. There's been speculation that some of the 18,000 Marines in Japan could move to Australia, Malaysia, or Singapore.

Hoehn says troop withdrawals and redeployments will happen at different times, depending on negotiations with allies. "People should not expect a big-bang event-that four months, six months or a year from now, we will come away from the negotiating table, dust ourselves off and say, 'It's all done,' " he says.

Civilian Impact

Since President Bush's August announcement, much attention has been focused on military personnel being moved. But tens of thousands of Defense civilian employees supporting those troops also will be relocated. More than 48,000 Defense civilians work overseas; another 39,000 citizens of host countries also work for the military services. The civilians' jobs are as varied as their military counterparts', ranging from managing massive Army bases to ensuring that Air Force cargo planes flying into Afghanistan have enough fuel.

"I think there will be an impact on where some of these [civilians] are going to work and what they are going to do, but it does not mean the skills and many of the functions they provide are no longer needed. They are just going to be needed in different places," says Hoehn, adding that most would have the option to move stateside with the troops and continue in their same jobs.

Hoehn says no "large-scale reduction" is planned for the Defense civilian workforce, and any workers losing jobs would be given priority in applying for other civilian positions in Defense. Also, he says, there will be new opportunities as the Pentagon converts tens of thousands of military jobs to civilian positions in the coming years to free up uniformed personnel to focus on warfighting.

"I think there are ample opportunities for the civilian workforce to adjust as we go through this transition," Hoehn says. Defense officials, who asked not to be identified, say that with the changes taking place over a decade, many civilians would become eligible to retire and could leave the government if they did not want to move.

Diane Disney, the Defense Department's civilian personnel chief during the Clinton administration, says relocating U.S. civilian workers overseas will likely be the least of the worries for Pentagon personnel planners. Many Defense civilians no longer expect to serve long stints abroad because in the 1990s, the Pentagon implemented a policy under which civilians can only serve in foreign posts for five years before taking an assignment at home.

Disney warns, however, that Pentagon personnel managers will be "hit by a hurricane" if they don't make plans now for dealing with the more than 50,000 foreigners who work for the military at overseas bases. Many European nations have labor laws requiring employers to pay large severance packages and continue benefits if workers are laid off. Without extensive negotiations with labor groups, Defense risks winding up in court, says Disney, now dean of Penn State University's Commonwealth College.

Another former Defense civilian personnel manager, who asked not to be identified, noted that a weak economy in Germany could make labor negotiations more difficult than during the U.S. troop withdrawals of the 1980s and 1990s. Moreover, the retired senior executive says, many of the civilian personnel experts who led those negotiations have retired and have not been replaced because of Defense downsizing.

The personnel official says most civilians overseas likely would be able to move to the same or comparable jobs stateside or elsewhere. But some positions, such as those of teachers and staff at Defense-run schools overseas, would likely be eliminated as military families return home.

Contractors who work to support troops overseas also are eyeing the impact of the realignment on their businesses. The Defense Department does not track how many contract workers are employed overseas, but the number is easily in the tens of thousands. For example, Northrop Grumman, the third-largest Defense contractor in fiscal 2003, has 600 employees in Germany alone and more than $50 million in contracts to support troops throughout Europe.

Kent Schneider, president of Northrop Grumman Information Technology's Defense Enterprise Solutions business unit in McLean, Va., says defense contractors have had mixed reaction to the realignment announcement. "There are new opportunities as bases are expanded worldwide, but there will be concerns about retaining qualified people [as jobs move]," he says.

Contractors could find new work in keeping "warm" some overseas facilities that the Pentagon might keep open for training and emergency deployments without a full military presence, Hoehn says.

Managing Bases

The Defense Department has 860 military installations on foreign soil, ranging from small parcels of land that contain communications towers to the vast Army and Air Force bases at the Kaiserslauten military community in southwestern Germany. All told, Defense owns 30,117 buildings with 143 million square feet of space and leases another 16,000 buildings with 155 million square feet of space on 29 million acres in 45 foreign countries.

Hoehn says the Pentagon will not decide which overseas bases will remain open or be closed until next year's round of domestic base closings are announced by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission. Determining which U.S. bases are shut, realigned, or in some cases expanded, will allow Defense to decide where troops heading home will be stationed and which overseas bases will no longer be needed.

"Part of the BRAC process is to have us in a position to understand not just what moves and where it will go, but what the costs will be, what the infrastructure requirements will be, how this will be maintained over time, and whether the pieces all make sense in relationship to one another," Hoehn says.

In the United States, local communities are well aware that the overseas realignment could have an impact on base-closing decisions at home. For example, the Army's Fort Riley in Kansas, with its sprawling training grounds, once was seen as a likely candidate for downsizing. But now it could be used to house soldiers returning from Germany. Meanwhile, at Naval Station Everett in Washington, which almost was closed in 1993, there's concern that the base could be shut if its aircraft carrier, the USS Lincoln, is moved to Hawaii.

Whatever happens at home, military facilities abroad likely will be very different than they are today. Proposed new installations in Eastern Europe or Central Asia are likely to be "lily pad" bases, serving as jumping-off points for rapid deployment into global hot spots. Already, the military has begun experimenting with this concept by using small, austere bases in former Soviet republics to support troops in Afghanistan.

Congress, meanwhile, has created the Commission on Review of Overseas Military Facility Structure to assess what changes should be made to installations and training ranges abroad. The eight-member commission, appointed by lawmakers, began conducting research this spring and will hold public hearings over the next several months before issuing a report in March 2005.

"Our intent is not to say 'X, Y, or Z should be here or there.' Our intent is to take a more strategic look," says Patricia Walker, the commission's executive director. Walker, the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for materiel and facilities in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, says the commission is not an "overseas BRAC," but will offer multiple options for basing forces overseas.

Defense officials who asked not be identified say they will work with the commission, but noted it only has an advisory role. They questioned whether lawmakers might not use the study to try to win troops for domestic installations in their districts. Indeed, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, who called for the creation of the commission, wrote in an Aug. 3 column in the Austin American-Statesman that Texas facilities "could provide superior training and a better value" than overseas bases.

However the Pentagon decides to allocate forces, the shift will involve spending billions of dollars. Defense officials estimate the moves will cost $12 billion over 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office says redeploying Army forces alone will cost $9 billion. Dov Zakheim, who left the Pentagon this spring after three years as Defense comptroller, says those estimates may be too low because it's difficult to factor in some costs, such as the money the United States will have to pay new host nations for agreeing to accept U.S. troops.

John Hamre, deputy Defense secretary during the Clinton administration and now president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says he's worried that the Pentagon might not have the cash or personnel to pull off the large-scale shift it envisions because of ongoing operations in Iraq and elsewhere. In the personnel restructuring of the 1990s, Hamre says, the military made up for tight budgets by cutting troops and personnel.

"We can't do that now," says Hamre. "The consequence is likely to be a much slower and smaller re-basing than was originally envisioned."