Closures loom for bases

[CPEO Moderator <cpeo@cpeo.org>]

California
LA DAILY NEWS
Closures loom for bases
Officia local damage
By Jim Skeen
January 23, 2004

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE -- California officials are gearing up for the
next round of military base closures, with the initial focus on the
ground rules that will be used to determine which installations should
go.

At stake are California's 36 major and 25 minor facilities -- the most
of any state.

Previous commissions on Base Realignment and Closure -- BRAC -- hit
California hard, axing 29 major installations and cutting 100,000
defense-related jobs.

The survivors include bases like Edwards Air Force Base, China Lake
Naval Weapons Center near Ridgecrest and Naval Base Ventura County, all
geared toward research and testing.

"This BRAC is a little different from previous BRACs," said state Sen.
W.J. "Pete" Knight, R-Palmdale, a retired Air Force test pilot. "In the
prior BRACs, the research and development, the test and evaluation bases
were exempt. This time no one is exempt."

The previous four rounds of base closures have saved the Defense
Department more than $16.7 billion. Another round, axing perhaps a
quarter of the remaining 230 installations, could save as much as an
additional $3.5 billion annually, federal officials said.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says the closures must at a minimum
eliminate bases that are no longer needed since the post-Cold War
military downsizing, and that divert scarce resources from defending
America. Beyond that, he has said, the closures could make a more
profound contribution by "rationalizing" defense infrastructure with
defense strategy.

In the Antelope Valley, where 11,500 defense-related jobs are at Edwards
alone, officials hope to influence the criteria a new base closure
commission will use in deciding in 2005 which bases to close. The
criteria will be finalized in February.

Local officials want the impact of a closure on "intellectual capital"
-- essentially the technical expertise of an area's population -- to be
considered and the impact on what officials call "total mission
support," a broad category regarding the cost of duplicating elsewhere a
base's resources, man-made and natural.

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200%7E20943%7E1898403,00.html

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