As if the rest of you didn’t know the Pentagon just released its recommendations for base realingnment and closures (aka, the BRAC List) (warning, .pdf file.) So, everybody and their mothers are up in arms about their local base getting hatcheted or killed. I’m not. My current post, Shaw AFB, is going to recieve a gain. And I’m pissed about it.
Why, ye Gods who wear stars on your shoulders, do you recommend that the 3rd Army HQ be moved from Atlanta to Shaw? An Army headquarters needs to be in a Fort, not an Air Force base. The only way I can see this is in the typical ‘realignment of forces’ arguement. Since 9th AF is the major component of CENTAF, and 3rd Army is the major component of CENTCOM’s ground detachment, it would make sense to have the upper commands in the same spot. BUUUUTTTT! My issue with this is that if these jackasses are thinking in any foreward way, in a few years, the DoD’ll figure it out that it’d be easier to simply have ALL of CENTCOM in one spot…MacDill AFB in Florida (where the CinC of CENTCOM currently hangs his hat.) It only makes sense (but then again, what do I know, I’m just a reserve sergeant and OTS candidate. I’m nobody.)
I was told that the bases to be closed in South Dakota account for about half the total employment in the state. I envision a lot of unsalable flatland in the Middle of Nowhere™, surrounded by a lot of unemployable South Dakoptans.
Papa T. works at Walter Reed, which is slated to be closed and combined with Bethesda at the Bethesda campus as the new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, with other DC medical facilities to be realigned, too. That one actually makes good sense. It’s ridiculous to have the two largest military facilities barely 7 miles from each other. And this avoids massive and expensive upgrades on the current Walter Reed facilities, not to mention the Bethesda campus has room for new buildings whereas Walter Reed doesn’t.
The part that may create huge problems, of course, is building a new large hospital at Fort Belvoir, plus moving the military offices currently at Crystal City and Skyline there, from what he tells me, once they can get new space built. While I understand they’ll theoretically save lots of bucks by doing that, there is just not the road infrastructure in that part of Virginia to support that much addition without some major upgrades. And we all know how likely that is.
I don’t think the closure of Ellsworth is going to be as huge an impact on Rapid City as everyone thinks. There’s a ton of tourism flowing through there on a weekly basis (Mt. Rushmore, the Black Hills), and then there’s this little thing they call “Sturgis” which brings more people into the area for two weeks than live there the rest of the year.
Besides, there’s not much at Ellsworth anyway, just B-1s. No nukes. No missiles. Nothing. Just ‘flying dachsunds’ which can easily move somewhere else.
Tripler
But I did build them a brand spankin’ new BITC facility in '03. :smack:
Just wanted to offer my condolences to those who will have to go through a base closure. I was an army brat in my youth, and lived through the closure of the Canadian base just outside of Baden-Baden in Germany. It was devastating for my family, forcing my father into early retirement, and signaled the downturn (IMHO) of our military force. Of course, our Government elected to do this once the mandate of the base was fulfilled after the wall came down. The American gov’t is closing bases in a time of war. I have to wonder about the priorities.
fushj00mang: Actually, I rather like Idaho itself. My job, on the other hand…
Also, the odds of getting orders out of here are not good. I know a lot of people who spent their entire enlistment between basic, tech school, and Mountain Home. People have been getting turned down for Korea, ferchrissakes.
I took the Naval War College by correspondence a decade or so ago. It discussed the money saved by closing bases. Lots of money. Tons of it.
The military is not in the business of providing commissaries to retirees, nor in the business of preserving local real estate values, nor of preserving history. Close these bases and continue with our mission.
In truth in ten or twenty years, most of these locations will be better off without a military base.
It sucks to lose local jobs, but the federal government does have to consider the welfare of all Americans, not just the ones living around bases the military doesn’t need. If the potential cost savings some are citing are even half true, it’s hard to dispute that these base closures are a good idea. I mean, I’ve seen figures as high as $50 billion. That’s easily more than 10% of the entire armed services budget.
The truth is that the only reason the U.S. armed forces is spread amongst as many bases as it is, is porkbarrelry and a refusal to bite the bullet when it was time to do so.
Yeah, BRAC is going to admit to closing bases just because a majority of the voters in that state. If look even closer, you’ll see that UFOs and aliens are being stored in the bases that aren’t being shut down. That press conference is scheduled for next week.
Paul in Saudi has got it right. The military’s mission has nothing to do with providing jobs to parts of the country with slower local economies. You can’t complain about the high cost of running a military while at the same time faulting the methods that they use to reduce that cost.
That’s in the ballpark, but not an annual figure; that’s what the SecDef is saying will be saved over 20 years (cite: Washington Post). And while political considerations have often played a major role in deciding which bases to keep open, I think another important factor is the deep institutional conservatism (not in the political sense) of the military. From the time of the Spanish American War until the collapse of the U.S.S.R., having military bases spread around wasn’t just pork-barrel, it was prudent preparation. Now the world is a different place, and better transportation means that more centralization can save money, but the political fight isn’t going to be pretty.
Since this is the Pit, WTF are they doing to Philadelphia? Killing the Navy yard wasn’t good enough, now they have to go after Willow Grove?
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