Noise Complaint (BRAC)

After a ten-year hiatus, the Base Realignment and Closure process is back. Pentagon leaders say they are using this round of realignment to spur transformation, promote joint activity among the branches, enhance surge capacity, trim costs, shed obsolete facilities and (it appears) offload some lingering headaches: As Government Executive magazine reported when the BRAC-2005 criteria were released back in late 2003, “The efficiency and operational necessity of military bases won't be the only factors under consideration as the Pentagon weighs closure and consolidation decisions. Another factor will be what happens outside the walls of bases.”

In other words, the Pentagon is increasingly mindful of how much it costs to keep the neighbors happy. With the landscape surrounding its facilities dwindling away and the number of regulations that impinge upon its ability to train mushrooming, the military faces an increasing number of obstacles at home as it prepares for war abroad. As Pentagon BRAC specialist Raymond DuBois told Government Executive, these and other issues of “encroachment”—a catchall term referring to any factor that limits or interferes with the Armed Forces’ ability to train for war—could play a role in determining which bases will close.

I have no idea how many of the 180 facilities put on the chopping block by BRAC-2005 are there because of encroachment headaches. But even if it’s just one, it’s regrettable. We shouldn’t force those who defend us to defend their own training grounds. (Nor should we blame the Pentagon for making a virtue out of necessity by putting an end to certain encroachment headaches.)

Causes and Consequences

Encroachment is a relatively new phenomenon, mainly because it is a symptom of a relatively new trend: urbanization around bases. Until recently, most military bases were purposely located in remote areas, far away from cities and suburbs. That left military training out of sight and out of mind for most Americans. As cities and suburbs grew, however, their populations began to discover that training for war is a messy, noisy business. Yet instead of adjusting to the military, suburbanites began to demand that the military adjust to them.

If waging and deterring war wasn’t such a serious matter, the causes and consequences of encroachment would be laughable:

In 1997, an EPA regional office ordered the Army to stop using lead ammunition, explosives, propellants and demolition materials at a DoD facility in Massachusetts, citing the Safe Drinking Water Act. The troops were then forced to train with biodegradable “green ammunition” rather than the real stuff.
The Public Affairs office at Luke AFB in Arizona was forced to post the following on its Web site: “Luke pilots are acutely aware of the impact of our operations on the quality of life of our neighbors. We want to be good neighbors and have made a number of changes to our operating procedures and flight paths to reduce the noise impacts as our pilots depart and return from training areas.
Aircraft noise over neighboring communities can vary significantly as a result of cloud cover, wind speed and direction and humidity. Although most of our F-16 training sorties take place during the day, we do routinely fly at night. We need to train the way we fight and the nature of aerial combat requires our pilots to fly at night and in any weather.
In deference to our neighbors, we plan for most night training missions [to] return to Luke AFB by 10 p.m.”
One of the reasons a B-1B unit withdrew from Dobbins AFB was noise restrictions in and around Atlanta. A 17-mile ribbon of Interstate 5 separates Camp Pendleton’s amphibious landing beaches from its inland training facilities.

Environmentalists have used the Endangered Species Act to protect woodpeckers at Forts Bragg, Polk, Stewart, Benning, Jackson and Gordon. In fact, at Camp Lejuene and Fort Bragg, troops have had to tiptoe around trees marked with ribbons, an indication that endangered woodpeckers have been seen nearby.
At Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, activists convinced state officials to block the Army from deploying fog oil during nighttime training. Daytime use of fog oil has been limited to short increments. Fog oil is a critical component of combat training because it generates the smoke screens used to conceal large-scale battlefield movements. No matter.
According to the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, “Military personnel are being trained to detonate weapons of mass destruction in the Missouri Ozarks...These weapons include nerve gas and other chemical weapons, biological weapons (germ warfare), and radioactive materials. In addition, thousands of gallons of fog oil are released into the air throughout the year for obscurant training.”
Not exactly. In fact, the mission of Fort Leonard Wood’s Chemical School is “To protect the force and allow the Army to fight and win against a [nuclear-biological-chemical] threat. Develop doctrine, equipment and training for NBC defense which serve as a deterrent to any adversary possessing weapons of mass destruction. [And] provide the Army with the combat multipliers of smoke, obscurant and flame capabilities.” In other words, Fort Leonard Wood is training our troops to fight and defeat those who would detonate WMDs.

Before every training sortie at the Goldwater Air Force Range in Arizona, target areas are scoured for pronghorn antelopes. If an antelope is present, the entire target area is declared off limits. The Sierra Club’s magazine offers this patronizing commentary: “Sometimes GIs fail in their map-reading exercises in the adjacent Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range, and end up stuck either in Cabeza Prieta or Sonora, Mexico.
These off-road exploits disrupt calving for the dwindling herds of pronghorn, as do the Air Force’s practice bombing runs north of the refuge that cause flash fires where pronghorn and bighorn roam. A bombing range/endangered-species habitat was not what natural-resource managers had in mind when they coined the term ‘multiple use.’” Of course, I imagine that conducting daily safaris while maintaining a nature preserve was not what the Pentagon had in mind when it opened the base.

Contrary to what Green activists claim, the military isn’t the cause of the endangered species on and around its facilities. As cities expand, animal life naturally migrates to undeveloped lands. Since training for modern warfare requires vast, open spaces, the military happens to control much of what remains of America’s undeveloped territory.
While base commanders don’t mind sharing, many of them can’t help but wonder why they are left holding the environmental bill for the civilian community’s appetite for consumption and development.

And contrary to the NIMBY crowd and suburban elites who argue that national security can’t be compromised by turning down those noisy jet engines or limiting training to regular business hours, there are very real national-security consequences to encroachment. Above all, encroachment prevents U.S. troops from “training the way we fight,” a critical component of U.S. military doctrine.
As we have been reminded since September 11, wars are not fought in 15-minute increments; and they aren’t won with green ammo or quiet jet engines.

I attended a college-football game with my family on that first weekend America tried to return to normalcy after the attacks on New York and Washington. There was a sense of comfort in being able to distract ourselves, if just for a few hours, from what had happened 18 days earlier. But then, halfway through the second quarter, something distracted us from our distraction.

The first thing we noticed was the noise, as the usual stadium cacophony of bass drums and cheers and public-address announcements was drowned out by a distant roar. The roar grew louder as two tiny black specks on the far horizon were transformed into sobering silhouettes of military might. In an instant, a pair of fighter-jets screamed through the skies just south of the stadium.
At first, there was an unrehearsed ballet of 65,000 heads turning skyward, then a collective gasp, then that same distant roar, as the warplanes sliced across the other horizon and arced back toward the stadium. This was no ceremonial flyover—this was a combat air patrol.

The display jolted all of us back to the awful reality of our post-September 11 world. At once ominous and reassuring, it was a reminder not just of how much the country had changed, but of how much we depend on the military to protect us.

After a minute or so, the planes landed at a nearby airstrip to refuel, and we nervously turned our attention back to the game. No one complained about the noise.

Closing George AFB and England AFB were also big mistakes. George had the only certified training area where the Wild Weasels could train realistically.

England was an A-10 Base in Alexandria, LA. It was close to Fort Polk and offered AF pilots the opportunity to work directly with Army units to practice the close air support mission.

Members of the local Citizens Concerned About Jet Noise in Virginia Beach – a group of people who purchased homes near a local US Navy airfield then complain about the noise – were surprised that Naval Air Station Oceana was not included on the recommended closure list. They are now working to have it included.
I can not believe anyone would admit to being that careless or ignorant.

On the other hand, sometimes they get it right. In the case of the Groton Submarine base, that is definitely the case.

As a retired submarine sailor, I have always wondered what they were thinking when they put the base on the Thames river. You only have two choices when navigating a warship in a narrow river....upstream or downstream. It's hard to make evasive maneuvers when your navigational options are limited.

Another problem is that we had a thirteen hour surface transit to the dive point from Groton. Submarines have no defense against aerial attack while on the surface, and this transit leaves us vulnerable for too long.

The third major problem is that the base is located upstream of two bridges (Interstate 95) which could be bombed and dropped into the river to bottle up all the submarines in port for the months.

Add the fact that the locals aren't friendly to the military and the cost of living is prohibited on Navy pay, and this one is ripe for closure. If it makes Joe Lieberman and Chris Dodd angry, so much the better.

What gets me is people buy a house next to an airbase/airport and then complain that there's a lot of noice...HELLO....anyone home. It's not like they're easy to hide. "Marge, look behind those trees, there's an airbase there! DAMN! If I know that was there I wouldn't have bought this house".

I am with you 100%

I lived in Dover for more than 20 years and many of those years I was in various flight patterns of C-5s - I could not believe, as the city grew, how many people whined about the noise. For pete's sake, DAFB has been there for decades........what do people expect?

The main thing I miss about Dover is the sound of those C-5s overhead. I rarely hear anything other than an occassional jet from Wallops, unless I'm heading for Chincoteague.

Possibly ignorant people are taken in by the realtors? Check flight schedules before showing the house. Don’t allow the perspective buyer into the neighborhood without the realtor. Drive a route to and from the house that will preclude any sign of the airfield.
Yea. Right. “Trust me”, said the agent, lawyer, politician…

I lived for a time close to Oceana Naval Air Station, right under the final approach path. Jets were so low that at times (when my girl friend was working on her tan) we could read the pilot’s name on the side of the jet. It was a minor irritant – but so is the mega-blaster stereo in the car on the street. It passes.

The townhouse we had before moving to VA was less than a mile from the end of one of Dover's runways, after 11 years of living there I could practically forecast the weather based on the flight patterns..........I could also tell when something was going to be going down because we would hear the engines warming up at 3 or 4 in the morning.

Like everyone else, I will never forget 9/11/01 - but something that I will also not forget was the horrible eerie silence with no aircraft at all, except for the choppers bringing remains from the Pentagon.

I always found the mega-blaster stereos on the street to be much more than a minor irritant compared to the sound of jet engines, which are the sound of freedom.

Locally, we had a guy complaining about CSX trains using their horn at the grade crossing behind his brand new house. On a track that has been in place for decades. How do you not notice things like that?

… but something that I will also not forget was the horrible eerie silence with no aircraft at all, …

Same here. I currently live near a civilian airport with several military airfields fairly close by. The only planes in the sky were fighters very high up.

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