COMMENTARY: Fighting back for Fort Huachuca

Sierra Vista Herald ^ | Herald/Review

[SandRat]

Submitted by Second District Congressman Ron Barber

For 137 years — for 3½ decades before Arizona was a state and 80 years before Sierra Vista was a city — Fort Huachuca has secured our nation’s Southwestern flank.

But now the fort faces a new type of threat — a threat from within our own nation. The harmful requirements of sequestration, the irresponsible across-the-board budget cuts passed by Congress in 2011, are forcing the U.S. Army to consider slashing the size of its active-duty force to levels not seen since before Pearl Harbor was attacked.

This makes no sense and I am fighting back.

It makes no sense for our national security to propose a reduction of personnel at Fort Huachuca where cutting-edge intelligence training and technology are giving us the ability to fight the wars of today and tomorrow.

It makes no sense to cut the Army’s best and brightest cybersecurity warriors and defenders, when computers essential to every aspect of our national defense face unprecedented threats.

And it makes no sense for Cochise County, where the fort is the foremost economic engine. The post is the county’s largest employer and has one of the largest military economic impacts for the entire state.

In reviewing military and civilian employees at 30 of its installations, the Army developed a “worst-case” scenario to evaluate the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of the cuts. The worst-case scenario the Army is projecting nationwide is a draw-down of 256,100 personnel. For Fort Huachuca, that could be a cut of up to 2,700 military and civilian personnel.

The Army is being forced to make these deep cuts because of sequestration — the wrongheaded, across-the-board budget cuts that have hit our national defense especially hard. I have opposed these cuts since before I was sworn into office more than two years ago.

When the Army released its evaluation on June 26, I fired back the same day, detailing why the missions performed at the fort are essential to our nation – and why those missions cannot effectively be shifted to other locations.

These are not just my opinions:

• Secretary of the Army John McHugh said “the capabilities at Huachuca offer advantages that are hard to replicate.”

• Army Chief of Staff Gen. Raymond Odierno said the “capability in Fort Huachuca is one that is very important.”

• Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey said the Army will continue to rely on proven systems such as Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance — one of the fort’s areas of expertise — to “expand our ability to access and assess hard-to-reach targets.”

The men and women of Fort Huachuca are performing work critical to our national defense — and the location of the fort also makes it particularly valuable.

The Electronic Proving Ground (EPG) at the fort tests and analyzes electronic equipment for the Department of Defense, other federal agencies and for the private sector.

Situated within a bowl-like valley surrounded by mountains more than 4,000 feet above sea level, the EPG testing range offers more than 9,000 square miles of land protected and free from outside electromagnetic interference — a unique asset that we have fought hard to protect.

I have told the Army why Fort Huachuca is essential — and I urge each of you to do the same.

The Army has opened a 60-day comment period, which ends Aug, 25, on the possible cuts to Fort Huachuca. Send your comments via email to usarmy.jbsa.aec.nepa@mail.mil

We are in this fight together. Fort Huachuca has served our nation, our state and our community with honor and distinction for more than a century. With our combined efforts, it will continue protecting us for generations to come.

U.S. REP. RON BARBERrepresents Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District. Follow him on Facebook or Twitter at RepRonBarber or contact him through his website at barber.house.gov.

[Reo]

Ron Barber is a kindly appearing elderly gentleman who would make an excellent department store Santa Claus. As a congressman, however, he’s been an ineffective doofus. Martha McSally should easily defeat him this fall.