Uniqueness might not be enough to save a base

CHARLESTON, S.C. - With a new round of military cuts facing the nation, officials are questioning what can be done to avoid base closure.

In deciding which bases survive the cuts, the Pentagon will review categories of "jointness" and uniqueness. Jointness is the ability to handle missions by two or more of the military services at the same time.

An independent commission will unveil its next list in May 2005 in the Base Realignment and Closure program.

Experts familiar with the BRAC process are paying attention to a new set of rules, especially those relating to jointness.

"I believe jointness will be the single most important difference between this BRAC and those that occurred before," said Barry Steinberg, a partner in Kutak Rock, a Washington-based law firm.

Steinberg is a former chief of the U.S. Army Environmental Law Division and of the U.S. Army Litigation Division at the Pentagon. In 1993, he helped Charleston-area leaders defend the Navy installations against that year's closures.

In the Lowcountry, leaders know the significance of these decisions. The 1993 BRAC round claimed the Charleston Naval Base, which featured warships, a bustling shipyard and proximity to the Charleston Naval Weapons Station and Charleston Air Force Base.

It's difficult to say how the Charleston Air Force Base and the Charleston Naval Weapons Station fare when tested against the jointness and uniqueness standards.

The Air Force base offers unique features the military wants, most notably a night flight training area that is unmatched. The weapons station spreads a lot of jointness across its wide-open acreage and can claim its size as a unique selling point.

"The Air Force base used to be unique because it was the only C-17 base in the nation," said retired Brig. Gen. Tom Mikolajcik, a former wing commander at the base who is now the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce's point man for base retention. "That's no longer true. Airplanes can be moved anywhere. But that doesn't mean the base isn't unique. It's unique because of the old real estate adage `location, location, location.' "

Charleston Air Force Base is one of the Air Force's four large Air Mobility Command bases on the East Coast. The others are Andrews Air Force Base, Md.; Dover Air Force Base, Del.; and McGuire Air Force Base, N.J. If Charleston's base were closed, one of those other bases likely would pick up its C-17s.

Last winter, a heavy snowfall collapsed the roof of an aerial port building at Dover, diverting much of that base's war-buildup traffic to Charleston. Its location in the Southeast, where good weather, is a tremendous asset, Mikolajcik said.

Another reason why the city's Air Force base is unique is its proximity to special forces and airborne troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., and Hurlburt Field near Fort Walton Beach, Fla. There also are no restrictions on low-level training routes or high-level refueling tracks in the state.

Jointness cannot overcome uniqueness, said defense expert Baker Spring with Washington-based think tank The Heritage Foundation.

"The military will continue to become more `joint,' " Spring said, "but for those who want to keep their base open, their arguments will succeed or fail based on their base's military merit."

The weapons station has become an excellent example of jointness, Mikolajcik said.

More than 40 tenant units from different branches occupy space on the station's 17,000 acres. Chief among them are the Army's Combat Equipment Group-Afloat, the Navy's two nuclear power schools, the U.S. Border Patrol, the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, the Army Reserve Center and the U.S. Military Traffic Management Command's 841st Transportation Battalion.

I haven't seen anything about Nellis being on the chopping block,
but a search turned up this recent story which may be related to that rumor:

Las Vegas growth pinches Nellis
By SAMANTHA YOUNG, STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
April 09, 2003
Pahrump Valley Times
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Las Vegas growth boom has forced the military to curb training at Nellis Air Force Base as commanders have rerouted flights and canceled missions to avoid nearby neighborhoods, fed-eral investigators said in a report last week.
Once safely isolated on the outskirts of the city, Nellis is increasingly being encroached upon by homes and businesses sprouting near base boundaries, the General Accounting Office concluded after a site visit.
The Air Force told GAO investigators that safety concerns related to urban growth have "restricted flight patterns of armed aircraft, causing mission delays and cancellations" at Nellis, a premier training base for combat pilots.
Nellis spokesman Michael Estrada said the Air Force since the mid-1980s has increasingly rerouted planes carrying live weap-onry to the north to avoid flying over homes south of the base.
The shift has forced pilots on training missions to abandon the base's pre-ferred runway in favor of a northern route that is more prone to high winds, Es-trada said.
The base also has spent $30 million to purchase private land to the north to maintain buffers for flight paths.
Nellis officials could not say how many missions have been canceled or al-tered because of encroachment, or how it has affected quality of training.
At a Senate hearing, GAO officials said their report criticizes the Pentagon for not being able to measure the impact of urban encroachment.
Besides Nellis, the GAO said encroachment is a problem at the Barry Goldwater Range in Arizona, Fort Benning in Georgia, Fort Lewis in Washington and Elgin Air Force Base in Florida.
"It's been very difficult to quantify the magnitude of the impact," said Barry Holman, GAO director of defense infrastructure is-sues.
"The GAO report shows there is an encroachment problem and it's only going to get worse," Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-Nev.) said through a spokeswoman. He said the military needs to do a better job assessing the impact of urban growth near bases.
Despite training restric-tions, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said military readi-ness has not been harmed.
"The GAO says the readi-ness of the Armed Services is at its highest and the de-partment hasn't shown readiness to be impacted," Reid said.
The Bush administration cites encroachment as one reason to seek controversial legislation exempting military bases from portions of the Clean Air Act, the En-dangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Act, and laws concerning solid waste and Superfund sites.
Reid said the military already has authority to exempt facilities from state and federal laws. He pointed to the president's annual declaration that operations at Groom Lake are exempted from envi-ronmental rules.
"They should not just do away with environmental laws," Reid said. "Lets do it on a case-by-case basis."
Gibbons and Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Calif.) have in-troduced an encroachment bill that in some cases would prohibit designating critical habitat for threat-ened animals and plants on military installations.
The legislation is similar to a Pentagon proposal that would allow base com-manders to accommodate wildlife while continuing military activities.
Pentagon lawyer Benedict Cohen said the base plans, called Integrated Natural Resource Management Plans, and other training activities are being challenged in court.
"There is a wave of pending litigation. The philoso-phy of the department and the administration is we think it's unwise to wait until there is a train wreck in court," Cohen said. "It's our belief if we can see these threats emerging we should address them."
If the government were required to designate critical habitat on military bases, readiness at Nellis and Fallon Naval Air Sta-tion could be impaired, said Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.).
"That could severely af-fect our nation's readiness because every combat pilot goes through one of those two ranges," Ensign said. "There isn't anything more important than that."
Estrada said current operations like small arms range training and runway bombing could be stopped if lands were designated critical habitat for the de-sert tortoise, big horn sheep, owls and foxes that roam the desert.

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