Base-closing committee add bases to the list

Oceana Naval Air Station was added to the yesterday list of military bases across the country that may be closed or shrunk. Oceana, a Navy “master jet base,” hosts F-14 Tomcats and F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets that are deployed aboard aircraft carriers.

The vote on Oceana by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission put a second Hampton Roads facility on the list, in addition to the Army’s Fort Monroe. The region, in southeastern Virginia, has the largest concentration of U.S. military in the world. Some 15,000 people work at Oceana, including civilians.

Commission said the residential growth around Oceana has increased the risk to people living in the area.

Yesterday’s votes showed the independent commission’s willingness to diverge at least somewhat from the plan Rumsfeld submitted in May, when he proposed closing or reducing forces at 62 major domestic bases and hundreds of smaller installations from coast to coast.

“We are not a rubber stamp,” commission Chairman Anthony Principi said after the vote.
Some in Congress had feared the panel would simply sign off on Rumsfeld’s plan without looking at options.

By adding bases to the list, the commission gave itself more flexibility to change what the Pentagon proposed as it considers shifting pieces of the mammoth domestic base network to better suit today’s defense needs.

Earlier, Principi cautioned that adding a base to the list “does not necessarily mean that the base will be realigned or closed” but will allow the panel to further analyze those bases’ usefulness by visiting sites, collecting data and holding hearings.

The panel will make final decisions next month about which bases to propose for closing or reductions, with President Bush and Congress making a binding decision in the fall. But the panel’s actions were sure to ignite a new round of lobbying by communities whose military facilities were being targeted.

The commission decided against targeting four large bases for closure: the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego; the Naval Shipyard at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; Moody Air Force Base in Georgia; and Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota.

The San Diego facility has headquarters for Navy operations in the Southwest, while the Navy’s tactical air units are trained and deployed from the Virginia base and the Air Force conducts joint tactical operations from the North Carolina installation.

The Brunswick air base is the last active-duty Defense Department airfield in New England and one of Maine’s largest employers, with nearly 4,900 military and civilian workers. It had been slated for force reductions but now will be considered for closure. The Galena airfield is one of the two “forward operation locations” in Alaska that serve as alert bases for aircraft.

At this stage, adding bases to the Pentagon’s proposed list of closures or consolidations will allow the commission to conduct public hearings, visit those sites and collect data, in some situations making direct comparisons with bases that perform similar missions and are slated for closure.

It took votes from seven of nine commission members to add a base to the list. The commission then will have to reaffirm each decision in August with seven of nine votes. Other bases on the Pentagon’s list can be removed then with five of nine votes.