Panetta's announcement brings up serious business of base closures

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta fired a shot heard at every U.S. military facility Jan. 26 when he said base realignments and closures are a possibility in 2013 because of deep budget cuts dictated by the Budget Control Act.

The Pentagon won't get to $487 billion in spending cuts over 10 years without looking at infrastructure. And with the Army set to shrink from 560,000 active duty troops to 490,000 by 2017, the Pentagon cannot afford to maintain bases it does not need, Panetta said.

But the secretary's request to Congress to authorize the appointment of a BRAC Commission was about as welcome as the Rev. Fred Phelps at a military funeral.

For a process that's supposed to be nonpolitical, BRAC is saturated with politics. Given the economic impact a military installation has on its community, there's no way to devise a process devoid of political influences.

Lest congressional members who are railing against any suggestion of base closures forget, they were the ones who set spending caps when they passed the budget law last year.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, said Wednesday at a Reserve Officers Association conference that options for cuts that deep must come from four areas: manpower, modernization and equipment, training and maintenance, and infrastructure.

How's this for a starting point: facilities that weren't being used when the country was engaged in two demanding conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's hard to imagine a scenario in which they would be necessary going forward.

Panetta's announcement set off a flurry of political proclamations about how unwise base closings would be when the U.S. jobs picture is still so tenuous. Elected officials from mayors to governors and U.S. senators will invest political capital and lots of money in efforts to keep their local bases from ending up in the cross hairs of a BRAC Commission specifically because they are job programs in their communities.

North Texas has a dog in this fight. The thought of Naval Air Station Fort Worth, with an annual economic impact exceeding $1 billion, closing is a chapter of history this community never wants to revisit.

When Carswell Air Force Base was realigned as an air reserve base in the 1991 BRAC, thousands of local jobs disappeared. Fortunately for the region, the base was realigned again in the 1993 BRAC as a Navy reserve base.

Today Naval Air Station Fort Worth boasts 11,300 active-duty troops, full-time civilians and part-time reservists. And because it remains a model for cross-service operations, it escaped the 2005 BRAC and is unlikely to be on the chopping block in the next round.

But nothing's guaranteed, which is why folks from both sides of the aisle in Texas' political chambers will put aside differences to work as one in trying to assure that the facility doesn't end up on a Pentagon hit list.

In a time when the local job picture is poised to take a hit under American Airlines' restructuring plan, it's easy to forget that the main criterion for keeping a base operational should be its military value -- does it effectively support the country's overall defense posture?

As community leaders keep an eye on Congress and the possibility of a BRAC, they had best prepare to argue issues like global posture, operational readiness and mission capabilities -- and not just jobs -- in their case to leave Naval Air Station Fort Worth alone.

Looking for comments?