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An active example of joint aircraft maintenance, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, served as contractor for Navy and Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornet repairs. “It just makes good sense,” said the Chief of Naval Operations, in reference to such programs.
Purple-Suit Bases Are the Future
On 1 March, the Pentagon will deliver its final “hit list” of stateside military bases to a bipartisan commission, recommending that they be closed or realigned to chop billions of dollars off future defense budgets.
The impact of this round is expected to equal, at a minimum, the combined effect of three previous base-closing actions in 1988, 1991, and 1993. But this round will be extraordinary for another reason: it will brand “jointness” onto military infrastructure the way the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act did for military operations.
Likely to emerge will be scores of purple-suit support installations and facilities. Individual services will still “own” the bases, but they will become, in effect, multi-service. Thousands more service members from the Army and Marine Corps—or from the Navy and Air Force— could end up assigned to the same base, perhaps even working side by side, repairing equipment, training pilots, testing weapons, conducting experiments, and treating patients.
Tinker Air Force Base near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, provides a glimpse of the future for much of the military’s support structure. In 1992, the Navy moved its squadron of 16 E-6A communications aircraft to Tinker. The E-6 airframe is similar to that of the Air Force’s E-3 Airborne Warning and Control Squadron aircraft already based there. Each service shares the same runways, repair depots, training programs, labs, technical experts, and even security services.
“Not only don’t 1 have any trouble with that—I like it,” said Admiral Mike Boorda, Chief of Naval Operations, in a mid-November interview. “We have too much force structure in the military. The trouble has always been how to close it in a smart way.”
Boorda lauded early steps in this direction, including the decision by the 1993 Base Closing and Realignment Commission to co-locate Navy and Air Force Reserve units on what was formerly Carswell Air Force Base near Fort Worth, Texas. It might even be possible, Boorda said, to colocate Navy and Air Force training squadrons. “Another example: We’re looking hard at a joint depot for aircraft maintenance between us and the Air Force. ... If you’re going to fix brakes on airplanes, you can fix everybody’s brakes. . . . You end up saving money; you get synergism between services doing like kinds of things. It just makes good sense.”
Despite that sentiment from the top, officials more directly involved in getting service agreement on which facilities and installations to consolidate said it’s been no walk in the park. Consolidation is “very countercultural, no doubt about it,” said a senior Defense official involved in the base-closing process. “The services, frankly, (remain) a whole lot more comfortable providing support to their own service than relying on another service.”
The 1993 base-closing commission criticized the Pentagon for failing to recommend aggressive consolidation of support facilities. During the first three rounds of base closings, the services decided for themselves what bases they wanted to close, and they focused primarily on operational sites. Defense officials, in turn, embraced what the services recommended and passed the lists on to the commissions.
This time around, Defense officials worked closely with the services, serving as referees when needed to force compromise. “It’s pretty tough flogging,” said one senior service official by mid-November. “I don’t know how it’s going to come out. . . . We’re coming up against forces that say, ‘Hmmm, if I’m service B and can get service A’s work, then I will not have to
close any of my depots.’”
The Air Force, for example, wanted to save its underused air logistics center at McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento, California. One option discussed was to close the naval aviation depot at North Island in San Diego and to move that work to McClellan. But Navy officials—who gave up three of six aviation depots in 1993—suggested it was time for Air Force depots to take some hits.
These kinds of arguments were aired in five “joint crossservice groups” that Defense Secretary William Perry established last spring, one each for depots, test centers, laboratories, hospitals, and training bases. The groups developed alternatives for service secretaries to include in final recommendations to Perry by 1 January. Perry and his staff have two months to review the list before forwarding it to the 1995 Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission. The eight-member commission, chaired by Alan Dixon, a former Democratic senator from Illinois, will hold public hearings from March through June and send a final list to President Clinton by 1 July. The President will have two weeks to review and approve it, or send the list back for further work. Once it is approved by Clinton, Congress will have 45 days to reject the entire list, or the recommendations become law.
Both Perry and his deputy, John Deutch, told the services to eliminate as much excess capacity as possible, because this will be their last chance. At a minimum, the package will equal in “replacement value” the 70 major bases tapped for closure since 1988, but because depots are larger than the typical base, the actual number of installations on the 1995 list could be fewer than 70, a Defense official explained.
However tough the process, purple-suit support bases are on their way. “There is enough pressure of a financial crunch ahead that cultural considerations won’t prevail,” predicted the Defense official. “We’re going to be doing a lot more consolidation.”
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Proceedings / January 1995