Next Round Of Base Closures

I been involved in BRAC since the 1991 round. There is no "list" although
the output of one Carlton Meyer, former USMC captain and "editor" for his
vanity military affairs web site has published one. It's been circulated as
real by a number of sources, including a civilian type in SecNav's office
who should know better. An urban legend second only to the Jane Fonda one
that rears its ugly head every few months.

That said, former players in the BRAC process are positioning themselves to
be consultants/resident experts/etc to assist in the coming round. These
individuals are experienced with the process, but I'm not so sure they can
abandon their former prejudices and view points in favor of the Revolution
in Military Affairs that has occurred since. Nor were they particularly
knowledgeable about the missions they were tasked to evaluate.

Theoretically, BRAC 2005 should be a blank sheet effort, emphasizing
jointness and contribution to current and emerging missions. Bu there are
some challenges to those who actually do the dirty work. While it's been
argued that infrastructure, training and support facilities have not been
reduced concomitantly with the force, there's no evidence to support a
purely linear relationship between force and support structure. (There's
quite a bit to suggest it is nonlinear.) Is the relationship one of
infrastructure to force or infrastructure to mission ... more likely a
combination of the two ... and how do you model that to determine accurately
what infrastructure can be dismantled?

Current mission requirements exceed those of the cold war, yet the force is
roughly 60% of the cold war armed services. What is the impact of that
operational tempo on factors that will ultimately be reflected in the
support infrastructure (training facilities versus retention). The Navy and
Marine Corps are currently proposing a buy of F-18E/F and F-35B/C that will
result in a number of aircraft well below current planning numbers (the
bucks just aren't there). The counterweight is to operate them at a
significantly higher rate and make that happen with more maintenance,
logistics, pilots, etc than the raw numbers would suggest (per current
planning data). The problem with that is will those support bucks
materialize? Will the manning levels (from wrench benders to pilots) be
raised to a higher ratio per aircraft to reflect the higher aircraft
utilization?

What are the BRAC implications of the envisioned 21st century force. Can we
safely plan on emerging technologies and abandon existing ones with regard
to support structure when we really don't know which ones will replace
existing capabilities, which will only augment them (to what degree?) and
which will flat-ass fail?

The shortcomings of past BRAC evaluations have generally been in an
inability to match apparent excesses and potential closures with the sites
that had the excesses. IE: The Navy determined it had 21% excess capacity
in air training. The excess ... illusory IMO ... existed largely in primary
training (small propeller aircraft). The solution: close a strike (jet
aircraft) training base.

One can hope that BRAC 2005 will be infused with the wisdom of Solomon ...
but that's not the best bet.

There's no list ... but you're on it!

R / John

"Slapshot" wrote in message
news:G7L_b.305$3X2.34@okepread04...
Any info online regarding potential bases to get the axe? Are there any
"foregone" conclusions? Would be interesting to see a list somewhere of
potential targets for closure.

Paul