As the budget shrinks and because the active Army draws all the way down to 490,000, elimination of excess infrastructure is required, say leaders from Army Installations, Housing & Partnerships.
There are many of spaces and facilities at installations during the U.S. that aren’t being utilized or are only partially utilized, said Paul Cramer, deputy assistant secretary for Installations, Housing & Partnerships, or IHP.
Yet by law, he said, the military is needed to take care of those facilities.
So the Army’s recommendation to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which is called OSD, and Congress is that a brand new round of BRAC — base realignment and closure — is required for 2017, he said.
The Army is finalizing its database on infrastructure status and may give its findings to OSD, he said. In turn, OSD will present the Army’s recommendations — along side those of different services to Congress within the sort of draft legislation, probably by April.
IHP provides policy, programing and oversight of the secretary of the military’s Title 10 responsibilities in real estate, military construction, housing, engineering and BRAC. The agency reports to Katherine Hammack, assistant secretary of the military for Installations, Energy and Environment.
If Congress authorizes another BRAC round, the Army would develop an extended-term force structure plan, said Andy Napoli, assistant for BRAC, IHP. For the last round of BRAC, in 2005, the military provided a 20-year plan, he said.
While there’s various discuss Army end strength taking place even further than 490,000 and with the budget in a state of flux, Napoli said the military can nonetheless provide a correct forecast model by plugging in any force structure figures, dollar amounts and infrastructure status.
“You must know where you’re firstly, that allows you to know where you must be,” he said, describing the method they’re now finalizing.
SMART REDUCTIONS
Napoli said IEE wants for each Army installation for use at one hundred pc. a brand new BRAC round shouldn’t be done in piecemeal, shaving infrastructure from each installation to balance the reductions. Rather, it’d be more prudent in relation to management and readiness to near underutilized installations and consolidate the rest.
Napoli explained that reducing the infrastructure and manpower of an installation by, say, 20 percent, wouldn’t benefit the community outside the gate. That 20 percent reduction would have a ripple effect in the neighborhood , with losses in revenues for hotels, fast food, real estate and so forth.
If a community doesn’t join a BRAC closure, they’d be locking themselves in to that 20 percent or whatever cut is made, he said, and so they wouldn’t have a say in how the land or structures are reutilized.
On the opposite hand, if a facility were slated to shut under BRAC, the community would, by law, have a say in how the land and facilities are reutilized, he continued.
“We think there’s a controversy to be made that there’s goodness for all communities to be in at the BRAC talks process,” Napoli said.
Cramer said there are examples of communities “that fought BRAC 2005 and now say it was the right thing that happened” to them.
He cited a lot of installations including Port San Antonio, Texas; Fort Ord, Calif.; and Fort Monmouth, N.J., that were turned over to the community which redeveloped the land and structures commercially with subsequent benefits in employment and tax revenue.
Napoli added that the Reserve Component, particularly the National Guard, has expressed some interest in a future round of BRAC.
In BRAC 2005, he said, a limited variety of states decided to come back onboard. Consequently, they discovered cost savings and other efficiencies by consolidating smaller armories into larger ones near population centers.
States not participating in BRAC 2005 saw that and now they too would like to get in at the benefits, he said.
NEW BRAC NOT SAME AS OLD
The proposed BRAC 2017 wouldn’t resemble the BRAC 2005 round, Napoli said. For one, BRAC 2005 was dearer than other rounds before it because force structure on the time was increasing because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Secondly, installations in Korea and Germany were being turned over to the host countries and tens of thousands of Soldiers were returning to the U.S. and more spaces were needed for them.
Third, BRAC 2005 was extensively utilized as a device to transform the military from a chilly War legacy force to a trendy, more easily deployable modular brigade combat team structure.
Even with those cost increases, Napoli said the military is realizing greater than one thousand million dollars of savings a year due to BRAC 2005. “That’s not a trifling return on investment.”
Napoli and Cramer both said BRAC 2017 won’t have those three variables in play and that even greater cost savings and efficiencies will be realized.
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