Defense Communities 360 Headlines

The departure from the military for tens of thousands of service members over the next several years as part of DOD’s strategic shift to a smaller, more agile force will not be quite so abrupt due to two provisions in the final version of the fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill. One provision will reinstate a previous authority allowing service members who are involuntarily separated from the military to continue to live, along with their families, in military housing for up to six months …

The Defense Department will need to provide Congress 90 days’ notice before reducing the number of military personnel assigned to an installation by more than 1,000, under the final version of the fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill. The current statute, 10 U.S.C. Section 993, requires only a 21-day notice period before the department carries out a realignment of that magnitude …

Congress’ decision to stop the administration from going ahead with a number of budget-cutting initiatives could force future reductions in the size of the military, President Obama said in a statement released after he signed the fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill into law late Wednesday. Obama cited several provisions in the legislation limiting “the Defense Department’s ability to direct scarce resources towards the highest priorities for our national security,” including restrictions on the department’s ability to retire unneeded ships and aircraft …

Florida Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R) will remain chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the 113th Congress, after earning a waiver to Republican term limits for the second consecutive term. Texas Rep. John Culberson (R), chairman of the military construction and veterans affairs spending panel, also will continue to lead his subcommittee in the next Congress, the Appropriations Committee announced this week …

Colorado Springs, Colo., has launched a one-stop resource to help service members, veterans and their families find information about an array of services available in areas such as health care, housing, employment, education and legal services. The Peak Military Care Network, established as a six-month pilot program in November, allows people to learn about resources available in the Colorado Springs region and individual service providers to see what others are doing …

With new legislation allowing installations and local governments to share base support services expected to be signed into law, defense communities will have a brand new tool for partnering with the military. Communities perform many of the same functions and services as installations do, and, typically, can provide than more cheaply. The new authority would allow a variety of intergovernmental support agreements, including arrangements in which a community provides municipal services to a neighboring installation or for the military base to provide services to its host community …

Thousands of DOD civilians and contractors would be eliminated under a provision in the final version of the fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill calling for a reduction of about 5 percent in those workforces. The provision, section 955, directs the department to reduce the civilian and service contractor workforces from fiscal 2012 through FY 2017 to achieve at least the same amount of savings from planned cuts in military personnel …

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Wednesday praised lawmakers’ last-minute effort to undo the first two months of automatic spending cuts slated to go into effect at the beginning of the year, but underscored the need to provide the Pentagon with a greater degree of certainty as to how much funding it will have over the next nine months. “Congress has prevented the worst possible outcome by delaying sequestration for two months. Unfortunately, the cloud of sequestration remains …

House and Senate conferees preserved language limiting the pace at which the Pentagon can reduce the active-duty end strength of the Army and Marine Corps in the conference report for the fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill despite opposition to the provision from the Obama administration. The provision restricts the military from trimming the Army by more than 15,000 soldiers a year from FY 2014 through FY 2017, and the Marine Corps by more than 5,000 troops a year during that period …

House and Senate conferees to the fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill want to learn about past examples of public infrastructure projects supported by federal agencies that were needed to accommodate growth at a military installation. Lawmakers inserted language in the joint explanatory statement to the measure’s conference report requesting the Defense Department to list all such projects carried out since FY 2001 that were supported by federal agencies other than DOD …