Posts Tagged ‘BRAC’

Lawmakers offered several novel arguments against granting DOD’s request for a new BRAC round in 2015 while questioning top Pentagon officials during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, but ultimately all the members of the panel who addressed the issue voiced reasons to oppose additional base closures. There’s got to be a better way to close installations than the BRAC process, which upsets communities as soon as a new round is authorized, said Sen. Tim Kaine. “When BRAC is announced, what happens is that every community that has military assets, whether they’re ultimately going to be on the chopping block or not, they lawyer-up, they accountant-up, they public relations-up …

A plan to convert the former Fort Gillem, Ga., into a logistics hub serving Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and the Port of Savannah could be jeopardized unless state officials’ concerns about contamination from the post that has seeped into neighboring Forest Park are mollified. Earlier this year, the state asked the Environmental Protection Agency to consider making the installation a Superfund site, an action that would severely hamper the community’s reuse plan from going forward …

In a review of the impact of the growing number of privatization projects on military installations, the Government Accountability Office concluded that future base closure rounds would benefit from the Defense Department providing more comprehensive information about the potential costs created when DOD terminates project agreements with the private sector. The congressional watchdog agency found that the department likely would incur liabilities following a BRAC round for renewable energy and privatized utility projects on affected installations …

While senior officials for the Navy and Marine Corps acknowledged at a hearing Tuesday of the House Armed Services Committee that they don’t expect to eliminate much infrastructure if a BRAC round is launched in 2015, for the most part they did not go along with the ranking member’s ploy to convince his colleagues to authorize more base closures. Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) asked the witnesses if it would be accurate to characterize their needs in a future BRAC as making changes around the edges versus “closing huge, major bases in the middle …

One of about two dozen military command centers operated by North American Aerospace Defense Command during the Cold War is available to anyone interested in purchasing two windowless buildings in Cicero, N.Y. The SAGE — Semi-Automated Ground Environment — complex at the former Hancock Air Force Base has 175,000 square feet of space and is being offered for $895,000, reports the Post-Standard. The buildings — which have two-foot-thick reinforced concrete walls and one-foot-thick concrete floors — were originally used to track Soviet bombers and assign jets and missiles to intercept them. After the military closed the complex in 2001, the General Services Administration disposed of it. The property now is part of Hancock Airpark, an industrial park being developed by a local economic development entity.

The top officials for the Navy and Marine Corps told lawmakers Tuesday that they do not expect to cut much spare capacity if a new base closure round goes ahead in 2015. “We in the Navy have taken previous BRAC rounds very seriously,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told the House Armed Services Committee. “We’ve shed most of our duplicative and overlapping bases and services …

The chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee said they oppose the Pentagon’s request to conduct a round of base closures in 2015, a stance which presents a formidable barrier to the Pentagon’s pursuit of a new BRAC round. Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin last week said he would not support DOD’s request, continuing his opposition from last year. On Tuesday, though, Levin added that he didn’t believe DOD was serious about its request because it failed to include any funds in next year’s budget to carry out a BRAC round …

Plenty of questions remain for the Fort Monroe Authority after the Army last month unexpectedly said it was ready to transfer 313 acres of the historic post located on the Virginia shore of the Chesapeake Bay to the LRA. For one, what will happen if the governor’s office does not accept the parcel from the Army? The attorney general’s office is reviewing the Army’s quitclaim deed …

An agreement for the state-supported China Development Bank to invest $1.7 billion in the redevelopment of two former Navy bases in San Francisco, Treasure Island and Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, has collapsed amid demands by the Chinese for more control over the projects than Lennar Corp. was willing to hand over. Lennar had reached a tentative deal with the Chinese bank last year to finance construction of thousands of homes and offices at the two sites …

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, said at a hearing Friday that he is a “strong supporter” of another round of BRAC, making him the rare lawmaker who has publicly backed the Pentagon’s request to hold a new round in 2015. DOD needs to pare down its infrastructure following a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and to adjust to a drop in defense spending, Smith said during a committee hearing on the Air Force’s fiscal 2014 budget request …