Posts Tagged ‘mission support/community partnerships’

The Air Force on Thursday released its plan to carry out the force structure changes mandated by the fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill. The changes primarily reflect the compromise plan for eliminating and retiring aircraft from the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve that the Air Force proposed last November after lawmakers and governors rejected the service’s original proposal for scaling down its force structure …

The Federal Aviation Administration has received 50 applications from 37 states for its nationwide competition to select six research and test sites for integrating unmanned aircraft systems with manned aircraft. Some states have pooled their resources with neighbors, including Ohio and Indiana, for example …

Civilian workers, particularly the newest ones, at Watervliet Arsenal in Upstate New York worry about how they will make ends meet in the face of furloughs which could eliminate up to 20 percent of their pay over the last six months of the fiscal year. The workforce at Watervliet Arsenal, which was designated a center of industrial and technical excellence for cannon and mortar manufacturing in January, has an average hourly wage of less than $28 …

The Montana House on Wednesday approved a measure to establish a statewide task force to prepare the state for a future BRAC round. The bill, which now goes to the state Senate, would create a “military strategic and economic impact task force,” reported the Great Falls Tribune. HB 579 would provide the task force $163,000 in annual funding through June 30, 2015, for administration and $250,000 to conduct a study of the military’s economic impact in Montana …

The 21st Century Partnership, the community partner for Robins Air Force Base, Ga., has commissioned a series of 15 studies for $175,000 to assess how the installation compares to 12 other service depots as part of its effort to prepare for a future BRAC round. The Middle Georgia Regional Commission is conducting the studies, which will evaluate Robins’ strengths and weaknesses on 15 different military and community factors, including education, encroachment and economic impact …

The Virginia governor’s office has hired an Alexandria, Va.-based consulting firm to review the state’s military installations for possible vulnerabilities in a future BRAC round, the second of two recent actions the state has taken to preserve military missions located throughout Virginia. The Spectrum Group will visit each of the state’s installations and develop a closure risk assessment for each …

A group of nine counties and cities in New Mexico and Texas have formed a regional planning organization to conduct a joint land use study that will identify potential land use conflicts that could interfere with the missions at White Sands Missile Range, Holloman Air Force Base and Fort Bliss. The study covers a large swath of south central New Mexico and the western-most tip of Texas as the three installations encompass more than 3.4 million acres with restricted airspace spanning nearly 10,000 square miles …

Army Environmental Command received thousands of responses to its assessment of the service’s plan to trim its active duty end strength from 562,000 to 490,000 by fiscal 2020 before the public comment period ended last week. “We get about 200 comments a day,” spokeswoman Cathy Kropp told the Ledger-Enquirer. “We are getting boxes in the mail.” As of last week, the installations receiving the most comments were Fort Polk, La.; Fort Benning, Ga.; Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.; and Fort Carson, Colo. …

One month after approving a request to rezone land for a residential subdivision that the Navy said could threaten its use of Fentress Naval Auxiliary Field, the Chesapeake, Va., City Council this week reversed itself and voted against rezoning the site that is located about two-and-a-half miles from the airfield. The city council’s original vote ignored repeated appeals from the Navy and violated an agreement Chesapeake and Virginia Beach made with the Navy after the 2005 round of base closures to limit development near the two facilities, reported the Virginian-Pilot …

The Pennsylvania Air National Guard’s 111th Fighter Wing, located at Horsham Air Guard Station, will take on ground control for the MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial system starting Oct. 1, officials announced Wednesday. The new mission for the 111th helps make up for the loss of the unit’s A-10 fighter jets, which were realigned following the 2005 round of base closures. The wing will add a total of 250 military and civilian jobs, including about 75 full-time jobs, reported the Morning Call. Sequestration could delay the new mission from going ahead, though, as the base currently has a hiring freeze, said a spokesman. The Air Guard station is located at the former Naval Air Station Willow Grove in suburban Philadelphia.