White House threatening Sen. Nelson with military base closures

The Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process is supposed to save the Department of Defense money by closing older or under-utilized facilities. The BRAC is supposed to be an objective look but often turns into a very political process. As politics overcomes other considerations, closures rarely accomplish the intended goal of trimming excess capacity and instead becomes affirmation of political clout. The question no one is asking, where are the savings from the BRAC 2005 recommendations? For those not familiar with the last round of closures, many Air National Guard units were identified for closure or re-missioning. Had the recommendations been followed to the letter, the original recommendations would have left some states without any ANG flying units. The ANG can operate their units for less money than active duty units as the ratio of full-time personnel in the ANG is much smaller. However, BRAC criteria was created to show ANG bases as being seized too small to handle new missions. Interesting as ANG bases were by law required to occupy no more space than necessary to operate their respective mission. The real reason for the BRAC? The military, and the USAF in particular, had maintained such a high operational rate that aircraft were being flown into the boneyard. The solution? Use the BRAC to cull newer airframes from the ANG and Reserves and bring those tails into the active inventory. Not true? Look at where the former tails numbers of ANG F-16 and C-130 aircraft went.

The history lesson was to show how even more outrageous this story of Rahm Emmanuel threatening a Nebraska senator with closing Offutt Air Force base. The last BRAC was supposed to have eliminated excess capacity, why do we need another round of closures when we still have forces deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan with the very real possibility of Iran becoming more aggressive in the future? We need bases to train and stage our military, closing any more bases at this time is more about the politics and not saving money.

Source: White House threatening Sen. Nelson with military base closures in Neb. | Washington Examiner

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