Closing Time

In a briefing with reporters today, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said that unlike the last time around, the service likely will have to close bases if Congress goes ahead with a new base realignment and closure round, as requested by the Obama administration. The last BRAC round, in 2005, resulted in “a multitude of realignments” but no base closures, Schwartz said, and the service's excess infrastructure has only grown since then.

“There are estimates in that era that our infrastructure, we had excess infrastructure in the neighborhood of 20 percent,” he said. “Since 2005, our inventory of aircraft, for example, has declined in the neighborhood of 500 aircraft, and so the presumption is -- and I think it's a fair presumption -- is that there is yet more excess infrastructure. So indeed, we certainly support the proposal to go through another round of base closure analysis and execution.”

Budget documents released by the Pentagon yesterday indicate that the Defense Department intends to ask lawmakers for back-to-back BRAC rounds this decade, with the first in 2013 and the next in 2015. Many members of Congress immediately released statements detailing their opposition to base closures, which would negatively affect some congressional districts.