BRAC List

[Airbornelawyer]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Eglin has lots of ranges to support a variety of AF weapons.

How many multi-level 360 degree shoot houses do you think they have suitable for SFAUC training?

I think that you are right on the support. Easy way for the AF to obtain an SFG of their own at no real cost.

TR

As I recall, a couple of years ago the Marine Corps had proposed building a major MOUT and antiterrorism joint training center at Eglin, but I don't know what became of that.

Besides building new facilities, with all those planes nearby, it ought not be hard to fly to existing MOUT facilities at Forts Bragg, Benning, Polk and Stewart and Camp Blanding, FL (where I went to summer camp as a kid). The nearest SFAUC facility is 20th Group's at Fort McClellan, which is about 250 miles north of Eglin.

[The Reaper]

Originally Posted by Airbornelawyer

As I recall, a couple of years ago the Marine Corps had proposed building a major MOUT and antiterrorism joint training center at Eglin, but I don't know what became of that.

Besides building new facilities, with all those planes nearby, it ought not be hard to fly to existing MOUT facilities at Forts Bragg, Benning, Polk and Stewart and Camp Blanding, FL (where I went to summer camp as a kid). The nearest SFAUC facility is 20th Group's at Fort McClellan, which is about 250 miles north of Eglin.

Eglin itself is a fighter base, not a transport base.

As far as Spec Ops aircraft availability goes, generally, the AF (and ARSOA) makes few if any lift hours available to white SF. Why would they fly to Bragg for 7th Group?

There goes the walk-ins for SWCS courses, and support for SWCS as well. Few strap hanging opportunities for jumps either. Of course, with Pope realigned, who knows what that will do for airborne ops.

Camp Blanding would be a decent MOUT option, but having worked trying to support a SF unit in an area with limited facilities, I would say that there are a ton of reasons not to do it, and few other than Jointness to do so.

BTW, wait till the 4th Brigade tries to move into the 7th SFGA area and finds each company gets one small set of four offices, six 12 man team rooms, a 20 man classroom, and a supply room. No barracks spaces.

It occurs to me that the BRAC Commission likely knew little about tenant units and their requirements other than personnel numbers.

TR

[lksteve]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Actually, Hawthorne is pretty neat.

ssshhhh...i actually like it around there...just hope the C*lif*rnians don't find it...

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Great place for practicing high angle shooting, as LR 1947 can attest.

in my mind, while lacking a WalMart, Starbucks and other amenities of contemporary civilization, it would be a hell of a place to soldier...nothing for miles and miles, but miles and miles..

Originally Posted by The Reaper

The thing that concerns me is that in consideration of a small savings over time, and a large expense in cleaning up and returning bases, we lose the ability to expand in the event of a major future requirement.

well, it seems our politicos are smug in the fact that DS, OEF, OIF and others have been handled without having to cancel a World Series, Stanley Cup (the sports did that themselves), we're not rationing aspartame, sugar or gasoline at home and for the most part, all of these endeavors haven't really disrupted life in suburbia...

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Can you imagine having to buy land for and build bases today like we did in WW II? The environmental impact studies alone would take forever.

three years for a minor subdivision...probably 103 years for a military installation...land values in western NV and eastern CA have doubled in the last 5 years...160 acres, fair market value, runs around $1M...you'd need probably 2560 acres for a DZ the size of Sicily, so thats $16M...an artillery impact area could be a real problem...

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Finally, we further concentrate our resources in fewer and fewer baskets, making targeting much easier for those who would oppose us.

this is the part that strikes me as shear lunacy...idiotic, almost...almost as idiotic as the "peace dividend" we derived from ending the Cold War...do you recall the White Paper circulated by DoD around Summer of 1992 identifying defense priorities for the coming years? wish i still had that lying around somewhere...unfortunately, it doesn't reflect well on our politicians ability to prepare for the future...i wonder if anyone ever thought about that? let's close down all but four or five Army posts, leave the same number of Air Force bases and a couple of Naval Yards...Pearl Harbor ring a bell top these schmucks?

Originally Posted by The Reaper

I would favor mothballing and realigning bases, with no closure. That preserves the resources, removes the cost of clean-ups, and allows for a return if future requirements arise.

this reasoning has to be fundamentally flawed...i am in complete agreement with it...

[BMT (RIP)]

Anyone see the CSA hand in any of these moves??



BMT

[Airbornelawyer]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Eglin itself is a fighter base, not a transport base.

As far as Spec Ops aircraft availability goes, generally, the AF (and ARSOA) makes few if any lift hours available to white SF. Why would they fly to Bragg for 7th Group?

There goes the walk-ins for SWCS courses, and support for SWCS as well. Few strap hanging opportunities for jumps either. Of course, with Pope realigned, who knows what that will do for airborne ops.

Camp Blanding would be a decent MOUT option, but having worked trying to support a SF unit in an area with limited facilities, I would say that there are a ton of reasons not to do it, and few other than Jointness to do so.

BTW, wait till the 4th Brigade tries to move into the 7th SFGA area and finds each company gets one small set of four offices, six 12 man team rooms, a 20 man classroom, and a supply room. No barracks spaces.

It occurs to me that the BRAC Commission likely knew little about tenant units and their requirements other than personnel numbers.

TR

In terms of transport, I wasn't thinking of Eglin, but Hurlburt. Moving SOF assets for them would be mission training, so a good working relationship could reap benefits. Also, there is fairly routine back and forth traffic between Eglin and Benning moving Ranger students. You also have regular Army aviation assets nearby at Fort Rucker.

And even using ground transport, it's a 4 to 5 hour drive to Ft. McClellan's SFAUC facility and about the same to Benning's McKenna MOUT site. Benning also has 3rd Ranger Battalion's facilities and RTB, as well as mechanized forces and the airborne school. From an SOF standpoint, it's probably good to be near Benning without being on Benning, subject to the infantry (and now armor) community's whims.

I'm trying to look at it from a glass half-full perspective: what opportunities you might gain, versus the obvious ones you lose.

A couple more items for the ledger:

- Eglin is a short hop from the Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center in Panama City.
- In North Carolina, state income tax rates are 6.0% to 8.25%. In Florida, they are zero.

[BMT (RIP)]

Sometime in '71 the 7th Gp. sent a Co. to Eglin. Iwas coordinating all off post training for the Gp. I told the Co. S-3 he should let his SCUBA teams pay a visit to Panama City.

The teams spent the entire time at PC using the Navy's new equipment. A lot of work with the SDV's. Both the Navy and the teams were in HOG HEAVEN.

BMT

[The Reaper]

Originally Posted by Airbornelawyer

In terms of transport, I wasn't thinking of Eglin, but Hurlburt. Moving SOF assets for them would be mission training, so a good working relationship could reap benefits. Also, there is fairly routine back and forth traffic between Eglin and Benning moving Ranger students. You also have regular Army aviation assets nearby at Fort Rucker.

And even using ground transport, it's a 4 to 5 hour drive to Ft. McClellan's SFAUC facility and about the same to Benning's McKenna MOUT site. Benning also has 3rd Ranger Battalion's facilities and RTB, as well as mechanized forces and the airborne school. From an SOF standpoint, it's probably good to be near Benning without being on Benning, subject to the infantry (and now armor) community's whims.

I'm trying to look at it from a glass half-full perspective: what opportunities you might gain, versus the obvious ones you lose.

A couple more items for the ledger:

- Eglin is a short hop from the Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center in Panama City.
- In North Carolina, state income tax rates are 6.0% to 8.25%. In Florida, they are zero.

The only lift at Hurlburt is MC-130s and MH-53s.

Neither apportion blade hours for SF.

SF also does not have a priority on Benning resources (or Eglin's). Get in the back of the line, dudes.

4-5 hour drive to train means you do not do it as often as when it is 30 minutes away, and your proficiency/readiness suffers. I saw it in PR. Do the special units have to drive 4 hours to a range? No, they have them on site, in their cantonment areas.

Florida property taxes are killer compared to NC. The revenue has to come from somewhere. I know, I have paid both.

Well, the SCUBA teams should be happy.

I have spent some long deployments at Eglin/Hurlburt/Duke/Rudder. This is a bad idea. I hope that someone important realizes that, and it fails.

TR

[Razor]

Originally Posted by Airbornelawyer

Also, there is fairly routine back and forth traffic between Eglin and Benning moving Ranger students.

Yeah, I seem to remember parts of that bus ride, between naps that is.

[CommoGeek]

Trying to find the silver lining (hard for a cynic like me):

Camp Blanding's MOUT is underused despite have a NG SF BN (-) within hours. The range is run by ignoramuses though. Blanding can host up to a BDE and has plenty of range space. Constructing additional training areas for 7th or other units can be done, it is a question of time and money. You’d like to think that the infrastructure will be there for 7th when they show up; the reality is that they won’t.

One of Blanding’s shortcomings is a lack of a fixed wing strip. Keystone Airpark is within a 15-minute drive and is C-130 capable. I do not know about C-17’s. You have 1 DZ, 1 water DZ, and 1 FLS.

Placing 7th and 20th close to one another is good in that respect, but what does 7 gain by this change?

Not a damn thing.

The AFSOC units at Hurlburt are also heavily tasked by the GWOT (who isn't?) so getting blade time from them will prove to be difficult.

Maybe I wasn't that optimistic after all.....

[lrd]

Mr. Galloway's take: http://www.freep.com/voices/columnis...e_20050513.htm

[Airbornelawyer]

Originally Posted by Razor

Yeah, I seem to remember parts of that bus ride, between naps that is.

As long as it wasn't the short bus.

[lksteve]

Originally Posted by Razor

Yeah, I seem to remember parts of that bus ride, between naps that is.

glad someone does...

unless Hurlburt got built up big-time and no one bothered to tell me about it, how much is it going to cost to construct barracks, office space and training areas? all i remember about Hurlburt is that it was close to the swamps of the Yellow River, there were pygmy rattlesnakes everywhere, no PX, no commissary, Eglin was a long way from anywhere and it was a great place for the last phase of Ranger training only because they had to have it somewhere...

Destin was nice, being the hub of the Redneck Riviera and all...

[lrd]

"BRAC to change military medicine operations"

http://www.dcmilitary.com/navy/teste...s/34936-1.html

[BMT (RIP)]

May 22, 2005
Unwarranted Complaints About New Base Closures
By Steve Chapman

It's officially called the Department of Defense, but to many politicians, the label misstates its function. Judging from their reaction to proposed base closures, they'd like to rename it the Department of Jobs, Pork, Community Uplift and Incumbent Protection. That way, no one would get distracted by the petty business of protecting America.

Recently, the Pentagon released a list of proposed realignments in U.S. military facilities, from Maine to Hawaii. The plan calls for shutting 33 major installations and shrinking 29 more, which would streamline operations and save nearly $50 billion over the next 20 years.

But elected officials representing areas that would be adversely affected showed little interest in whether the changes would reduce costs, improve operations or cure cancer. They preferred to focus on the overriding issue: their states or districts would lose federal jobs and dollars that they assumed to be a birthright.

From Capitol Hill came piteous lamentations and promises to resist. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said he and others in the state's congressional delegation would "push every single button we can to get the right decision." Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, accused the Pentagon of deciding "to dramatically neglect the northeastern United States." Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., said the proposed closure of a submarine base in his state "is cruel and unusual punishment that Connecticut does not deserve and our national security cannot afford."

But if Connecticut doesn't deserve it, two questions arise: 1) What state does? and 2) Who cares? This is not a task on the order of cutting a birthday cake for 6-year-olds, where fairness demands that everyone get an equal share. Fairness should be irrelevant when it comes to national defense.

Suspicions arose that politics, not security, may have determined which states get the shaft. But if the administration is trying to reward its friends and punish its enemies, it's going about it in a strange way. True, Texas would gain jobs in the realignment -- but not as many as Maryland, a true-blue state with two Democratic senators that President Bush lost by 13 percentage points in 2004. Massachusetts, home of John Kerry, also came out ahead.

Plenty of people in Republican states must be wondering what happened to the spoils of victory. Alaska, which is more consistently Republican than the Bush family, would lose more than 4,600 jobs. Red states like Mississippi, Kentucky and North Carolina are among those slated for sizable job cuts.

Missouri, which twice went for Bush, would be one of the big losers. Residents may be reflecting on the insight of their own Mark Twain, who wrote, "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."

Last year, Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist went to South Dakota and pledged to use his influence to save Ellsworth Air Force Base if voters would replace his Democratic counterpart, Tom Daschle, with Republican John Thune. South Dakotans did as requested. But when the closure list came out, Ellsworth was on it.

Last year, Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist went to South Dakota and pledged to use his influence to save Ellsworth Air Force Base if voters would replace his Democratic counterpart, Tom Daschle, with Republican John Thune. South Dakotans did as requested. But when the closure list came out, Ellsworth was on it.

It would be too much to expect politicians to defer to the expertise of the Pentagon. But it shouldn't be too much for them to hold their fire until they hear why the department made the recommendations it did, instead of rushing to the microphones to spew denunciations. It would also have been refreshing to hear even one member of Congress say that her constituents would stoically accept these sacrifices in the interest of national security. Instead, 11 senators, led by Thune, are co-sponsoring a bill to delay the entire round of closures.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, national security is what the base-closing process is about. Contrary to the prevailing impression on Capitol Hill, the only criterion is whether the changes will make us safer while economizing tax dollars.

If the plan achieves that goal, it will be an excellent thing for all Americans -- something most of them probably know, despite what their elected representatives say. Even in the dramatically neglected northeastern United States, I suspect, staying alive is the highest priority.