Military Bases Are Under Review

By Harry Levins

ST. ROBERT, Mo. - A year from May, the Pentagon will post a list of military bases it wants to close. And already, the prospect of the ax's falling is troubling many military communities, like St. Clair County, the home of Scott Air Force Base.

But around Fort Leonard Wood, civic boosters see a bright side - the chance to grow the Army post even more.

They say Fort Leonard Wood has unique plusses that could attract military activities now based elsewhere.

The boosters are reluctant to pinpoint just which posts could lose people (and jobs, and money) to Missouri. But speculation centers on Fort Gordon, Ga., and Fort Huachuca, Ariz.

Each of those posts has minuses that line up opposite the plusses of Fort Leonard Wood, or so the thinking goes.

The biggest plus at Fort Leonard Wood is colored purple.

"Been there, done that"

If you blended the uniform colors of all four armed forces (plus the Coast Guard), the resulting color would be purple.

And "purple" is the military buzzword for jointness - for mixing and matching the armed forces across institutional lines. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld holds that when the services set aside old rivalries and pull together, they can win wars in a rush. Although Fort Leonard Wood belongs to the Army, the fast-food lines at the post's Burger King are salted liberally with Marines, airmen and sailors. They come to the post for training in its specialties - engineering, military police and chemical defense. Out of every 100 military people on the post, about 15 wear uniforms other than Army green.

"Fort Leonard Wood is big on jointness," says Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., whose district includes the post.

In a telephone interview, he said, "In today's military world, seldom does one service alone do a mission. The services have to work together, hand in glove.

They have to understand the culture and language of one another if they're going to fight together. Jointness is a huge advantage."

Joseph L. Driskill heads the quasi-public Missouri Technology Corp. and until recently headed the state's Economic Development Department. He says: "Bases that have practiced integration seem to be where the military wants to go."

Driskill joined a group of development experts last week in a session to spell out Fort Leonard Wood's advantages. His praise for the post's jointness drew a second from Robert A. Sickler of the Rolla-based Missouri Enterprise Business Assistance Center, a nonprofit group that fosters and aids businesses.

"A joint attitude already exists here," Sickler said. "It's very tough to establish a 'purple culture' where one didn't exist before."

And boosters of Fort Leonard Wood note that in addition to serving as a big basic training center, the post has a wealth of experience as a schoolhouse - a three-school schoolhouse.

"Fort Leonard Wood has pioneered the multi-school 'university' environment," said Ron Selfors, executive director of the three-county Fort Leonard Wood Regional Commerce and Growth Association.

He noted that in a previous base-cutting round, the post picked up the Chemical and Military Police schools from Fort McClellan, Ala. "Down there, the two schools did little together," he said. "Here, they take advantage of what they - and the Engineer School - do in common. It's a university campus, not a college campus."

Selfors ticked off two other big plusses for Fort Leonard Wood:

"First, we have no encroachment problems" - no subdivisions bumping up against the post's boundary, with residents griping about the military mess and noise.

The reason: Most of Fort Leonard Wood abuts the Mark Twain National Forest.

"And second," Selfors said, "we have no environmental problems" - no water fouling, no endangered species.

Sickler adds a third: community enthusiasm. He said, "Before the Engineer School came here, the attitude was, 'Do we want growth to happen?' Now they're saying, 'Make it happen.'"

In a phone interview, developer Randy Brecht of Brecht Properties conceded that in the BRAC round of 1988, when Fort Leonard Wood won the Engineer School from Fort Belvoir, Va., the region was ill-prepared to absorb the influx.

But having sopped up the Military Police and Chemical schools after the 1995 round, Brecht said, "We're truly prepared for any expansion. We've been there, done that."

True, Fort Leonard Wood has a few drawbacks. For one thing, getting there by air is an adventure in puddle-jumping turboprops. But other posts have more dramatic drawbacks.

One-room schoolhouses

The base-closing process - officially, it's called Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC - begins in the Pentagon, where a panel draws up a list of candidates for closing.

But the process ends in the White House and then in Congress, each of which gives the list a yes or no.

"It's a political process," said the RCGA's Selfors. "There are going to be winners and losers."

Down in Georgia, some people worry that politics may make Fort Gordon a loser. In the four rounds of closings since 1988, Georgia's 13 bases have remained unscathed. But back then, Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn headed the Senate Armed Services Committee. And in the last round, in 1995, Georgia Rep. Newt Gingrich was speaker of the House.

Now, Nunn and Gingrich are gone. And now, several Georgia politicians have been quoted as saying that Georgia's bases may be fair game, with Fort Gordon out in front.

Like Fort Leonard Wood, Fort Gordon is largely a schoolhouse post. But it's a one-room schoolhouse, offering only a single course - signal training. And the post shows less purple than Fort Leonard Wood.

At the Augusta, Ga., Chamber of Commerce, Thom E. Tuckey has heard the rumors. But he says he's losing no sleep.

"Fort Gordon has no encroachment problems and no environmental problems," says Tuckey, a retired Army colonel who's the chamber's director of military affairs. "We're not in a panic mode. We have a plan, we're executing it and we feel quite comfortable."

In a phone interview, Tuckey said, "Augusta is engaged. BRAC isn't front-page news, but the Augusta Chronicle has stories at least once a week."

In one of those articles, last Feb. 14, the Chronicle quoted Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., as saying, "I promise you there are going to be people from Carolina and New Hampshire who think it's our turn" to lose a base or two.

In Arizona, the threat of closure gets a lot of ink in the pages of the Sierra Vista Herald, which covers nearby Fort Huachuca (pronounced wah-CHOO-kah).

Like Fort Gordon, the Arizona post is a one-room schoolhouse, teaching only military intelligence. Unlike Fort Gordon, the Arizona post has barely a trace of purple. And its fate is clouded by three other problems: Growth in the area is draining the San Pedro River, the region's water source.

Last year, voters said "no" to more education money, shutting down several programs in the schools that soldiers' children attend.

A cluster of at least a dozen leukemia cases has afflicted the area.

At the Sierra Vista Chamber of Commerce, executive director Susan Tegmeyer says the community is going all out to hang on to Fort Huachuca.

"Two years ago," she said in a phone interview, "the community set up several task forces. They're addressing employment, education, quality of life, the environment, security, housing - all the things the BRAC panel considers."

She said, "Yes, we live in a desert, but we're on the cutting edge of water conservation."

And on the plus side, she said, because so much of the post is desert, "there's no problem of encroachment."

The Missourians boosting Fort Leonard shy away from talking about Fort Huachuca or Fort Gordon by name, apparently for reasons of political tact.

Indeed, in a telephone interview from his congressional office, Skelton insisted that he had heard no rumors about those two posts - even though he's the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

Rick Prugh of Missouri Enterprise said, "We don't have our eyes on any particular post. We're saying it makes sense for certain missions to be here."

But two of those missions just happen to be at Fort Gordon and Fort Huachuca.

"This place makes sense"

Missouri Enterprise's Sickler said, "Any mission that's in first-echelon support of the

warfighter would be a candidate. After all, that's what they're doing at Fort Leonard

Wood today."

Some definitions: Warfighters are the combat arms - the infantrymen, tankers and artillerymen in contact with the enemy.

First-echelon support people travel with the warfighters, or just behind them.

The support soldiers handle such tasks as mine clearance (the engineers), security (the

military police) and defense against unconventional weapons (the chemical specialists).

But the first-echelon list could also include two more missions - communications (the signal specialists at Fort Gordon) and intelligence (the analysts at Fort Huachuca).

In an effort to stave off the BRAC ax, boosters of the posts in Georgia and

Arizona have hired consultants. So have the Missourians. But because the

Missourians seem confident (if silently so) that Fort Leonard Wood is safe, their consultant is talking about expanding Fort Leonard Wood, not defending it.

Do such efforts pay off?

Sickler said, "The BRAC people listen to lobbying efforts, and then they do what they think is best. In the previous BRAC, Missouri put forth a conservative effort for Fort Leonard Wood, while Alabama put forth a tremendous effort for Fort McClellan - and it didn't work."

Missouri's consultant is a Washington outfit called Birdeshaw Associates. It wrote a report whose findings are being closely held, although they are said to include a notation that Fort Gordon and Fort Huachuca could be vulnerable.

"We're hesitant to speak specifics," said Driskill, who was heading the

Economic Development Department when it commissioned the report.

"But we can produce a joint voice in Washington to make sure our message is received loud and clear, especially from Ike Skelton."

That message: "This place makes sense, now and in the future."