Will Hawai’i get a chance to convert military bases to more sustainable alternatives? If defense budget cuts lead to base closures and conversions of excess installations in Hawai’i, we may have a rare opportunity to recover more military occupied lands and facilities. The Air Force Times reported that Secretary of Defense Panetta will request two rounds of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Act closures:
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is expected to request, as early as tomorrow, two new rounds of military base closures in the United States as part of the Pentagon budget-cutting process, according to defense sources.
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To close or consolidate military bases in the United States requires legislation from Congress to create a bipartisan Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC), which then studies the problem and makes recommendations to the president and the defense secretary.
The last round of BRAC took place in 2005 and the changes it implemented were only completed in this past fall.
The Army may face the biggest cuts with proposals to cut the number of brigades and troops. The Hill reported that:
The Army is planning to cut at least eight brigades and 80,000 troops as it trims its budgets, U.S. officials confirmed Wednesday.
The new brigade cuts, which will happen over several years, will reduce the number of Army troops to 490,000 from a high of 570,000. The cuts, first reported by The Associated Press, could reduce the number of brigades from 45 to as low as 32.
The Army’s force reduction has been expected by analysts, but the cuts are now getting finalized as part of the Pentagon’s 2013 budget, which is the first that will deal with a $487 billion reduction over the next decade.
The overall 2013 Pentagon base budget will be $524 billion, according to congressional officials and analysts, which is a reduction of $7 billion from the 2012 budget Congress approved last month.
a note of caution: just because a military base gets closed doesn’t mean that there will be an opportunity for a conversion to peaceful, sustainable use that benefits the local community. The Pentagon notoriously underfunds cleanup and conversion of their closed bases. In addition, they typically feel that the lands belong to them and may put them up for auction to the highest bidder. In Puerto Rico we have seen all such manifestations of base closures, from Vieques (where the “cleanup” consists of open air detonations of munitions and further spreading of toxins), to demanding that Puerto Rico pay inflated prices for use of our own lands that were expropriated by the military in the first place. And there is always the possibility that in some “emergency” the military can re-open the base.
I agree! We need to reduce all Military presence in the Islands – not only the Army. It is time that the military deoccupation starts with BRAC being the basis for giving back lands no longer needed for the huge military force that the US is maintaining to fight terrorism. The mere size of the Department of Defense makes no sense in combating pockets of terrorist everywhere. The US is squandering its wealth over the imagined threat that terrorist groups pose to its “National Security”. Absurd!