Consolidation concerns still hover


  • December 31, 2015
  • /   Rod Duren
  • /   economy

A previous base closing and realignment raised the possibility of consolidating helicopter pilot training, and the issue never seems to go away despite past rejections of the move.

It’s been 20 years since the names of a pair of Gulf Coast military aviation-training facilities have been mentioned in the same breath along with the scary word realignment, and 10 since the Navy last officially rejected a consolidation.

But with talk of a new Base Closure and Realignment Commission round looming on the horizon, it’s only natural that economic development officials will think of those past concerns.

{{business_name}}Hawks from Fort Rucker

UH-60 Black Hawks from Fort Rucker, Ala., at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. Photo from Fort Rucker website.

The Army’s Fort Rucker in Southeast Alabama and the Navy’s Naval Air Station Whiting Field in Northwest Florida, separated by about 100 miles, both train helicopter pilots. And in an age where consolidation is seen as a cost-cutting measure, the question continues to hover, even with the general belief is that a BRAC in 2017 is dead in the water.

The issue of consolidating helicopter training actually goes back at least 50 years. During the 1995 BRAC, when the commission refused to put Naval Air Station Whiting Field on its hit list, an AP story at the time said that Alabama politicians had been trying to consolidate training at Fort Rucker for three decades.

The AP story said that the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard have resisted the consolidation on grounds their training is incompatible with the Army’s. Differences include over-water navigation, shipboard operations and preliminary training in fixed-wing aircraft that is not included in the Army’s training program.

The idea was again brought up but trumped in BRAC 2005. In fact, it was not even pursued, according to a GAO report in July 2005, after the Navy said it had concerns any attempt to move training to Fort Rucker would effect training schedules.

Despite all those years of rejection, the consolidation possibility has never entirely faded away as a concern.

Now the Pentagon, facing tighter monetary constraints, has been pushing for another BRAC in 2017. The Air Force and Army say they have too much infrastructure in an age where lawmakers have capped funding on non-war related military activities and military installations.

Earlier this year, the Army took it upon itself to reorganize and downsize infrastructure and personnel based on planned reductions of 450,000 personnel by the end of FY 2018.

In August, that Army analysis determined that Fort Rucker, which trains Army and Air Force helicopter pilots, would lose 186 active duty personnel by the end of FY 2017, and an unspecified number of civilians.

Sixty-eight percent would come from the United States Aviation Center of Excellence, headquarters command for Army Aviation training.

Those numbers were “not nearly as devastating as the 40 percent potential cut some studies had outlined” for Fort Rucker, says U.S. Rep. Martha Roby of Alabama’s 2nd District.

Those Fort Rucker reductions can be handled through attrition, and won’t affect the aviation student load, according to Roby, who serves on the House Appropriations Committee.

Since FY 2013, the base has been producing more than 1,000 helicopter pilots every year, according to retired Army Brig. Gen. Rod Wolfe, director of the non-profit Friends of Fort Rucker group.

Fort Rucker’s Cairns Army Airfield is the busiest Army aviation base, with 240,000 flight hours per year. Fort Rucker has a nearly $2 billion direct and indirect economic impact on southeast Alabama, newspapers report.

Across the state line in Santa Rosa County, Fla., Naval Air Station Whiting Field is seen as a real jewel. Training Air Wing 5 at Whiting and its 13 Navy Outlying Fields, including six in Alabama, accounts for 1.4 million annual flight operations, 14 percent of the Navy’s total.

CTW-5 produced 872 helicopter pilots: 486 Navy, 241 Marines, 75 Coast Guard, and 70 international using the TH-57 Sea Ranger.

Santa Rosa County Commissioner Don Salter and military affairs consultant Pete Gandy learned long ago that one of the best ways to protect Whiting Field from the threat of closure is to protect it from encroachment.

As part of a three-county 2004 Joint Land Use Study (JLUS) for Eglin Air Force Base efforts to host F-35 training, Santa Rosa County began to identify “every piece of property” within a mile of Whiting Field, said Salter.

Since then, the county has either procured or gained conservation easements – through federal grants - on about 2,130 acres. There are about 2,395 acres on the county’s planning board for future action that includes property along the flight paths out of the base’s North and South fields.

They use this comprehensive approach to protect Whiting’s missions in front of any future BRAC talk, said Gandy, who also heads a three-county Defense Support Initiative.

On another front, the project to move the current Outlying Field 8 in Escambia County, used by the Navy for helicopter training, to a location in Santa Rosa County closer to Whiting Field is moving forward. Escambia County wants to use the current OLF 8 in Beulah for a commercial park close to Interstate 10. To do so, Escambia County bought more than 640 acres in Santa Rosa County to use as the new OLF 8.

The current OLF 8 is adjacent to the multimillion-dollar and growing headquarters of the Navy Federal Credit Union.

The site swap would provide Santa Rosa County with another opportunity to gain more encroachment control for Whiting’s missions.

In Southeast Alabama, according to Wolfe, encroachment has never been an issue around Fort Rucker since its beginning in the 1940s because it’s “basically surrounded” by farmland as far as one can see.

Whether there will be a BRAC in 2017 is unclear at this point. But it’s looks increasing unlikely considering the long lead time.

“It’s unlikely that the Defense Department will undergo BRAC in the near future” and there are “no plans to consolidate Army and Navy helicopter training,” said Roby.

According to Florida 1st District Congressman Jeff Miller’s chief of staff Dan McFaul, it’s pretty much dead in the water.

“There’s no way in hell” there’s going to be a BRAC-17 because it should have already been put in motion. He said there is nothing in the BRAC pipeline. Besides, “Congress doesn’t have the stomach for it” at this time, McFaul says.

The political winds could shift for an off-election year BRAC in 2019. But right now, with all the terrorist activities and international nation-building going on worldwide, “we should be growing” the military not gutting it, McFaul concludes.

{{business_name}}UH-72A Lakota U.S. Army trainer

UH-72A Lakota U.S. Army trainer

Fort Rucker switching to UH-72

The Army’s Fort Rucker will undergo at least one major change to its basic helicopter training in 2016. It will ditch the decades-old TH-67s for the Airbus Helicopter UH-72As. At least a dozen Lakotas, which are built in Columbus, Miss., have already been shipped to Fort Rucker. The first UH-72s to arrive at Fort Rucker in early 2015 were being used for medical transport and medical evacuation training. The Navy is considering acquiring and modifying some of the TH-67s, which, like the Navy’s TH-57, is a military variant of the Bell Jet Ranger 206. - Rod Duren

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