Boston Globe -- NorthWest section
February 26, 2004

Air Force base lobbying effort gains altitude

By Davis Bushnell, Globe Correspondent

BEDFORD -- Efforts to keep Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford and the US Army
Soldier Systems Center in Natick from being closed next year reached a
higher level Monday, when a 34-member blue-ribbon leadership committee was
formed under the umbrella of the Massachusetts Defense Technology
Initiative.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Governor Mitt Romney are cochairmen of the
committee, which also is made up of the 11 other members of the state's
congressional delegation and 21 executives from the high-technology,
academic, and health-care sectors. Most are from the Boston area.

Committee members living or working in the northwest suburbs are: Sheila
Widnall of Lexington, a former Air Force secretary in the Clinton
administration; Paul Gudonis, chief executive, Centra Software Inc., and
Suzanne Daniels, vice president, BAE Systems, both of Lexington; Dr. David
Barrett, chief executive, Lahey Clinic, Burlington; Robert Nesbit, senior
vice president, Mitre Corp., Bedford; James Regan, chief executive, Dynamics
Research Corp., Andover; Steve Kaufman, chief executive, Avici Systems, and
Bill Flanagan, vice president-general manager, Titan Corp., both of
Billerica.

In buttonholing other opinion leaders in Washington, D.C., and other parts
of the country, committee members will emphasize the importance of Hanscom
Air Force Base and the Army's Natick facility as centers that are on the
cutting edge of technological innovations, said Chris Anderson, president of
the Massachusetts High Technology Council and a leadership committee member.

The Waltham-based high-tech council, which has 140 member companies, is
directing the campaign to save the air base and Army facility.

It appears this time the value of technology to the nation's defense will be
taken into account in determining which military bases will be targeted in
2005 for closings and realignments, Anderson said. He added that technology
was not a major consideration in the shuttering of bases in 1991 and 1995,
when the Bedford base narrowly escaped being closed.

Earlier this month, the Defense Department submitted to Congress its final
criteria for base closings and realignments. The deadline for the defense
secretary to file recommended base closings to Congress is May 16, 2005. The
recommendations will be considered by a nine-member Base Realignment and
Closure Commission.

"So, we're now more primed than ever to spread the word that Hanscom and
Natick activities can't be replicated anywhere else," said Anderson, adding
that Hanscom is in the forefront of electronic warfare systems development
and the Army's Natick center is tops in designing state-of-the-art apparel
and food technologies for the military.

"Uprooting" the Hanscom base and Natick center and moving them elsewhere
would be as bizarre and unwarranted as "relocating wetlands from the Cape to
Nebraska," said Regan of Dynamics Research.

There is a type of "ecosystem" in this state, in which the two military
bases are linked to major colleges and universities like the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and Harvard and to a wide array of
technology-oriented defense contractors, Regan said. "And the value of this
system has never been higher."

Formed by Lincoln Labs scientists 48 years ago, Dynamics Research derives
about half of its annual revenues of $240 million from Air Force contracts,
he said.

The company, which specializes in providing engineering and information
technology services, typically has 350 to 400 employees working on projects
at the Bedford base, Regan said. It has 800 Massachusetts workers.

The corporate-academic "mix we have here -- southern New Hampshire, too --
is critical to the military's effectiveness," suggested Gudonis of Centra
Software, a provider of products for Internet conferences and virtual
classrooms. The growing company has 200 employees in Lexington, and 55 in
Atlanta and overseas.

Also, a total of 30,000 technology jobs are involved in projects with
Hanscom or the Natick center that have a yearly economic impact of about
$3.5 billion on the region, said Gudonis, who is also chairman of the
high-tech council.

"So, we're involved in a high-stakes effort, and we have to get that message
across to Washington," he asserted.

Other members of the blue-ribbon committee are Michael Ruettgers, chairman,
EMC Corp., Hopkinton; Virginia Allan, executive director, Natick Soldier
Systems Center Business Alliance; Jack Wilson, president, University of
Massachusetts; Kevin Casey, head of government affairs, Harvard; Claude
Canizares, associate provost, MIT, and MIT Lincoln Labs; Joyce Plotkin,
president, Massachusetts Software Council; Paul Guzzi, chief executive,
Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce; Rick Lord, chief executive, Associated
Industries of Massachusetts; James Brett, president, New England Council;
Craig Coy, CEO, Massachusetts Port Authority; Jimmy Dishner, a retired Air
Force Brigadier General, who lives in South Orleans, on Cape Cod; and
William Walsh, chief executive, Sippican, Marion.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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