State military bases at risk
Officials campaign to save Bedford, Natick facilities under scrutiny

By Ross Kerber, Globe Staff, 11/28/2002

Fearful that the large military research and development facilities in Bedford and Natick could be shuttered by a new round of base closures, state officials have launched a campaign to save the installations, which indirectly employ about 15,000 people in Massachusetts.

About 13,000 of those jobs stem from contracts to companies and university work affiliated with Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, including its large electronic-systems center. The rest relate to the Army's Soldier Systems Center in Natick, where employees develop advanced uniforms and other infantry gear.

Not all of the jobs would be lost if either base were marked for closure in the Pentagon's next review, scheduled for 2005. But the end of the Air Force's work at Hanscom would be a blow to the complex of high-technology defense firms and university research centers that grew up in the state during the Cold War, including MIT's Lincoln Labs and Lexington-based Raytheon Co., say state officials and their many allies in the private sector.

''If you look at the kind of work that Hanscom does, it's mainly engineering and computer-related, and it's driven a lot of the other commercial activity historically'' in the form of spinoffs along Route 128, said Jim Henderson, a past president of ACS Defense who still consults to the firm. Based in Dallas, ACS has about 125 employees at Hanscom and several hundred at an office in Burlington.

Other executives also want the state to talk up the Hanscom base's traditional role as a research center. To convey their message, last month the public financing agency MassDevelopment hired a retired Air Force chief of staff, Ronald Fogleman, as an adviser to help approach the military figures who will largely decide Hanscom's fate.

Officially, ''his duties are to advise us on strategic opportunities related to the mission at Hanscom,'' said Michael Hogan, MassDevelopment's president. Unofficially, Fogleman could also help bridge the cultural gap between technology executives and the more hierarchical military, officials said.

Most of those employed at Hanscom work for contractors whose work is assigned through the base, and figures provided by Hanscom make its contribution clear. Lincoln Labs alone received $372 million in funding in fiscal year 2001, followed by Mitre Corp. of Bedford with $250 million and Lexington-based Raytheon Co. with $188 million.

At Mitre, a nonprofit government research center, senior vice president Raymond Shulstad said he supports the state's lobbying efforts since few of its 750 employees who work either at Hanscom or on military projects at Mitre's Bedford offices would want to move if Hanscom were closed.

''My biggest concern is whether our people would follow the work, and I think there's a huge uncertainty there,'' Shulstad said.

Technically the upcoming round of federal reviews will be overseen by the Base Closure and Realignment Commission, whose members won't be named by President Bush until March 2005. Later that year the secretary of defense will submit a list of suggested closures; the commission will have the chance to refine it before the president and then Congress must accept or reject the entire list.

Similar reviews have shut down about 350 facilities since 1988, including a naval air station in Weymouth and most of the Army's Fort Devens, both of which been redeveloped since. Other bases in New England likely to face reviews include the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, N.H., and Navy facilities near Newport, R.I. Another active site in Massachusetts is Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, but few think it would be eliminated because fighter jets stationed there fly many of the homeland-defense patrols begun since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Hanscom and Natick centers are another story, since their missions resemble those of other military bases, including the Army's Communications- Electronics Command at Fort Monmouth, N.J., and the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego. Hanscom remains a hotbed for research projects such as one known as ''Paul Revere,'' a 707 jet used to test-fly equipment being developed by Lincoln Labs and Mitre for the forthcoming Multi-Sensor Command and Control Aircraft. It will replace the well-known AWACS surveillance planes.

But the Air Force stations few other aircraft at Hanscom, and the base's former runways are now mostly discussed in the context of a separate controversy over use of the field by commercial aircraft.

Steve Karalekas, a lobbyist who represents the state's interests with the Pentagon, said military officials are keen to close their excess laboratory facilities and could classify Hanscom that way even though most of its work relates to the design and integration of computer systems rather than basic research. ''To be fair to Hanscom you need to define the proper category we're in,'' he said.

Hogan and others said they haven't determined how much effort to put into saving the Army Center in Natick until its local constituency becomes clearer.

Town officials weren't available to be interviewed on the subject this week, but they have met with the state to discuss possible ''complementary uses'' for base facilities if it were closed, Hogan said. US Representative Edward J. Markey, the Malden Democrat whose district includes Natick, said most local figures would prefer the Army center to remain. ''There is a consensus that if the Natick labs can be saved, then they should be saved,'' Markey said.

This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 11/28/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
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