Brainpower as a military asset

Boston Globe, December 22, 2003

Brainpower as a military asset
State's intellectual strengths pitched in bid to save bases

By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff

Massachusetts government and business leaders are trying an innovative
strategy to keep Greater Boston's military bases open: convincing the
Pentagon that brainpower is vital to national security. Draft criteria for a
new base-closing round, published in the Federal Register yesterday, cited
factors that have been used in the past to measure military value: impact on
mission and readiness, condition of land and seaports, ability to mobilize
forces, and cost of operations.

But advocates for the Massachusetts bases have tapped Governor Mitt Romney
and the state's congressional delegation, along with some high-powered
lobbyists, to seek to shape the final criteria in a public comment period
running to Jan. 28. They will press Pentagon officials to add factors such
as engineering talent and access to te! chnology and academic clusters as
considerations for the Department of Defense as it moves to restructure the
nation's warfighting capability.

''Our argument is not based on infrastructure,'' said Alan J. Macdonald,
senior vice president at MassDevelopment, which has led the campaign. ''Our
argument is based on intellectual capability.''

The effort is aimed at shielding Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford and the
Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick from the base realignment and closure
(BRAC) process that will play out over the next two years. It will result in
the closing of an unspecified number of domestic military installations,
starting in 2006.

Greater Boston's technology oriented bases have emerged intact from four
previous base-closing rounds that shuttered 97 major bases between 1988 and
1995, including Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire. But they fear the
revival of a proposal floated by a Pentagon committee in the m! id-1990s to
consolidate Hanscom with Army and Navy bases that also specialize in
electronics systems. This is the first time Massachusetts officials have
sought to influence the criteria.

Hanscom and the Army lab in Natick are the state's only active military
sites. Together, they employ more than 5,100 military and civilian Defense
Department employees and support almost 24,000 private-sector jobs -- many
at software or other high-tech firms -- through contracts.

While the Pentagon has not identified target sites, the new round of
closings, authorized by Congress last year, is being seen not only as a way
to slash excess capacity by about 25 percent but also as an opportunity to
transform the military to fight terror. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
has called for a structure ''in which operational capacity maximizes both
warfighting capability and efficiency.''

Massachusetts trade officials and defense contractors are scra! mbling to
synch up their lobbying efforts with Rumsfeld's vision.

Citing advances pioneered by Hanscom, such as technology that has
dramatically improved bombing accuracy and shortened the time between
targeting and delivery, Robert F. Nesbit, senior vice president at the
defense contractor Mitre Corp. in Bedford, said, ''If you want to achieve
the next phase of evolution, you don't want to break up the team. You want
to keep the capability we have here.''

If the Air Force were to close Hanscom, some employees of its contracting
companies might continue to work long distance for whatever base took over
its operations. But thousands of well-paying technology jobs would be lost,
the base's advocates say. ''It would have a major impact on all the
contractors,'' said Richard Galloway, a Billerica-based vice president for
the Titan Corp. ''There'd be no reason for Titan to be here.''

Macdonald said the four-year lobbying effort has ! a $2 million budget from
public and private sources. His economic development authority has hired
three teams of consultants -- among them, retired Air Force Chief of Staff
Ronald Fogleman and former Senator Alan Dixon of Illinois, who chaired a
previous base closing commission in 1995 -- to circulate a ''strategic
framework'' for evaluating bases in the new round. They are arguing that
past criteria has focused too heavily on ''infrastructure,'' such as planes
and ships, rather than intellectual assets.

''It's a good case,'' said Marcus Corbin, senior analyst at the Center for
Defense Information in Washington. ''In the Boston area, you have a
concentration of intellectual talent. But it's not clear why research and
development can't be moved more easily than something else. It's just a
question of what the Pentagon's cost-benefit analysis spits out.''

Hanscom has been a development center for command-and-control technology,
not! a base for military aircraft. Similarly the Natick site is a research
lab, taking the lead on an ''objective force warrior'' program to outfit
combat troops with high-tech gear.

Pentagon spokesman Glenn E. Flood said defense officials, led by Raymond F.
DuBois, the deputy undersecretary for installations and environment, would
publish the final criteria for the new closing round by Feb. 16. The
military branches then will issue ''data calls'' taking inventory at the
hundreds of US military installations.

The president is scheduled to appoint a nine-member commission in March
2005. In May 2005, the secretary of defense would submit a base-closing list
to the commission and Congress, and the president would approve or reject a
final list that fall. Bases would be closed over a six years between 2006
and 2012.

''We're going to look at every base,'' Flood said. ''There's no list out
there from the Defense Department. But the secret! ary has said we have too
much infrastructure. We need to free up the money from excess inventory to
help fight the war on terror.''

A proposal rejected in 1995 would have consolidated three so-called C4ISR
(command, control, computers, communications, intelligence, surveillance,
and reconnaissance) bases: Hanscom, the Army's Fort Monmouth in New Jersey,
and the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, in California.

Trade officials in San Diego and central New Jersey, also fearing the
consolidation proposal could be resurrected, are monitoring the closing
process closely and have mounted their own lobbying efforts.

''The feeling is this will be the `Mother of all BRACs,' '' said Andrea
Moser, vice president at the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp.,
which is leading the fight to protect the command's area. ''We want to point
out the strengths of what we have here, but obviously Massachusetts can make
a similar ! argument about intellectual capital.''

Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.