THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, February 21, 1995 TAG: 9502210254
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: BASE CLOSINGS: THE FINAL ROUND
What's at stake for Hampton Roads?
SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS LENGTH: Long : 247 lines
The Army in Hampton Roads is an Army on the water, equipped with ships and tugs as well as tents and trucks.
Foot soldiers travel on keels here, not stomachs. At Fort Eustis on the James River, and Fort Story fronting the ocean and the Chesapeake Bay, the troops wear life jackets over fatigues.
The Army even maintains a 17th century moat around the original Fort Monroe in Hampton, once the guardian of Hampton Roads' harbors.
But the nautical nature of the Army in Hampton Roads - unique among its installations worldwide - counts little among those with the authority to close the doors on the three local forts.
Instead, the installations are valued mainly for how they appear on paper - as training sites. Of those, the Army has far too many, raising fears among local officials during the past year that the forts may be closed.
Those fears are waning as word filters down from Washington about the recommendations the Pentagon will make on March 1 to the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission. Army supporters in Hampton Roads are counting on the unique location to shine through, despite the rules.
``Of particular significance in the (closing) process is their particular value to our national security,'' said U.S. Rep. Herbert H. Bateman, a Newport News Republican. ``They do things that they are uniquely qualified to do. . . can't be done anywhere else.''
Here's a snapshot of each fort's standing today:
Fort Eustis: The biggest of the local forts, the Newport News site is headquarters for the 7th Transportation Group and oversees Fort Story in Virginia Beach, home of the Army Amphibians' 11th Transportation Battalion. Together, they are where the Army trains its troops to use landing craft, cranes, trucks and logistical support vessels.
But despite how they look on paper, they offer far more than training. The soldiers who man the units are among the busiest in the Army, bringing their ships, cranes and muscles to foreign ports during emergencies.
They have been called to nearly every prolonged conflict or humanitarian mission the United States has had since World War II - Korea, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Rwanda and Haiti.
So busy were members of Fort Story's 11th Battalion that they returned from Haitian operations on a Wednesday, showered and changed the color of their fatigues, then hopped a plane for Saudi Arabia on Sunday. Others went directly from Haiti to Saudi Arabia.
Fort Story: The Virginia Beach base's long-term future was in doubt late last year when it lost its fleet of 24 air-cushioned cargo craft, called LACV-30s. The vessels were declared surplus, and the two Army companies that operated them were disbanded.
Its commissary was closed this year. There are requests from base commanders to eliminate a variety of civilian jobs no longer deemed necessary, including at least one of two firefighting companies.
Fort Monroe: The Hampton base is headquarters for the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, formed in 1973 to develop the doctrine, weapons systems, equipment and training for nearly every GI.
TRADOC, as the unit is known, is a major worldwide command, headed by a four-star general who oversees 60,000 personnel at 26 schools and four basic-training camps at 17 installations. They include Eustis and Monroe.
TRADOC, today, is Fort Monroe's only reason for being.
Fort Monroe has been a target of base-closing efforts before. It has escaped, in part, because of what officials believed would be the high cost of cleaning up buried ordnance, some of it dating to the Civil War.
But a new study places the cost at $22 million, a fraction of the previous estimate of $620 million. Cleanup is required under federal law before a base can be closed, and the new estimate may eliminate that as a barrier to closing.
Col. William B. Clark, Monroe's commanding officer, says the study will have little bearing on the base-closing commission's decision.
``The No. 1 thing the BRAC commission looks at is military value,'' Clark said in December when the lower cleanup figure was disclosed. ``These types of things . . . are not supposed to be items that impact upon their decision.''
Take the Army out of Hampton Roads, and muscle and bone leave this military metropolis, local supporters say.
The cost: $500 million in annual salaries, 17,000 soldiers and 6,000 civilian defense workers at the three Army sites.
``It would be a very significant blow to our area,'' said Bateman.
So why would the Army consider such a move?
The bases may not be needed - or as vital during these lean days of downsizing as they were when the nation's military forces were bustling with people and money in the early 1980s.
TRADOC has gone from 96,000 personnel in fiscal year 1985 to 75,000 in 1993, the last time the base-closure commission met. Today the command has 60,000 people. It has dropped from operating nearly 50 schools to 26 today and from eight basic-training sites to four. Yet the command still operates at the same 17 installations it had in 1985.
The pressure to reduce its infrastructure is strong.
In past base-closing years - 1988, 1991 and 1993 - the closing commission spared all three facilities, despite indications they were leaning toward making them prime candidates.
Fort Monroe was not on the Army's 1993 list, but subsequently was added for consideration by commission members. Its moat, part of a historic landmark that will have to be preserved regardless of the base's future, has been a lightning rod for opponents.
The panel ultimately accepted the Army's reasoning that Fort Monroe should not be closed. To do so would mean relocating TRADOC, a costly move that the Army has suggested would involve tens of millions of dollars.
Meanwhile, Fort Monroe has inherited a new tenant - the Joint Warfighting Center. This is a brainchild of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which wants to focus more attention on the need to prepare the military for joint combat, or with combined forces.
In press releases, the Army has said the new center is ideally located - near the Air Combat Command, Doctrine Center and Air-Land-Sea Application Center at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton; near Norfolk's Atlantic Fleet headquarters, Naval Doctrine Command and U.S. Atlantic Command; and relatively near Quantico Marine Corps Base's Combat Development Center.
Fort Eustis and Fort Story have been spared because the Army argued that closing them would be difficult given their location on the water.
In 1993, the base-closing commission suggested the Army consider a consolidation with other bases - including non-Army installations. Some have mentioned Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base as an alternative, noting that Little Creek also is on the water, near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
Little Creek is the Navy's only amphibious base on the East Coast and may have spare space at its docks as the Navy gets smaller.
Little has changed at Fort Eustis to improve its chances in 1995, some officials say. Indeed, the base may be losing ground as it trims its work force. With a growing number of vacant buildings on its grounds, the Army accepted two new tenants this past year - the Coast Guard and Navy.
A new Coast Guard Reserve unit - Port Security Unit 305 - is occupying part of the old motor pool building.
Crew members from the carrier John C. Stennis, under construction at Newport News Shipbuilding, have renovated two Army barracks on the grounds for their use. Previously they lived off base, in leased housing that cost the Navy money. Future carrier crews awaiting completion of their ships also will be housed at Fort Eustis.
That is good news for the Army, which doesn't want empty buildings. And it's good news for the Navy, which was concerned that the carrier crews did not have access to military stores, health services or mess halls.
Fort Eustis also is talking about moving the 97th Army Reserve Command's battalion of CH-47 Chinook helicopters from the former Tipton Airfield at Fort Meade, Md., to Fort Eustis' Felker Airfield.
Felker Airfield, built in 1949 as the military's first heliport, is the only airfield in the Army today where at least one of every type of helicopter flying in the active Army can be seen. The wide assortment of aircraft is needed to support the Aviation Logistics School, which trains all of the Army's helicopter mechanics and logisticians.
In the past two years, Fort Eustis has lost some of its teaching duties, such as helicopter test-pilot training. That went to Fort Rucker, Ala., which, in 1991, tied with Fort Eustis in the ranking of Army bases by mission, such as training or logistics. In a move expected to offset some of the losses, the Air Force agreed to move its helicopter maintenance training to Fort Eustis. About 15 personnel have arrived.
There are some who question why Fort Eustis, specifically the 7th Transportation Group, never changed its mission statement to reflect its high use as a unit that does more than training.
Retired Adm. Harry D. Train II, co-chairman of the state's commission on base retention, said earlier this year that a change may have helped the base fare better.
Train doesn't know what types of questions the Fort Eustis officers were asked by evaluation committees, the military analysts who reported their findings to Army Chief of Staff Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan. But he does know that the model used in determining an installation's military value is based entirely on its designated mission.
``The designated mission of Fort Eustis is training,'' Train said.
While training is important, it may not carry as much weight as a purely operational base, such as an infantry or airborne battalion.
Unless its mission is changed, the base cannot add that to the value given to it by the base-closing commission.
``That complicates the defense of a base such as Fort Eustis,'' Train said, ``because when they have a data call, Fort Eustis can only respond with those things that are related to its mission. It can't say: `We do all this other work . . . .' ''
Yet, the relative low rating that Fort Eustis has been given by Army officials in the last two base-closing studies, known as the Total Army Basing Study or TABS, should be of greatest concern.
The 1991 TABS ranked Fort Eustis ninth among 14 Army-wide installations. One problem, according to state and congressional officials, is the way the TABS is done.
The Army's criteria gives great weight to land area. Forts Eustis, Monroe and Story don't have a lot of training area compared to some of the bigger forts. They have water area, but the Army won't give weight to that.
Early in 1994, the Army transferred several support duties from the Transportation School and Aviation Logistics School at Fort Eustis to the Combined Arms Command at Fort Lee.
That was alarming news, said Bate-man, the area's congressman.
``The concern about Fort Eustis, I think, is more and more a fact that in the last base closure-driven evaluation, Fort Eustis was not as high in rankings as one would like it to be in order to feel comfortable,'' he said at the time.
In a letter to a constituent in July, Bateman was blunt, saying Fort Eustis is in danger of being closed, despite valid arguments in its defense. The main reason, he said, was the Army's excess capacity in training installations.
``When compared with other major training bases, it does not fare well,'' he wrote then.
More recently, Bateman said he is optimistic that the three local Army facilities will be left alone.
``I am not in position to assure anyone that will be the case and we will certainly fight for them if they should show up on somebody's list,'' he said. ``But I have no reason to be pessimistic. I just don't have anything specifically, affirmatively, that I can respond to here.'' ILLUSTRATION: PAUL AIKEN/Staff
Sgt. Ralph Martin of the Army tugboat Gettysburg throws a line from
the bow as the tug prepares to move another vessel at Fort Eustis.
The Army uses that Peninsula base to train its troops in the use of
landing craft, cranes, trucks and logistical support vessels.
PAUL AIKEN/Staff
The Army tug Gettysburg moves through the port at Fort Eustis. The
nautical nature of the Army in Hampton Roads - unique among its
bases worldwide - carries little clout among base-closing officials.
They focus instead on a surplus of Army training sites.
U.S. ARMY
The old walled fort at its center belies the modern mission of
Hampton's Fort Monroe, headquarters of the Army's Training and
Doctrine Command. TRADOC, a worldwide unit, numbers 60,000 people.
FACES OF THE BASE: FORT STORY
Kim Jarvis, 24
Virginia Beach
Administration specialist
Family: One child
Salary: $14,000
Years at base: 2
``I work for the post master sergeant, so I get to see firsthand
what's being done to help the people on post. I . . . get to see
how much we do for the community, too.''
Vicki Keeton, 35
Portsmouth
Recreation assistant
Family: Single
Salary: Declined to say
Years at base: 8
``I work not only with the Army, but also with the Navy, Coast
Guard and Marines. The recreation department is their home away
from home, and everything we do for them is free.''
Graphic
JOHN CORBITT/Staff
FORT MONROE
FORT EUSTIS
FORT STORY
[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
KEYWORDS: MILITARY BASE CLOSINGS by CNB