Sarcasm aside, there are some good points in the article but let's take it one step further, then. Why not relocate ALL of those facilities to a lower cost state and save money in the long run?
The concern is that we are not mereely relocating...but unavoidably downsizing and losing our actual present capability... And we won't even save any money, because that kind of change ...driven by penny-wise-pound foolish OMB thinking...will actually represent a dramatic INCREASE in 'transactional' costs. And where in the budget is the extra money for these new transactional expenses? Nowhere. Hence:
We're eating not just seed-corn but our own muscle and bone, and getting nothing deployed while messing about with this funding musical chairs. Too much "churn" caused by the arbitrary orders out of the White House, as noted in the following:
Defense Dept. Looking for $30 Billion in Cuts
Aviation Week & Space Technology 07/04/05
author: David A. Fulghum
author: Amy Butler
Foreboding
Pentagon planners are beginning to quietly voice their alarm at what appears to be up to a $30-billion shortfall that could threaten a host of weapon programs--including aviation projects.
And as they begin to forge a budget for Fiscal 2007 and beyond, they anticipate vicious fights over funding resembling those that started off this year as the Pentagon finished the Fiscal 2006 request. Many Defense Dept. officials returned from vacation early this year to a sweeping series of last-minute budget cuts now dubbed the "Christmas surprise." Program budget decision (PBD) 753 signed Dec. 23 by then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz sliced $30 billion from the defense budget from 2005 to 2011. One military official says "PBD 753 was the first of the $5-billion whacks" as officials look to balance the budget in future years.
A small group of defense civilians mandated the cuts, including reductions in the F/A-22 and termination for the C-130J and Joint Common Missile. Some of the cuts were redistributed to the Army, which needs cash to modernize into a modular and digital force in the future. However, several officials say the cuts were merely made at the last minute to balance the books per the White House's direction.
Unsure of what to cut in Fiscal 2007 and 2008, Pentagon accountants inserted what officials call the "negative wedge," an $11-billion cut to both years, in the existing budget. They did not identify programs to be docked, and they are now faced with that dubious task.
Upcoming cuts are likely to have more teeth and, perhaps, staying power than those in Fiscal 2006, which begins in October. Because so many key programs were cut or terminated last year, officials at the Pentagon are still trying to grasp the technology and fiscal impacts of the decisions. For example, cutting the Joint Common Missile--which itself was developed to replace a host of existing systems with a lower cost new one--could actually cost more by pouring life-support cash into legacy projects.
At the time of the cuts, speculation was rampant that the tight fiscal environment would force senior officials to invest in new technologies like UAVs, combat drones and Special Forces equipment at the expense of new manned and space systems (AW&ST Jan. 10, p. 20).
If it comes to pass, the cuts would continue to leave unfulfilled the pre-election White House plans to add $10 billion annually to defense spending. It also will renew pressure to cut more F/A-22s and F-35s and slow any momentum in the Air Force's beleaguered E-10A intelligence-gathering aircraft and tanker recapitalization program.
An unknown for the Air Force is the actual cost of the C-130J program, which was terminated in the December decision. Senior Pentagon officials have since said they will restore the program. It's unclear where the money will come from to revive the effort; the original termination freed up nearly $5 billion through 2011. One Pentagon source says money went to the Navy's shipbuilding budget and officials may have to pull it back out. Regardless, another Pentagon source says the understanding in the Defense Dept. is that officials are "starting off in the hole" as they assemble next-year's budget.
Meanwhile, amid pressure from the Senate, USAF is renegotiating the contract with C-130J manufacturer Lockheed Martin to end its status as a multiyear buy and recast it as a traditional yearly purchase order. The renegotiations could generate more costs.
There also is concern that the Air Force--whose civilian leadership was left tattered by the tanker leasing scandal and underwent a number of resignations as President Bush began his second term--could suffer as the Pentagon presses on with the Quadrennial Defense Review, a sweeping look at military requirements and priorities. Without a heavy-handed advocate in the QDR, some Air Force program advocates fear the service will fare ill in the process. The final QDR is expected in Congress in February.
OTHER AREAS or programs that may be vulnerable to further reductions include missile defense, advanced satellites, maritime patrol aircraft and the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship.
Some Air Force planners are already getting a dose of the new reality. Air Combat Command's 2007 budget proposal was "laughed out of the room" when it was presented to the Pentagon-based Air Force headquarters staff, according to one witness. It was reportedly billions of dollars over what the budget could possibly bear. Navy officials admit that much planning continues to be predicated on peacetime spending levels while wartime costs continue to accumulate.
The services must submit their final budget plans to the Office of the Secretary of Defense in September.
Also expected to influence the budget are some external pressures. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently got an earful of complaints from the Norwegian government about its investments in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. He has passed the word to his staff to attend closely to the needs of JSF's foreign participants in order to keep them involved.
Also expected to profit from the budget shakeup are the payloads to be carried by unmanned aircraft including new generations of hyperspectral sensors (for detecting chemical and biological weaponry), active electronically scanned array radars (that can produce weapons effects) and directed-energy weapons (with high-power microwave devices expected to mature at least as quickly as laser weapons). Ground-based HPM has already been used to shoot down shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles in tests, and the first laser designed as a weapon for an unmanned airborne payload is under contract, say officials attending a Baltimore UAV conference.
Affecting all these calculations will be the demands, both financial and technological, of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon has been spending about $5.6 billion per month to continue operations in both areas, and the number of insurgent attacks in Iraq continues to climb. More than $202 billion had been obligated for both as well as defense-related homeland security missions as of March 2005. During a speech last week on Capitol Hill, Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), a member of the powerful appropriations committee, acknowledged the impact operations are having on procurement programs. In the post-Sept. 11 climate, he said, officials "get so enthralled with the immediate needs that we forget about the future."
Financial pressures are expected to force existing aircraft to remain in service longer than planned with the addition of improved engines, sensors and weapons. New aircraft purchases are likely to be cut and stretched out, and costly space systems will also likely suffer. Major Aviation Programs/Cuts From 2005-11
V-22 $1.3 billion
Joint Common Missile $2.4 billion-termination
Missile Defense Program $5 billion
Wind Corrected Munitions Dispenser-Extended Range $403.7 million
NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance Program $476 million
Transformational Satellite Program $400 million
E-10A $600 million
C-130J $4.9 billion-termination (decision rescinded)
F/A-22 $10.5 billion
Joint Unmanned Combat Air System $1.1 billion
(c)2005 Dow Jones Reuters Business Interactive, LLC. Trading as Factiva.
See the Aviation Week article up above. This is not about an orderly, efficient and reasonable cost-savings. This is a last-second, willy-nilly slash-and-burn of the Pentagon's long-term projects and core basic infrastructural elements for the phantasml savings of, as Goure puts it, a savings on paper of several hundred million dollars. Now multiply that level of managerial chaos issuing from the White House by the $30 billion they are demanding be cut...
Anyways, as an aside to your point: There is also a geographic requirement for some facilty placement. You don't launch ships and subs from North Dakota. Nor do you want all of our airbases relocated to, say, Nebraska, as the cheapest state? Remember how there were no fighter bases in easy reach to defend the 9-11 targets? Even at Washington D.C. thanks to Xlinton's previous cuts. If we followed your principle to the extreme, leaving no bases at the "expensive" periphery of the U.S. or defending anything of any importance along the coasts...because its too expensive, we would have...no defenses where they could do any good.
Another factor that is ignored in the BRAC process is the fact that if the U.S. is attacked by a premeditated first strike as in Pearl Harbor, there is a lot of safety in numbers. More bases, makes for easier recovery/reconstitution of the military capability. It also makes for greater "surge" capability which we may in fact need if we are up against 1.2 billion Warmongering Chinese Communists. It is extremely unwise to assume that there will be no great power wars, or classic engagements, as did the Xlintonian Disinformation Agent, Thomas Barnett ("The Pentagon's New Map". Fortunately, Rumsfeld got him fired at the end of last year).