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Panel spares S. Dakota air base, senator relieved

Posted on: Friday, 26 August 2005, 13:06 CDT

In Washington item headlined "Panel spares S. Dakota air base, senator relieved" please read in third paragraph ...state of 750,000 residents... instead of ...state of 750,00 residents... .

A corrected repeat follows.

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A military panel on Friday voted to keep open South Dakota's Ellsworth Air Base, a decision that overturned a Pentagon recommendation and spared the state's Republican senator a major political defeat.

The decision to preserve the base for the Cold War-era B-1 bomber was a victory for Sen. John Thune, a freshman Republican who beat former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle last November based on his claims that he would be better placed to save the facility.

The base is the second-largest employer in the largely rural state of 750,000 residents.

"This is a great day for South Dakota, but we think it's a great day for America," Thune told reporters immediately after the decision by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission.

Thune had told voters last year that his Republican Party connections to President George W. Bush would help protect the base, but he was shocked to learn on May 13 that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had put Ellsworth on the closure list.

Thune said he spent more time with base commissioners in the last three months than with his family to persuade them that it was a mistake to close Ellsworth. He also moved to distance himself from the White House, which had recruited him to seek the Senate set.

DOLLAR SAVINGS

In the first round of base closings in a decade, the Pentagon aims to save tens of billions of dollars over two decades and reshape its forces to face new and emerging threats. Its proposed cuts affected more than 840 facilities and called for 26,000 net job losses.

In the commission's third straight day of deliberations over the fate of those facilities, it did not appear to be ready to grant New Mexico's Cannon Air Force Base a similar reprieve. The base, with 2,824 jobs, is slated to close and send its F-16 fighter jets to other bases.

The panel defeated a motion to keep Cannon open by ordering the Air Force to move training jets there. It will continue deliberations on the base on Friday afternoon.

In the Ellsworth decision, the Air Force had wanted to consolidate its 67-plane B-1 fleet at a single airstrip, Dyess Air Force Base in Texas. The supersonic bombers were developed in the 1970s for nuclear strikes, but have been converted to deliver conventional weapons, which they did in Iraq.

But the nine-member panel voted 8-1 to keep Ellsworth open, citing a lack of meaningful cost savings if its 24 bombers were moved to Dyess, coupled with a larger-than-estimated economic impact on its home community of Rapid City.

The Air Force had counted the transfer of people to other bases as a cost savings, but commissioners had disputed those, saying that the move would actually add costs, citing a per hour B-1 operating costs of $23,754 from Ellsworth and $31,519 at Dyess, due to longer traveling distances to training ranges.

"We have no savings and we're essentially moving the airplanes from one very very good base to another very very good base." said commissioner Harold Gehman, a retired Navy Admiral.

Commissioners also said legal challenges that threaten training ranges in Texas were a factor in the decision. Land owners have alleged that bombers screaming overhead at 300 feet on training runs create too much noise and wake turbulence, a problem not experienced in South Dakota.

Source: REUTERS

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