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i 

80–188 2013

[H.A.S.C. No. 113–18] 

IS BASE REALIGNMENT AND CLOSURE 

(BRAC) APPROPRIATE AT THIS TIME? 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

MARCH 14, 2013 
(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS 

ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia, Chairman 

ROB BISHOP, Utah 

VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri 

AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia 

KRISTI L. NOEM, South Dakota 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

MIKE ROGERS, Alabama 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

E. SCOTT RIGELL, Virginia 

STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi 

MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa 

COLLEEN W. HANABUSA, Hawaii 

JACKIE SPEIER, California 

RON BARBER, Arizona 

CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire 

WILLIAM L. ENYART, Illinois 

PETE P. GALLEGO, Texas 

DAVID SIENICKI, Professional Staff Member 

BRIAN GARRETT, Professional Staff Member 

NICHOLAS RODMAN, Staff Assistant 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2013 

Page 

HEARING: 

Thursday, March 14, 2013, Is Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Appropriate at This Time? ............................................................................................ 1 

APPENDIX: 

Thursday, March 14, 2013 ...................................................................................... 29 

THURSDAY, MARCH 14, 2013 

IS BASE REALIGNMENT AND CLOSURE (BRAC) APPROPRIATE AT 

THIS TIME? 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Bordallo, Hon. Madeleine Z., a Delegate from Guam, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Readiness ...................................................................................... 2 

Wittman, Hon. Robert J., a Representative from Virginia, Chairman, Subcommittee on Readiness ...................................................................................... 1 

WITNESSES 

Conger, John, Acting Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations 

and Environment ................................................................................................. 4 

Ferguson, Kathleen, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Environment and Logistics ....................................................................... 9 

Hammack, Hon. Katherine, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, 

Energy, and the Environment ............................................................................. 6 

Natsuhara, Roger, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment .................................................................. 8 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Conger, John ..................................................................................................... 35 

Ferguson, Kathleen .......................................................................................... 65 

Hammack, Hon. Katherine .............................................................................. 46 

Natsuhara, Roger ............................................................................................. 60 

Wittman, Hon. Robert J. .................................................................................. 33 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

Mr. Scott ............................................................................................................ 75 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. Barber ......................................................................................................... 85 

Ms. Bordallo ...................................................................................................... 83 

Mr. Enyart ........................................................................................................ 88 

Ms. Shea-Porter ................................................................................................ 86 
Page

IV 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING—Continued 

Ms. Speier ......................................................................................................... 84 

Mr. Wittman ..................................................................................................... 79 
(1) 

IS BASE REALIGNMENT AND CLOSURE (BRAC) 

APPROPRIATE AT THIS TIME? 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS, Washington, DC, Thursday, March 14, 2013. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 3:30 p.m., in room 

2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Robert J. Wittman 

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT J. WITTMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM VIRGINIA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE 

ON READINESS 

Mr. WITTMAN. I want to call to order the House Armed Services 

Subcommittee on Readiness and today’s hearing concerning the 

need for a BRAC [Base Realignment and Closure]. And I want to 

welcome this afternoon’s panel members to our hearing. And I 

would like to thank you for being here to address whether BRAC 

is appropriate at this time. And after reading your opening statements, I understand that one of the principal reasons why the Department requested a BRAC round last year was because of the imbalance between infrastructure and future force structure. This imbalance was caused by reduced force structure levels imposed by 

the Budget Control Act. Unfortunately, this is a very good example 

of a poor plan. Whenever budgets drive strategy, poor decisions result, which in this case includes a reduced force structure. 

I categorically reject this notion that presumes to balance the 

Federal budget on the backs of our service members. Having budget decisions driven by strategy is both immoral, and only increases 

the likelihood of service men and women not returning from future 

combat. I believe that the Department of Defense needs a robust 

military capacity, and that any diminution of this capacity should 

be staunchly opposed. Furthermore, this assertion that a reduction 

of 100,000 service members is a principal reason to have a BRAC 

round is shortsighted. I compared the BRAC 2005 force structure 

numbers to the 2017 future force structure proposed by the Department. While it is true that we will have reduced the Active force 

structure by 130,000 service members, this is almost completely 

offset by the increase in civilian personnel of 120,000 over the same 

time period. Where is the excess infrastructure? I have yet to see 

any empirical evidence that would provide even the slightest degree of support for another round of BRAC. 

As to the BRAC process itself, BRAC 2005 was an absolute failure. Cost estimates to implement BRAC 2005 recommendations 

have increased from $21 billion to $35 billion, a 66-percent in-
2 

crease. Compared to the commission’s reported estimates, GAO 

[Government Accountability Office] determined that the BRAC 

2005 payback would not occur for over 13 years. Even more efficient BRAC initiatives of the 1990s did not pay back until a few 

years after BRAC implementation was finalized. 

At a time when there is significant variability in the budget and 

the ensuing force structure, would a BRAC round be effective in 

providing rapid savings? Unfortunately, history has emphatically 

told us, ‘‘no.’’ I believe that the Department should pursue a 

multipronged strategy that fully utilizes the available capacity on 

hand. Leveraging the private sector to support military and use excess infrastructure provides a valuable revenue stream in a time of 

diminishing resources. Furthermore, the Army and the Marine 

Corps heavily relied on temporary facilities to support the Grow 

the Force initiatives. I think that we need to reduce this temporary 

infrastructure first before we move forward with eliminating entire 

bases and other permanent infrastructure. 

While I look forward to the discussion today with our esteemed 

group of witnesses to see if there is a compelling argument to 

change my position, I continue to have significant reservations with 

authorizing another BRAC round because of critical flaws in terms 

of both the process and the underlying assumptions. I believe that 

aggressively moving forward with a BRAC round could significantly harm our military power and their ability to project power. 

With that, I will move now to our ranking member, Ms. Bordallo. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wittman can be found in the Appendix on page 33.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, A DELEGATE 

FROM GUAM, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON READINESS 

Ms. BORDALLO. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank 

all of the witnesses here today to discuss this important matter 

with the Readiness Subcommittee. Today our subcommittee is 

going to receive testimony on an issue that evokes a lot of emotion 

for our members as well as defense communities. Many of us remember BRAC 2005, and some even previous BRAC rounds. As the 

former Lieutenant Governor of Guam, I remember working hard to 

protect the bases on Guam. Based on that experience, I found it 

very ironic that despite BRAC rounds on Guam, the Department of 

Navy continues to seek private or Government of Guam land to 

meet training requirements on the island. I think this serves to 

highlight how shortsighted the BRAC process can be given the dynamic nature of our military requirements, particularly given the 

new strategic guidance. 

Our subcommittee held a hearing on this same topic last year, 

and many members expressed concerns about the costs of the 2005 

BRAC round and how that round has not yet achieved the estimated savings. Members cited a GAO report that highlighted a 

greater than 66-percent increase in the cost of the 2005 BRAC 

round, and a 58-percent decrease in savings across a 20-year period. Further, a GAO report released last week indicates that while 

the COBRA [Cost of Base Realignment Actions] Model is accurate 

for assessing the impact of BRAC, the Department needs to better 
3 

develop a process for ensuring the data provided to the COBRA 

Model. And we are not understated and accurately capture requirements such as military construction or information technology. 

This report goes on to indicate that other processes focusing on reduction of excess infrastructure are not even developed yet. Given 

that BRAC 2005 ended up costing more and saving less than expected, and based on our current budget environment, I remain 

skeptical about the value of a new BRAC round at this juncture. 

So I hope that our witnesses can comment on what, if any, procedures have been put in place to ensure better oversight of the data 

that would be provided to the COBRA Model. Also, what assurance 

do members have that the focus of this BRAC would be on excess 

capacity and not on realigning missions, as was the case in 2005, 

which did not lead to significant savings in the near term? 

I am also perplexed as to the need for a BRAC round when we 

do not know the total extents of force structure or end strength 

changes from all the Services. For example, Army has just initiated 

a programmatic environment assessment to determine the basing 

for a two- to three-battalion BCT [Brigade Combat Team] construct. So I hope that the witnesses can comment on whether it is 

wise to reduce our infrastructure and footprint when we do not 

know what the ultimate end state is for our force structure or our 

end strength. 

I am also concerned that the economic impact to local jurisdictions is not quantified or adequately considered for areas surrounding the bases that are closed or realigned. In a time where 

our economy is struggling to recover, I question the wisdom of a 

BRAC round that may negatively impact communities that are 

struggling to put people back to work. This is an important consideration for this committee and Congress to consider if we are to authorize a BRAC round. 

Furthermore, I would encourage our witnesses to discuss the 

U.S. overseas basing structure, where we might find excess capacity abroad, and how a divesting of excess infrastructure abroad 

would impact the Department’s request for a BRAC at home. 

That said, I believe it is important for our Nation to maintain an 

intelligent, well-balanced, forward presence of forces in overseas locations. It is important for us to find the right balance between 

permanent presence in some locations, as well as reliance on host 

nation support and rotational forces. But the risks associated with 

finding balances must be weighed carefully. I am concerned that 

these risks have not been clearly weighed, and I am also concerned 

about proposed reductions in Europe and the message that sends 

to our allies in NATO, especially Germany. 

So I look forward, ladies and gentlemen, to the testimony that 

you are going to give, and to our question and answer period. Mr. 

Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Ranking Member Bordallo. I want to 

introduce our witnesses. Joining us today are Mr. John Conger, 

Acting Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and 

Environment; the Honorable Katherine Hammack, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy, and Environment; Mr. 

Roger Natsuhara, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the 

Navy for Energy, Installations, and Environment; and Mrs. Kath-
4 

leen Ferguson, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Installations, Environment, and Logistics. 

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for being with us 

today. I appreciate your thoughtful statements and your insights 

into this complex topic, and I am looking forward to those. While 

I understand that we are in challenging budget times, it is a matter of record that this Administration has been unable to deliver 

a timely budget request for the fourth consecutive year. Considering this late submission, I understand that our witnesses will not 

be able to comment on the record as to whether the Administration 

will support a request for another round of BRAC in the fiscal year 

2014 budget request. However, the Administration did request two 

additional rounds of BRAC in last year’s budget request, and 

former Secretary of Defense Panetta indicated his support for additional infrastructure consolidations earlier this year. I expect our 

witnesses to be able to discuss their thoughts as to the applicability 

of BRAC with the current force structure and overseas force posture. With that being said, we will begin with Mr. Conger. 

STATEMENT OF JOHN CONGER, ACTING DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR INSTALLATIONS AND ENVIRONMENT 

Mr. CONGER. Thank you very much. This is my first testimony 

ever, and I am really happy to be here on this topic in front of this 

subcommittee. 

Mr. WITTMAN. We are glad to have you here. Just take a deep 

breath. 

Mr. CONGER. That is the press talk in order to start. All right. 

Chairman Wittman, Ranking Member Bordallo, distinguished 

members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you to discuss Base Realignment and Closure. First, let 

me highlight up front, as the chairman mentioned, that the Administration has not yet delivered its fiscal year 2014 budget request, 

and that means my colleagues and I are not in a position to comment on the possibility of a future—— 

Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Conger, if I could ask you to pause for just 

a second. If you will take the microphone and pull it a little bit 

closer to you so we can—there you go. That will work. Very good. 

Thank you. Perfect. 

Mr. CONGER. All right. Am I on? 

Mr. WITTMAN. You are good. 

Mr. CONGER. Okay. All right. So because we don’t have a fiscal 

year 2014 request, we are not going to be in a position to comment 

on the possibility of a future request for BRAC authority. It is true 

we asked for BRAC authority last year, and our constraints have 

only magnified. But we will be treating the Administration position 

on future BRAC rounds to be predecisional. This may make some 

of our Q and A a little awkward, and I hope you will have patience 

with us. Still, I expect to have a robust discussion about BRAC 

process and problems facing the Department. 

In order to frame the discussion ahead, I want to offer three 

points. First, the Department is facing a serious problem created 

by the tension caused by declining resources, reductions in force 

structure, and limited flexibility to adapt to the first two. We have 
5 

many must-pay bills in the Department, from operations in Afghanistan to defined salary and benefit costs associated with each 

service member and civilian employee. Our facilities, for example, 

we have utility bills that we have to pay. So when across-the-board 

cuts come down, they weigh more heavily on a smaller, more concentrated part of the budget. We need to find a way to strike the 

right balance so infrastructure does not drain too many resources 

from the warfighter. Without question, installations are critical 

components of our ability to fight and win wars. Whether that installation is a forward operating location or a training center in the 

U.S., our warfighters can’t do their job without bases from which 

to fight, on which to train, or on which to live when they are not 

deployed. However, we need to be cognizant that maintaining more 

infrastructure than we need taxes other resources that the 

warfighter needs, from depot maintenance, to training, to bullets 

and bombs. So as we talk today, let’s keep in mind that together 

we need to figure out how to strike that balance. 

Second, our problem is smaller today than it would have been 

due to the fact that we have conducted five rounds of BRAC in the 

last 25 years. We have about $12 billion in recurring savings that 

we can spend on people, on ships, on aircraft, on training, on depot 

maintenance, on bullets and bombs. Those savings are real. They 

have been validated by GAO. Previous Congresses and previous administrations have done us all a favor by conducting those rounds 

and leaving the savings for us. 

The third point I wanted to make is that my goal here is to work 

with this committee and this Congress as a whole to find solutions 

to the problems we have got and to ensure we appropriately support the installations that we all agree we need. I don’t have a fiscal year 2014 request to discuss today. But let me ask for your 

moral support on something that doesn’t require legislative authority; namely, our effort to consolidate infrastructure overseas. Base 

closure in the U.S. requires BRAC authority. Closing bases overseas, while it requires us to work closely with the State Department and our international partners, doesn’t require any legislation. So on January 25, Secretary Panetta kicked off a BRAC-like 

process to review our infrastructure in Europe. If I could provide 

one short quote from his kickoff memo just to give you a little bit 

of context on why we focused on Europe specifically, ‘‘Consolidation 

of our footprint in Europe will take into account the shift in strategic focus to the Pacific, the planned inactivation of two Brigade 

Combat Teams and associated support forces, reductions in Air 

Force units, and decreasing requirements for support to the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.’’ So when we discussed last year’s 

BRAC request, many Members of Congress said they wanted to see 

just this kind of holistic effort focused overseas. I hope I can count 

on your strong support for that initiative. 

And so this concludes my opening statement. I appreciate your 

attention and your partnership, and I look forward to your questions. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Conger. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Conger can be found in the Appendix on page 35.] 

Mr. WITTMAN. Ms. Hammack. 
6 

STATEMENT OF HON. KATHERINE HAMMACK, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE ARMY FOR INSTALLATIONS, ENERGY, AND 

THE ENVIRONMENT 

Secretary HAMMACK. Thank you, Chairman Wittman and Ranking Member Bordallo, other distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to discuss the 

need for infrastructure realignments and perhaps to clarify a little 

about the 2005 BRAC round from an Army perspective. First of all, 

the Budget Control Act of 2011 significantly reduced future Army 

budgets. These reductions, placed alongside lower demand for 

Army forces in Afghanistan and a new national defense strategy, 

have placed the Army on a path to reduce its Active Duty end 

strength from 570,000 in fiscal year 2010 to 490,000 by fiscal year 

2017. And this is a reduction of 80,000 soldiers, or approximately 

14 percent from the Active Component. These end-strength and 

force-structure reductions will affect every installation in the Army. 

And these reductions are already programmed into the Army budgets. Additional reductions to the Army budget of a magnitude associated with sequestration may drive our Active Component end 

strength down below 490,000. And just as a piece of information, 

the only time the Army has been lower than 480,000 was prior to 

World War II in 1940. And frankly, I don’t believe the world has 

gotten any smaller or any safer since that point in time. 

As a first step in the process of major force-structure reductions, 

the Army published a Programmatic Environmental Assessment, or 

a PEA, as part of the National Environmental Policy Act on January 19, 2013. That PEA [Programmatic Environmental Assessment] identified 21 installations that have the potential to be impacted by our force-structure reductions. A PEA analyzes both environmental and socioeconomic factors that could impact those 21 

installations. Due to the responses that we got both from Members 

of Congress and from those communities, instead of that PEA closing on February 19, we have extended the comment period by another 30 days, and currently it is scheduled to close on March 21, 

2013. 

To your point, Chairman Wittman, the Army has not yet conducted any capacity analysis to determine the level of excess infrastructure that would be created as a result of our force-structure 

reductions. That would begin with a comprehensive installation inventory once we determine where we are going to take these force 

structure changes. The Army will conduct a rigorous analysis to 

identify the excess infrastructure and prudently align supporting 

civilian personnel with reduced force structure and our reduced industrial base design. We will inactivate at least eight Brigade Combat Teams, and possibly more. While the U.S.-based BCT decisions 

and locations have not yet been made, two of these BCT inactivation decisions have already been announced in Europe, and are in 

the process of being implemented. Putting force-structure reductions into a facility context, I want you to consider that a Brigade 

Combat Team takes up about 1.4 million square feet of space. And 

in today’s dollars, it costs about $350 million to build. Inactivating 

six or more Brigade Combat Teams in the United States, depending upon several variables, but inevitably that will generate excess 

infrastructure measured in hundreds of thousands of square feet. 
7 

At our overseas installations, as Mr. Conger mentioned, the Army 

has already made strides in consolidating our facilities. Since 2001, 

we have reduced our end strength and force structure in Europe by 

over 45 percent. Correspondingly, that resulted in a 51-percent reduction in infrastructure, 58-percent reduction in civilian staffing, 

and 57-percent reduction in base operations. These are our projections that will be in effect by the end of fiscal year 2017. 

The story in Korea is similar. Significant declines in soldiers supported a consolidation of garrisons and sites, and resulted in thousands of acres of property returned to host nation. And although 

elimination of infrastructure was one objective of the BRAC 2005 

round, the Army focus was aligning our infrastructure with our 

military strategy to enhance warfighting capacity and efficiency. So 

in 2011, when—or before the 9/11 attacks, the Army end strength 

was 480,000, with 62,000 soldiers in Europe, or 13 percent in Europe. And by the end of fiscal year 2017, forces in Europe will be 

30,000, which is less than 6 percent of the Army’s end strength. 

The Army used the BRAC 2005 round as a vehicle to meet our wartime needs, to move soldiers home from overseas, and to maximize 

military value and capability. But given those stated goals, the 

BRAC 2005 round was a success to the Army. It produced reoccurring savings for the Army of more than a billion dollars annually. 

The 2005 round was also very successful for our Guard and our 

Reserve units, which used the BRAC 2005 process to consolidate 

into areas of growing populations, where recruiting and demographic needs are greater. They are now realizing benefits of consolidation, recapitalization, more jointness, and enhanced operational readiness. 

I want to bring to light two additional areas of concern that we 

have right now, and I am sure are on your minds too, one of which 

is the continuing resolution, where currently the Army’s operations 

and maintenance account is underfunded by $6 billion. This account directly supports our worldwide operations, base operating 

support, and facility sustainment at all of our posts and stations. 

Compounding this $6 billion problem is the cost of the war in Afghanistan, which actually increases at the end of a war as you 

spend money to bring home equipment and reset or fix that materiel. If you look at both Korea and Vietnam, you will see that the 

cost increased at the end of the war. The same is true of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a land-locked country, and ground transportation out of that country is currently limited. That means we have 

to airlift the equipment there to bring it back home. And the cost 

of airlift is exceeding our budget expectations. This $6 billion incremental cost this year is necessary to enable us to wind down operations. 

Sequestration is on top of that. And I don’t need to tell you how 

devastating that is. I have met with many of you individually and 

helped you to understand the impact that has to the Army. 

As the Army force structure declines in the U.S., we do have facility overheads and infrastructure and civilian support staff that 

remains constant. Our investments in equipment, training, and 

maintenance then become distorted. Over time, these distortions in 

investments and spending will contribute to a hollow Army. Unless 

we have relief from the defense budget cuts of 2011 and sequestra-
8 

tion, we have no other choice but to reduce our infrastructure in 

line with force reductions. 

Thank you for your attention, and I look forward to your questions. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you so much, Ms. Hammack. 

[The prepared statement of Secretary Hammack can be found in 

the Appendix on page 46.] 

Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. Natsuhara. 

STATEMENT OF ROGER NATSUHARA, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE NAVY FOR ENERGY, INSTALLATIONS AND ENVIRONMENT 

Mr. NATSUHARA. Thank you, Chairman Wittman, Ranking Member Bordallo, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. I 

welcome this opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the 

Department of Navy’s position on efforts to optimize its infrastructure both at home and abroad. As mentioned by Mr. Conger, Secretary Panetta directed the Department of Defense to conduct a 

European capacity analysis to reduce long-term expenses through 

footprint consolidations. In the last 8 years, the Navy relocated its 

European headquarters from London to Naples and closed three 

additional bases: Naval Air Station Keflavik, Iceland; Naval Support Activities Gaeta and La Maddalena, Italy. The Department 

has four installations and one prepositioning site remaining in Europe. They are located in Rota, Spain; Naples and Sigonella, Italy; 

Souda Bay, Greece, and central Norway. We are undertaking preliminary capacity assessments of these locations that will inform a 

defensewide path forward. 

With respect to consolidating our domestic infrastructure, the 

Base Realignment and Closure, BRAC process, offers the best opportunity to assess and evaluate opportunities to properly realign 

our domestic infrastructure with our evolving force structure and 

laydown. Although the Department’s force structure has remained 

relatively constant since fiscal year 2005 when the last round of 

BRAC began, a new assessment will allow us to take into account 

changes to the shore platform interface as our weapons systems capabilities, testing, and how we employ them have evolved over 

time. Since the first round of BRAC in 1988, the Department has 

closed 186 domestic installations activities, including 52 major installations. By the end of fiscal year 2012, we had disposed of 91 

percent of our excess property through a variety of conveyance 

mechanisms, with less than 17,000 acres remaining on 23 installations. We anticipate reducing this number by six installations this 

year, with the remainder to be disposed as we complete our environmental remediation efforts. The past support Congress has 

given to our prior BRAC efforts resulted in an annual recurring 

savings of approximately $4.4 billion a year, which the Department 

applies to higher priority programs to support the warfighter. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today. I look 

forward to working with you to sustain the warfighting readiness 

and quality of life for the most formidable expeditionary fighting 

force in the world. This concludes my remarks, and I welcome your 

questions. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Natsuhara. 
9 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Natsuhara can be found in the 

Appendix on page 60.] 

Mr. WITTMAN. Ms. Ferguson. 

STATEMENT OF KATHLEEN FERGUSON, ACTING ASSISTANT 

SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE FOR INSTALLATIONS, ENVIRONMENT AND LOGISTICS 

Ms. FERGUSON. Chairman Wittman, Ranking Member Bordallo, 

and distinguished members of the subcommittee. I appreciate the 

opportunity to appear before you today to discuss Base Realignment and Closure. As you are aware, the United States Air Force 

takes great care to protect the distinctive capabilities of air power. 

Those capabilities are enabled and reinforced by our global network 

of Air Force installations, and managing those installations involves understanding and balancing mission requirements, risk, 

market dynamics, budget, and the condition of our assets. Within 

the portfolio of installations, environment, and energy we continually evaluate how to reduce costs, while improving the way we 

manage our real estate, housing, and energy demand. We focus our 

investments on critical facilities, reduce our footprint by demolishing old energy-inefficient buildings, upgrade heating and cooling 

systems and other energy-intense building systems, and leverage 

third-party financing through public-public and public-private partnerships and through the lease of underutilized portions of the 

portfolio where those opportunities exist. We do all this while recognizing that we are carrying infrastructure that is excess to our 

needs. While we have no recent excess infrastructure capacity analysis from which to draw, our capacity analysis from 2004 suggested 

that 24 percent of Air Force basing infrastructure was excess to our 

mission needs. While BRAC 2005 did not make major reductions to 

the Air Force, since that time we have reduced our force structure 

by more than 500 aircraft, and reduced our Active Duty military 

end strength by nearly 8 percent. So intuitively we know that we 

still have excess infrastructure. We have limited authority under 

current public law to effectively consolidate military units or functions and divest real property no longer needed. Put plainly, we 

continue to spend money maintaining excess infrastructure that 

would be better spent recapitalizing and sustaining our weapons 

systems, training for readiness, and investing in the quality of life 

needs of our airmen. Divestiture of excess property is a must. We 

stand ready to partner with the members of this committee and 

your staffs. 

Thank you for your strong support of the men and women of the 

Department of the Air Force. That concludes my statement, and I 

welcome your questions. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Ms. Ferguson. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Ferguson can be found in the Appendix on page 65.] 

Mr. WITTMAN. We appreciate our witnesses today and your opening testimony. We look forward to questions. And with that, I am 

going to begin with Mr. Conger. Just ask basically has the Secretary of Defense undertaken an assessment of the current infrastructure within DOD [Department of Defense]? And secondly, has 

there been any effort to identify if there is excess infrastructure? 
10 

Mr. CONGER. So two questions there. And let me take them in 

order. Has the Secretary undertaken a capacity analysis, basically 

is what I am hearing you ask. That is a part of the BRAC process. 

It was part of the BRAC process authorized for the 2005 round. 

And we have not undertaken that explicit process as part of—because it is part of the BRAC process. And I don’t expect you to 

want us to jump-start that per se without direction from the committee. 

Are we looking at excess infrastructure? We are always looking 

at excess infrastructure. We are always looking at ways to consolidate within the rules. So, sure, we are doing that. And there is lots 

of smaller examples. It is just that you don’t have the ability to do 

larger-scale examples without specific authority. And I am sure the 

subcommittee is well aware of the constraints that we have under 

the BRAC law. 

Mr. WITTMAN. So am I safe to assume from that then you are 

saying there is no empirical evidence that has been put together 

to support additional rounds of BRAC? 

Mr. CONGER. The empirical evidence that we have comes from a 

couple of different sources. We have a study that was done in 2004 

that was mentioned earlier in the opening statements that identified 24-percent excess capacity inside the DOD. That study was followed by the BRAC 2005 round. In BRAC 2005, the data that we 

have implies that 3- to 4-percent PRV reduction, plant replacement 

value reduction. So under that simple math, and under that original study’s data, we can conclude that there is space. Now, we also 

have additional information. We have information implying we 

have plans to reduce the number of Army soldiers, the number of 

marines, the number of Air Force aircraft since that study was 

done. So all of that, if you assume that—even if you assumed we 

had no excess at that point in time, we are opening up space following that point. So the deduction that we have is that it is at 

least worth following down this path. That was the conclusion that 

we reached last year. 

Mr. WITTMAN. You spoke about the 2005 BRAC and the element 

of savings there. And as we have seen, we are not even at the point 

of accruing any of those savings. We are talking about a 13-yearold window with that particular realignment, which is essentially 

what that was. We have heard other witnesses talk about the exacerbating effects of the current CR [Continuing Resolution] structure and how it could come about without direct elements to be 

able to move money around and the sequester. 

My question is this. We know under any scenario of BRAC taking place historically that it takes years to accrue those savings. 

Can we afford to exacerbate an already challenging budget condition with further expenditures to pursue a BRAC in the near future? 

Mr. CONGER. That is a great question. And let me be very careful 

about how I answer it, because obviously I am not here to defend 

any future request for BRAC. But I do want to address the first 

point. We are doing nothing but saving at this point from previous 

BRAC rounds. There was an investment made. It was larger than 

anticipated. But it is done now. We are doing nothing but saving 

from this point on. For the BRAC 2005 round, we are saving $4 bil-
11 

lion a year. If you look out 20 years from today as opposed to from 

when we started the round, that implies tens of billions of dollars 

that we are saving from the 2005 round from here on out. Now, 

people look at 2018 as the break-even point. And that is valid. But 

that is based on sunk costs. The cost is sunk. This committee already authorized those expenditures, and they have been made. So 

then to your point, which is can you afford to make expenditures, 

can you spend some money to save money essentially? Do you have 

the money available? And in the same way that, you know, an investor can only put money in the stock market, for example, if they 

have it, if they are not, you know, that is doing better than breaking even, that is how they are going to make money. Even if they 

have the best opportunity, if somebody has no money they can’t 

spend it, can’t invest it. So that is the question we have before us. 

Can we make the room to have that kind of recurring savings? 

Thank God that the folks before us authorized the rounds that they 

did, because otherwise we would have a $12 billion bigger hole 

than we have today. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Looking at the savings and the costs from the 2005 BRAC, if you were to take the $35 billion cost of that particular BRAC and play it out over the period of time, that would 

have bought the United States three additional aircraft carriers. So 

you can see prospectively the question then becomes strategically 

what is our focus? Is it the budget driving strategy or strategy driving the budget? And I think that is a fundamental element that 

has to be answered with this. I know the GAO came out recently 

with a study looking at what should be the selection criteria for actually pursuing a BRAC. Going back to the 2005 BRAC, that BRAC 

stated at that time that there was a 24 percent overage in capacity. 

That BRAC effort, though, only reduced that capacity by 5 percent. 

DOD’s response is, hey, listen, you can’t really tell us to use selection criteria because that makes our decisionmaking suboptimal. 

Which brings me back to the question of what is really the purpose 

behind the previous words within DOD to want to pursue a BRAC 

and DOD’s resistance to saying, well, you can’t really use selection 

criteria because that necessarily fences us in and we don’t think we 

can make good decisions within that realm. 

Mr. CONGER. We do have selection criteria. There are eight of 

them. They were published in the law. And they are focused on 

military value. Those are the top ones. We don’t want to make a 

decision that is solely based on money. We want to make it based 

on how does this optimize the military footprint. So that is part 

one. What the GAO suggested, which I would take issue with, is 

to make the cuts paramount. You have to cut this amount of stuff. 

And so what I don’t want is for us to be put in a position at any 

future time under any future construct where somebody says you 

have to close, you know, 20 bases or eliminate 20,000 jobs. That is 

an artificial and arbitrary construct that compels us to do things 

that are suboptimal for the sake of reaching that goal. And unfortunately, even when a goal is not mandated people work very hard 

to get to it, and sometimes they make suboptimal decisions. So that 

is why we resist that kind of a construct. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Well, what the GAO recommended was selecting 

targets for reducing capacity there as part of the selection criteria. 
12 

So essentially saying where do you want to go? You know, putting 

those objectives out there, whether it is cost reductions or whether 

it is realignment, whatever it may be, but that needs to be part of 

the criterion. 

But with that, I want to go to our ranking member, Ms. Bordallo, 

to have her pursue her questions. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I guess my 

first question would be to you, Mr. Secretary, Secretary Conger. 

Could you address how the Department would ensure the next 

round of BRAC, if proposed and approved by Congress, would be 

better evaluated for its financial viability and implemented to ensure that there are not cost overruns? 

Mr. CONGER. Well, there is a couple ways I can answer that 

question. Let me run through a couple of thoughts. One, once again 

I don’t want to say that we are requiring the BRAC round to 

achieve a certain amount of savings. We are just not. Intuitively, 

you have a BRAC round in order to save, you have a BRAC round 

when you have excess. But the individual decisions have to be suboptimized for military value. That is the construct that we have set 

up. And it has worked, right? We have saved a considerable 

amount of money over the years. How do we ensure that the costs 

don’t go up? That is an interesting question, because when we conducted the last round, and GAO pointed this out, the costs went 

up in a very small number of recommendations. There were decisions that were made at specific places. And those recommendations had their costs go up. And they fall into a couple different 

categories. But one of the significant ones was when Congress said 

that hospitals have to meet world-class status, for example. You 

know, they have to reach certain requirements. And that added the 

costs. It added to the costs of the hospital at Belvoir, at Bethesda. 

That drove up a bill. And, you know, what are we going to do? Tell 

Congress, no, we are not going to do that? Of course we are going 

to do what Congress tells us to do. 

The second is on the MILCON [Military Construction] increases. 

There were several recommendations where we decided to construct rather than renovate. Those decisions were made after the 

costing, the original costing was done. And those requests came to 

Congress, and said here is exactly what we are proposing to do. 

Congress said okay. So there is an oversight mechanism that we 

each have to participate in in order to regulate that. I think that 

significant pushback from Congress on changing the scope would 

have had a significant impact on what we chose to do. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you. Thank you. I have another question. 

I guess this would be for any one of our witnesses. As I stated in 

my opening comments, I am curious how a BRAC review would be 

adequately evaluated while the force structure is still very fluid. 

Would it be wise to reduce our infrastructure and footprint when 

we do not know the ultimate end state for our force structure or 

our end strength? 

Mr. CONGER. Let me take that one real briefly. Part of the process requires the joint staff to put together a 20-year force structure 

plan. So we are not making this up on the fly. The Joint Staff has 

to put together a projection of what we are mapping to. We are infrastructure folks. Right? I mean it is not our job to say we need 
13 

one brigade or one more or one less. We are working with the numbers that the warfighters give us in order to figure out what the 

optimal structure is. So we would rely on the Joint Staff to make 

those calls for us. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Yes, Ms. Hammack. 

Secretary HAMMACK. Thank you. One of the examples is what we 

are doing in Europe currently. We are scheduling and staging and 

planning our infrastructure reduction side by side with the inactivation of the Brigade Combat Teams. And so we are able to do 

it in a very systematic, programmatic manner to keep our costs in 

line as those brigades are inactivated. So we have the ability, we 

have the manpower to do it very systematically and programmatically. And that is the authority we are looking for here, to do 

the same in the United States as we reduce the number of Brigade 

Combat Teams in the Army. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Good. Thank you. Secretary Ferguson, the question is it seems that the Air Force has been the most vocal in a 

request for another round of BRAC. Can you tell me what aspect 

of the Air Force mission differs from other Services that would demand base closures? And how has your Department reviewed the 

long-term effects to ensure hidden costs do not put additional taxpayer money in jeopardy? 

Ms. FERGUSON. Thank you for the question. I think I would go 

back to some of what I said in the opening statement. As we executed through, as we entered into BRAC 2005, the Air Force determined we had 24-percent excess capacity across our installations in 

the United States. BRAC 2005 really—— 

Ms. BORDALLO. Is that just the U.S.? 

Ms. FERGUSON. That is just the U.S. In BRAC 2005 we really 

only closed eight minor locations that accounted for just .8 percent 

of our plant replacement value, so a very small amount. And since 

that time we have taken down force structure by over 500 airplanes. So we do believe we have excess capacity still out there 

that we would like to address to begin to save some costs. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you. One other final question, Mr. Chairman. As Lieutenant Governor of Guam at the time, I was in charge 

of BRAC 1995 and closing down the Naval Air Station. And I remember that after they closed down we were on a list for cleanup. 

Maybe Mr. Natsuhara can answer this. I remember we were very 

far down on the list of cleanup because it was an air base before, 

commercial—or rather a military. And we were very far down on 

the list of priorities. So I am wondering, I am curious with all the 

closures across the United States and wherever, what is the status 

of our cleanup now? Are we up to date, or do you still have a lot 

of areas that need cleaning up? And it is very costly. 

Mr. NATSUHARA. For the Navy, like I mentioned in my statement, 91 percent of our property authority has been disposed of, 

turned over to other uses. We still have 26 installations that we 

are working on as far as cleaning up. The funding, we are on 

schedule with our funding. We are working with all the local reuse 

authorities on their timelines. So we believe we are properly funding the cleanups to match our remaining bases. 

Ms. BORDALLO. So you still have 26, and so they are not being 

utilized, is that correct? 
14 

Mr. NATSUHARA. Correct. They are not full installations, most of 

them. Most of them are just partial installations that are left. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Do we have the funding for this? 

Mr. NATSUHARA. We do have funding in our budgets. We are 

matching the development plans of the local use authorities. We 

work very closely with them. 

Ms. BORDALLO. Mr. Secretary Conger, did you want to—— 

Mr. CONGER. Yeah. I appreciate it. I did want to talk a little bit 

about cleanup, because this is important. And people often think of 

cleanup as a bill that we are hiding. All right? And we are not. And 

what is interesting is if you look at the earlier BRAC rounds, there 

was a bigger cleanup burden. Pardon me for just a second. There 

was a bigger cleanup burden because as a whole the Department 

had a bigger cleanup burden. We have had a very active cleanup 

program at all of our active sites for the last 20 or 25 years. We 

have in fact—allow me to quote some statistics. From the 1988 

round, we have 92 percent of the sites either with a remedy in 

place or a response complete. 1991 BRAC round it is 96 percent. 

1993 round it is 93 percent. 1995 round we are at 74 percent, and 

2005 we are at 58 percent. But one of the interesting things is in 

the 2005 round, after many years of cleaning up our Active Duty 

bases, we had an order of magnitude almost of fewer sites that 

needed cleanup. So digest that for a second. We have been cleaning 

up all of our active bases in parallel with this very aggressively for 

the last 20 years. That means that if you close a base today, or say 

in the 2005 round, it is far less likely to have cleanup problems because we have been cleaning up those active bases. These are 

things—we should have been cleaning up those bases that closed 

anyway, and we would have been spending that money anyway because it is important for the people who are working and living on 

that base. 

Ms. BORDALLO. So what is your list today that remain to be 

cleaned up? 

Mr. CONGER. Yeah. If you look at the Department’s plans, we 

have a fairly aggressive projection that by 2018 we will have 90 

percent of the sites in the Department on all of our active bases, 

all the BRAC bases, cleaned up, response complete. By 2021, we 

project 95 percent. This is not the same situation we were in in 

1988 or 1995, for example. It is just a different world that we are 

in right now. 

Ms. BORDALLO. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Ranking Member Bordallo. 

We will now go to Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I guess each of you 

in your testimony you seem to believe very adamantly that there 

is excess capacity. Is that an accurate statement? Could you give 

us a list of where that excess capacity is? 

Mr. CONGER. No. That is why we have a BRAC analysis. 

Mr. SCOTT. Sir, how can you be so convinced that there is excess 

capacity if you don’t know where it is? 

Mr. CONGER. Because we did a study in 2004 that identified 

parametrically, because you don’t want to prejudge the BRAC process, because then people say you have a list of winners and losers. 

We don’t have that. So we did it parametrically. We did it in 2004. 
15 

We got a result of about 24-percent excess capacity. And we can 

map out what we actually closed in the 2005 round. And it is a lot 

less than that. And so that is why we think we have excess capacity. Plus the fact that we know how many people fewer that we are 

going to have. Moreover, in addition to the fact that we have forcestructure reductions, Congress asked us to reduce the number of civilians that we have got. And so that is going to create excess capacity too. 

Mr. SCOTT. Can I ask you, I am sorry, I am limited, how many 

of those came actually from the Pentagon? 

Mr. CONGER. The reduction in personnel? 

Mr. SCOTT. Yes. 

Mr. CONGER. I don’t have that information, but we can get it for 

the record. 

Mr. SCOTT. I would like to have that. I would like to know what 

the reduction in personnel has been at the Pentagon. And since you 

think it is necessary to do a 20-percent reduction in our uniformed 

soldiers in the Army, I would like to know if there is going to be 

a corresponding decrease in the bureaucracy at the Pentagon. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on 

page 75.] 

Mr. CONGER. Well, two things. One, I didn’t advocate, I am articulating, because we are the installations guys. We don’t decide 

how many fewer military we have. All right. The numbers that we 

are given imply an excess in infrastructure, and that is why we are 

thinking what we are thinking. But I get your point. 

Mr. SCOTT. Let me interrupt you right there, because I am sorry, 

I am just limited to 5 minutes. And you talked about energy costs. 

Mr. CONGER. Yeah. Utility bills. 

Mr. SCOTT. Absolutely. What do we pay for a gallon of jet fuel 

in the Air Force and the Navy? 

Mr. CONGER. I am going to defer to my Service colleagues to answer that question. I don’t know the answer. 

Ms. FERGUSON. I will have to take that and bring that back. I 

don’t have the current cost. 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on 

page 75.] 

Mr. SCOTT. I would appreciate that. I would appreciate if we 

could just get the average cost per gallon for jet fuel from the Air 

Force and the Navy. It is my understanding that we paid up to 100 

times as much as the private sector pays for fuel. And so when you 

talk about the fiscal constraints that we have that you report as 

one of the reasons that we need the BRAC, I guess my question 

would be couldn’t the Pentagon go back and look at some of the 

things that they have mandated on the bases, especially with regard to energy, where we are forcing our bases to spend more per 

kilowatt of energy, more per gallon of fuel, more per anything and 

everything that they do on our bases, quite honestly as a result of 

what seems to be a political agenda. Why can’t we relieve our bases 

from some of those mandates while we are in these times of such 

fiscal distress? 

Mr. CONGER. It is a fair question to ask why can’t we look for 

other ways—what restrictions, goals, can you ease up on to help 

save money. That is a good question. Now, two things. One, the jet 
16 

fuel is not in our—not in my bailiwick. I will have to defer that 

one. But when we think about energy projects on the bases, I tell 

you what, I am not—I am not urging anybody to spend extra 

money for a dream purpose, but for a green purpose. In other 

words, they need to have a business case if they are going to spend 

this money. They need to have a business case if—they need to 

show that they are going to reduce their utility bills. They are not 

doing this to—— 

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Conger, I apologize. I am down to 1 minute. But 

you would acknowledge that there is an anti-fossil fuel, or a mandate to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels in the DOD. 

Mr. CONGER. No, sir. 

Mr. SCOTT. Yes, sir, I think there is. 

Mr. CONGER. There is no mandate that I am familiar with. But 

I would be happy to—— 

[The information referred to can be found in the Appendix on 

page 75.] 

Mr. SCOTT. We will take that for the record. I am down to 45 seconds. But I would tell you this. We have a very serious situation 

with regard to the finances today in this country. And the bottom 

line is if we go through a BRAC today, it is going to increase 

spending for the next couple of years. And so while I don’t necessarily agree with you that we have excess capacity, what I will 

tell you is that I am absolutely convinced that now is not the time 

when we can afford a BRAC. So would you at least agree that if 

we had a BRAC today it would increase spending short term? 

Mr. CONGER. I would agree that any BRAC is going to have 

spending up front and savings later. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Scott. 

We will now go to Mr. Courtney. 

Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I feel like we are kind 

of shadow boxing here because we are trying to get our arms 

around obviously critical issues like Mr. Scott just asked about. 

And because we don’t have a budget and we don’t have an actual 

request officially for a BRAC, we I guess have to sort of speculate 

here a little bit. And so one way of trying to frame a question today 

is to go back a year ago, when Dr. Robyn was sitting across from 

us and was answering questions. She was peppered with a lot of 

questions about the 13-year breakpoint on the 2005 BRAC, which 

again a lot of us who have been on this committee for the last 7 

or 8 years have lived with it. And it is I think a question this Administration has to be ready to answer if it is going to come back 

later with a BRAC request. But her answer at that time was, well, 

you know, if you look at the prior BRACs, they actually achieved 

savings at a quicker pace, and therefore it was justified. So our office actually went back and looked at the 1985 through early 2000 

BRACs, and even in those cases it was quicker, but it was still 6 

years on average before, you know, you went from spending money 

to showing any kind of net savings. And, you know, we are in a 

situation right now where the Budget Control Act was passed in 

August of 2011. If your request for BRAC does materialize and it 

moves at mach speed through the Congress, which is, you know, 

we can’t agree on the day of the week around here, but in 2015 the 
17 

BRAC is actually carried out, again, using Dr. Robyn’s prediction 

of a better payout, we are still hitting 2021, which really doesn’t 

help us. I mean we are going to be living with budget caps through 

this entire period of time under the Budget Control Act. So Mr. 

Scott’s question still, you know, has to be answered, which is that 

this costs money. And if you are going to justify it within the context of the budget structure that we are living in here, you can’t 

make it work for the numbers. I mean to me it seems like a better 

question ought to be asked about what we are realigning in Afghanistan and Europe, which you talked about earlier here today. 

Secretary Carter appeared before this committee a few weeks ago 

and confirmed that we are still spending $2 billion a week in Afghanistan. I mean we are clearly rolling up a lot of facilities over 

there. It is going to be a challenge, as Ms. Hammack said, in terms 

of getting equipment and installations out of there. I mean why 

don’t we focus on that right now, which is frankly where I think 

the American people would feel a lot better about if we are going 

to start consolidating Pentagon infrastructure, it is in Afghanistan. 

And I mean if you are starting a new initiative in Europe, great. 

But, you know, can you share something with us on that? I mean 

what is the savings that this European initiative is going to be taking place? And in the meantime, I just feel like based on even the 

best case scenarios that Dr. Robyn presented, you know, this just 

doesn’t work within the Budget Control Act structure that we are 

all going to have to live with through 2021. 

Mr. CONGER. All right. So a couple different points. First, it is 

a fair thing to say that you have to spend money to make money 

in these kind of situations. You are investing—in the 2005 round, 

I will use that as an example, or previous ones, you are investing 

in infrastructure to move folks around—I apologize—you are investing in infrastructure to move folks around, and so therefore if 

you have a budget problem, this committee, the Appropriations 

Committee, the House and the Senate, everybody has to figure out 

whether any investment makes sense. Of course that makes sense. 

And so you have to prioritize, the Department has to prioritize, the 

Administration has to prioritize where they are going to allocate resources. We are not here making a specific request. But any investment—let me take an energy-efficiency project for an example, just 

because it is innocuous here. If we are going to make an investment in a building that will save money in utility bills and it pays 

back in, oh, I don’t know, 5 years or so, we have to decide whether 

to spend that money right now because we don’t have any money 

right now. Okay. And so that is part of the dynamic we are dealing 

with. If it is deemed that the investment in any sort of realignment 

or whatever that is going to yield significant savings out in the outyears, that this is something you can’t do right now, that is something for the principals, for—sorry. That is something for you all 

to work through. And if I missed any parts of your question I will 

get you on the second round. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Courtney. 

Mr. Forbes. 

Mr. FORBES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, for 

holding this hearing. And thank all of you for being here. Mr. Con-
18 

ger, you are doing a good job. We are glad to have you here. We 

appreciate your testimony and—— 

Mr. CONGER. Appreciate it. 

Mr. FORBES [continuing]. To all of you, we appreciate your service. And Ms. Hammack, I am always glad to get your opinion on 

things. And I just want to go back to a comment I think you made, 

but I want to make sure that I heard it. You said based on the 

force structure that we are having now, that down to that 490,000 

in the Army was based on the Budget Control Act and sequestration. And I want to take sequestration off the table just a minute, 

because General Odierno sat pretty close to where you sat, took up 

a little more space, but he sat there, and the testimony that I recalled him giving with all of this force structure before sequestration, they were still going to cut 80,000 people. I mean, that wasn’t 

based on sequestration. 

And what we were told over and over again by the Department 

of Defense was that all of these cuts was based upon the fact that 

there was this new strategic analysis that had been done for the 

country and that these cuts were made in alignment with that, and 

as the chairman alluded to earlier, that they weren’t done based 

on budget driving that, it was based on strategic needs. Am I misinterpreting either what you said or what General Odierno said? 

Secretary HAMMACK. I think we are saying the same thing, but 

in different ways, sir. 

Mr. FORBES. Okay. Help me with it, then. 

Secretary HAMMACK. The strategic realignment was done at a 

time where we were strategically reducing the size of our force, 

bringing forces back from overseas and facing cuts in budget. So 

everything—— 

Mr. FORBES. But can I—— 

Secretary HAMMACK [continuing]. Came together—— 

Mr. FORBES. I don’t want to interrupt you. I want you to be able 

to answer it, but that is—the cuts in budget, we specifically asked 

over and over and over again, are these cuts being driven by the 

budget or are they being driven by the new defense strategy? And 

we were told over and over again they are being driven by the new 

strategy. 

So is it your testimony today that this force structure was driven 

down based on budget cuts and budget numbers that were given, 

or was it based on the defense strategy? 

Secretary HAMMACK. I am saying it came from three things. It 

came from realigning forces coming out of Afghanistan, it came 

from the new national defense strategy, and it came from working 

to live within a declining budget from the Budget Control Act of 

2011. 

Mr. FORBES. If it came from the declining budget and the Budget 

Control Act, were those numbers lower than what would be necessary to meet the defense strategy? 

Secretary HAMMACK. I am not sure I can answer that at this 

point in time. 

Mr. FORBES. And the reason I raise it is because for the last 4 

years, if we take sequestration, which we are hearing so much 

about now and the amount which is going to be cut this year, the 

Administration has already cut 19 times that amount out of de-
19 

fense the last 4 years, and we have been pleading with folks from 

Mr. Conger’s office to come over here and tell us, that is too much, 

that is—we can’t do it, and we have heard crickets, you know, we 

have heard nothing. ‘‘It is okay. It is okay. It is okay.’’ 

And now my question would come back to the facilities part of 

this, which is your bailiwick. If, in fact, we knew that these numbers were going down to the figures that they were going down to, 

do you have enough money to operate the facilities and the installations without a BRAC, because, as Mr. Courtney pointed out and 

the chairman pointed out, you all knew, I know you did last year, 

you saw this committee, you knew we weren’t budging on BRAC, 

so the Army couldn’t figure on that. Do you have enough money to 

operate those facilities if you take sequestration off the table? 

Secretary HAMMACK. No. 

Mr. FORBES. Then why didn’t you guys tell us that when we were making these $800 billion in cuts? 

Secretary HAMMACK. Those comments were made in January and 

February. 

Mr. FORBES. Of what year? 

Secretary HAMMACK. Of this year. 

Mr. FORBES. The cuts were made in 2011 and before. Why didn’t 

you make any of those comments when those cuts were actually 

being made? And why did you wait until January, when the Budget Control Act was passed in 2011? 

Secretary HAMMACK. Okay. And I think maybe we may be talking two different things. For the Budget Control Act, that—— 

Mr. FORBES. That is all I am talking about. Not sequestration. 

Secretary HAMMACK. Okay. 

Mr. FORBES. Take sequestration off the table. 

Secretary HAMMACK. All right. Based upon the Budget Control 

Act that is returning the size of the Army back to the size we were 

pre-9/11, so pre-9/11 we were at 480 [480,000]. The Army plussedup, the Army grew, the Army built additional infrastructure and 

moved forces back from overseas to the United States to handle the 

load that we had in responding to the war on terror. 

Now as that war ceases and we withdraw combat forces from Afghanistan and reduce the size of our force back to pre-9/11, it is 

expected the budget will reduce. It is also expected that our need 

for infrastructure will shrink. 

Mr. FORBES. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Forbes. 

Mr. Loebsack. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the 

ranking member, too, both of you, for holding this hearing, very important hearing. It is good to see you folks here today. I appreciate 

your service to our country. I do have very significant concerns, of 

course, regarding reports, I think all of us do, that the budget request will include a request for two new rounds of BRAC. And I 

think, probably like maybe all of my colleagues, I do fundamentally 

question the wisdom behind the proposal at a time of significant 

budget uncertainty. 

I just want to reiterate, I think, a point that has been made by 

just about everyone. We know the significant upfront costs of 

BRAC and the savings that have not materialized in the prior 
20 

BRAC rounds. We have been over that already a little bit. I don’t 

think we should brush those numbers off, especially, as Mr. 

Courtney said, even if we are looking at a 6-year timeframe here 

for things to start paying off, if you will. 

I do think we should be looking at our basing structure overseas 

before looking at closing installations here at home. As a matter of 

a record, I want to put that on the record. That is what I believe. 

Ms. Hammack, I have a question for you. I was pleased to see 

in your written testimony that you refer to the Army’s organic industrial base as, ‘‘a national strategic asset,’’ to the joint force. I 

agree with you, as you know, that we must work to ensure our arsenals, our ammunition plants and our depots remain effective and 

efficient. And we all, I think, have the same view that that ought 

to be the case in the event of another contingency down the road, 

an unforeseen contingency. 

Can you elaborate on your statement in your written testimony 

that, ‘‘the Army must assess its current infrastructure in terms of 

capacity and capability to ensure that the organic industrial base 

is shaped properly’’? And how would the Army define an optimallysized industrial base? What criterion strategy would be used to determine that size and whether the organic industrial base footprint 

does need to be reduced, and, of course, the ways to reduce it? 

I know that is more than one question, but I think you get the 

gist of what I am asking. Thank you. 

Secretary HAMMACK. Thank you for the question. One of the 

great things that occurred as a result of the war in Afghanistan is 

we made significant investments in our industrial base. And as a 

mechanical engineer, I have enjoyed going to the facilities and looking at the equipment that has enabled us to respond to the needs 

of the warfight. And advanced technology and advanced equipment 

has increased our capability to produce the materiel needed for the 

warfight. 

As we size down, we are taking a look at those increased capabilities. And those increased capabilities that technology has given 

us is enabling us to work in a reduced footprint. So as we look at 

capacity, as we look at requirements, we are looking at what the 

footprint is that we need. And, again, coming from a manufacturing 

background, I had the unfortunate responsibility of consolidating 

four manufacturing facilities into one, because technology enabled 

us to have increased production in a smaller footprint. 

That is the advantage of technology, that is the advantage of the 

investments that we have made, is that we have increased our 

abilities, and it is time to look at our industrial base to ensure that 

we can reap those efficiencies for the long term. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. And, of course, we have to be thinking about it 

strategically, too, and I think this—you know, I can—I would reiterate some of the things that were already said here, especially by 

Mr. Forbes about certainly the concern is it budget, is it strategy, 

what is driving these decisions? And certainly when we are talking 

about organic industrial base, we have to keep in mind that we 

may very well have contingencies down the road and we have to 

make sure that we have an industrial base that is going to be 

there, that is going to be ready, that is going to be warm, that 

could be utilized in the event of another contingency or series of 
21 

contingencies down the road. We all hope we are not going to have 

those, but in the event that we do, we have really got to be ready. 

That is why we are doing this, you know, on the Readiness Subcommittee in that sense. And I appreciate your efforts along those 

lines. 

I want to stay in touch going forward as co-chair of the Depot 

Caucus, obviously. And ammunitions and ammunition plants arsenals as well, it is very, very important. 

I would like now to move to Mr. Conger. As you know, many installations have multiple organizations based at them. These complement each other’s missions as well, yet decisions regarding the 

location of organizations during past BRAC rounds have been made 

sometimes without consideration of the mission and cost efficiencies created by their collocation. 

Would the Department look at installations as a whole moving 

forward to ensure that a transfer of one organization doesn’t make 

another more inefficient in that sense? 

Mr. CONGER. I think it is an important point, and it is part of 

the calculation for military value, which is the paramount criteria 

we measure. Now, there is some subjectivity there, but what you 

are characterizing is a subjective kind of a thing, and those are, by 

all means, included. And this is not the only kind of subjective element of military value that is evaluated. 

Mr. LOEBSACK. I think it is important along these lines, I know 

that folks are able—who make these decisions are able to visit different locations, but I think it is really important to keep in mind 

that there are bases, there are locations, there are facilities around 

this country that have empty spaces, for example, that could be utilized. And I think we have to be very, very careful moving forward 

that we take into consideration those installations where there 

might be tens of thousands of feet that could be utilized on a collocation basis, to make sure that the mission is, in fact, able to be 

carried out in the future. So it is just a suggestion, more than anything else, for you to take back with you. 

Thanks very much to all four of you. I appreciate your service. 

And thank you, Mr. Chair. And I yield back. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Loebsack. 

Ms. Noem. 

Mrs. NOEM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Conger, a question 

for you. If dollars haven’t been appropriated for a BRAC process 

and there hasn’t been excess funds that have been dedicated towards that, what do you plan to use in order to fund the BRAC 

process? Have funds been diverted from another area of your budget? What are the plans that have gone into making sure that it is 

actually paid for and accounted for? 

Mr. CONGER. Well, two answers to that question. First, we 

haven’t asked for a BRAC round, and so we don’t have dollars appropriated for a BRAC round. 

Mrs. NOEM. Correct. 

Mr. CONGER. If—— 

Mrs. NOEM. Would you agree—— 

Mr. CONGER. I would imagine that any time one would request 

such a thing, that we would have to have dollars associated with 

the analysis. 
22 

Mrs. NOEM. And do you agree that in the current environment, 

more than likely those funds would have to be diverted from another area of the Department of Defense’s current funding levels, 

considering that we are in a bit of a fiscal situation? 

Mr. CONGER. I would imagine that in any case we are talking 

about a zero-sum game when it comes to the budget, that there has 

to be a prioritization for anything. 

Mrs. NOEM. And there could be the possibility of shortchanging 

our men and women that defend this country. 

Mr. CONGER. I would hope that anybody who puts together the 

defense budget that comes over here wouldn’t dream of shortchanging the men and women who serve the country in any 

prioritization that they make. 

Mrs. NOEM. Thank you. 

Ms. Ferguson, I have a couple questions for you. In a future 

BRAC process, will the Air Force be focusing on eliminating any 

particular category of excess base infrastructure? 

Ms. FERGUSON. At this time, we have not done any type of analysis. As Mr. Conger pointed out earlier, as we would get the legislation passed from the Congress along with the criteria of military 

value, we would look at all installations across the United States 

Air Force, but we have not done anything so far. 

Mrs. NOEM. So the 24-percent excess is just in general across the 

Air Force, not specifically identified at this time? 

Ms. FERGUSON. That is correct. 

Mrs. NOEM. Do you believe that the most—or least disruptive 

way to approach this from a national security level would be, and 

national readiness, would to first focus on support systems such as 

military schools and—rather than going after seeking to close bases 

that house bombers or fighter wings? 

Ms. FERGUSON. I think I will defer that to Mr. Conger to answer 

that one from a more strategic perspective. 

Mr. CONGER. Okay. Thanks. I think that it would be—two 

things. One, we haven’t asked for a BRAC round, but let us talk 

in the abstract for a second. In advance of any BRAC round, we 

do our best not to prejudge, to imply any sort of a result. So we 

don’t have a list of what is likely to happen if there was a BRAC 

round; that we would wait until the actual authorization from Congress, because it would be inappropriate for us to start that kind 

of thing ahead of time. 

Mrs. NOEM. Okay. Well, I do want to thank you for your service, 

and I do look forward to helping all branches of our military look 

for efficiencies that we can find and agreement that we can find, 

whether or not there is another BRAC round or if one would potentially be requested throughout in the future. So thank you. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mrs. Noem. 

We will now go to Mrs. Shea-Porter. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Thank you very much. A year ago when the 

budget hearings were held for the Services, General Odierno stated, ‘‘I don’t think you will see a big Army installation being asked 

to close. We think we have the right footprint.’’ And that is a quote. 

And Admiral Greenert said regarding a Navy BRAC, ‘‘nothing 

jumps out at this point to me about installations that should close.’’ 
23 

This was just a year ago, and really nothing has changed substantially between then and now except for the implementation of 

sequestration. Would you still stand by these statements from the 

views from last year? If not, what has happened in the past 12 

months to military requirements, leaving aside the budgetary considerations, to change your views? 

Secretary HAMMACK. In reference to the comment made by General Odierno, he doesn’t envision a big Army installation that 

would close and he doesn’t have in his mind—as Mr. Conger stated, 

none of us have in our mind right now, because the analysis has 

not been done. 

When we look at a military value analysis, we take a look at the 

training capabilities, and so when we talk about a big Army installation, quite often those are the ones that have very large training 

lands or very large training areas, and they have a high military 

value and would bear differently in an evaluation of capabilities 

than maybe a smaller base would be. So he accurately portrayed 

that in his mind right now, he cannot name one. 

As we said, we have not done the capacity analysis to determine 

where the excess infrastructure is, nor have we done the military 

value analysis that determines if our bases are in the right locations or where that we need to be located. 

Mr. NATSUHARA. And to be consistent with Admiral Greenert, I 

believe on the second part of that, to paraphrase him, that he also 

said that he thought doing an analysis would be good to look at our 

infrastructure. So I think we are still remaining consistent on that. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Okay. Thank you. I also would like to ask you 

specifically about the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, which was on 

the list, as you all know, in 2005. And my concern is losing ever, 

and almost lost at that time, a public yard where the cost of repairing nuclear subs is less, and the availability, having a 24/7 yard 

like that, how do you calculate the cost of closing, or when you 

even look at a public yard, versus transferring the work elsewhere 

and how heavily do you weigh that into the considerations? 

Mr. NATSUHARA. Since a BRAC round hasn’t been requested, 

when we—if we do do another BRAC round, the selection criteria 

will have to be established in the military value. So as we have all 

stated, you know, there is nothing, then, that has been decided, 

there is no predecisional selections. 

Going forward on the next analysis, depending on the criteria, we 

will do a thorough analysis, and based on that analysis and the 

public—and your inputs, we will make a decision, but we don’t 

have a predecision on any of the bases right now. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. Okay. Thank you. I would like to thank you 

all for being here. I realize this is a difficult moment for you, as 

well as for us, as we look at this, but I do want to express my concerns and what you have heard from my colleagues as well about 

the ability to actually carry out any of this, given the budgetary 

considerations and the ultimate costs, especially at this time. 

Thank you. And I yield back. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mrs. Shea-Porter. 

We will now go to Mrs. Hartzler. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good to be here and 

to visit with you about this very important issue. And Secretary 
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Hammack, I wanted to say hello again from Fort Leonard Wood 

and thank you for coming and visiting. And we appreciate that and 

your efforts to get out on the installations. And I wanted to try to 

get this clarified in my mind about the force structure and the installation footprint that we have. It seems like pre-9/11, you said 

we had 480,000 and—okay. And then there was a BRAC in 2005. 

How many installations were closed with that? 

Secretary HAMMACK. Overall, I think there were 24 installations. 

And of the Army—I think there were 13 installations. If I can 

think of—some of them were depots or Army ammunition plants. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Okay. So 13 total. But now you are saying that 

with the drawdown back from Afghanistan, our force structure will 

be somewhere around 480,000 again? Okay. Then how come there 

is a thinking that we need to close more installations, because it 

seems like we have the same number of troops, the same force 

structure at actually less installations than they had pre-9/11? 

Secretary HAMMACK. Certainly. And thank you for that question. 

You know, I pulled numbers on the Army end strength going back 

to 1919. It was very interesting to look at the ebb and flow in the 

size of the Army. 

At its peak in 1945, the Army had 8,267,000 soldiers. At that 

point in time, the Army built a lot of infrastructure. And in the 

lexicon of the infrastructure environment, we call a lot of this 

World War II wood. Much of that remains today: some of it in excess, waiting for demolition dollars; some of it has transferred to 

the Guard and Reserve, but we have a lot of infrastructure. 

If you look at the next high point, the next high point was in 

1968 with 1,570,000 soldiers. We have declined since that time to 

1989, when there was an infrastructure analysis as part of BRAC 

process. We were at 769,000 soldiers. We reached a low in 1999 of 

479,700, which is at about that 480,000 I mentioned, and that was 

the lowest point since before World War II. 

The Army has a lot of infrastructure. The Army has had a lot 

of infrastructure. And through the years, we have worked to refine 

it, we have worked to transfer it, we have worked to shrink it, and 

these BRAC rounds have assisted us to right-size the infrastructure along with the size of our force. 

As Mr. Conger stated, the analysis done by OSD [Office of the 

Secretary of Defense] identified that the military services overall 

had 24-percent excess infrastructure, and the BRAC 2005 round 

shrunk that by about 5 or 6 percent. That means there is still excess infrastructure. And I know on many of the bases I go to, even 

on some of the industrial bases—I was just on one that had 800 

buildings, and we were utilizing 300 of them. 

The Army does have excess infrastructure, we continue to have 

excess infrastructure. And in the United States, it takes authorization from Congress for us to significantly reduce it. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. I just wanted to make sure that our troops coming back that will still be there in the force still have adequate facilities to train and to be housed in and things. 

And I know votes are occurring, but I wanted to ask real quick, 

your comment about the CR problem, $6 billion short in operation 

and maintenance. Question: We passed a CR last week attaching 
25 

the DOD approps [appropriations] bill to it. Will that help with 

that problem? 

Secretary HAMMACK. And thank you very much. That helps. It 

does not completely fix our problem. We remain having a problem, 

especially on operations and maintenance, but our OCO [Overseas 

Contingency Operations] problem is a big problem on how do we 

retrograde that equipment from theater. 

Mrs. HARTZLER. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mrs. Hartzler. 

We will now go to Mr. Barber. 

Mr. BARBER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member. 

And thank you for coming today to testify on this very important 

topic. My first question, and I may only get one in, because we are 

going to be going to vote shortly, is for you, Secretary Ferguson. It 

has to do with the F–35 [Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter] and the 

basing of the F–35s and the decisions that will be made in the next 

year or two. How do you think, if it isn’t, in fact, likely, that the 

BRAC could impact on the timing of those basing decisions? 

I know that the Air Force is currently engaged in site surveys, 

they have had some in my community as well, but I am interested 

in knowing how BRAC may impact on that. And secondly, how will 

the Air Force weigh the information that you have gleaned from 

the site surveys as you consider possible BRAC procedures? 

Ms. FERGUSON. Thank you for the question. F–35 is—as you likely know right now, we are in the middle of finalizing the environmental impact statements for the first operational locations. The 

first operational locations have been identified as Hill Air Force 

Base, as the preferred and reasonable alternative for the first Active Duty location, and Burlington, Vermont, as the first operational location for the Air National Guard. We are completing the 

environmental impact statement for those right now. Those will 

then be presented to our chief and secretary for final decision, and 

then a final decision will be made on that later this year. 

The next time we anticipate needing to make a decision for F– 

35 will be some time in fiscal year 2017, and so the timing of that 

decision will be—or let me—it will depend on the timing of BRAC 

also, but certainly any basing decision, whether it is F–35 or any 

other basing decision, would potentially get linked up with a 

BRAC, but as you look at the bed-down for the F–35, the bed-down 

for the F–35 is going to go on for many, many years to come, and 

we will work through the processes as it falls out. 

Mr. BARBER. I think, Mr. Chairman, I better yield back. It is 

time for us to go to vote. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you 

all for coming and for your service. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Barber. 

I want to go down to Mr. Palazzo so we can finish up. 

Mr. PALAZZO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I also want to 

thank our witnesses for being here today and for your testimony. 

And I will keep my remarks fairly brief. I don’t really have questions, but I do just want to bring up something. I noticed your bios, 

that pretty much all four of you are engineers by trade or your 

training and your education. Well, I am a CPA [Certified Public Accountant], I am a certified public accountant, and I come from industry and I have also worked in quasigovernment agencies and 
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things of that nature. And the one thing that I know most successful businesses and most successful government agencies have always relied upon is reliable financial statements, financial statements that are typically audited by independent public audits 

through other CPA firms and things of that nature. 

The House Armed Services Committee under Chairman McKeon 

actually set up a panel in 2011, and it was the Financial Independence Audit Readiness Panel, and we had over eight meetings very 

early in the morning, Congressman Courtney was a member of the 

panel as well as Congressman Andrews and a few others, myself, 

and the one thing was that, you know, we had Robert Hale, we had 

a lot of people come in and tell us that it was important that we 

could provide reliable financial statements for DOD, and they set 

September 30th, 2017, as the deadline. 

And it is so important, because when you make any type of business decision, you just don’t make business decisions, especially in 

the real world, you don’t make, you know, across-the-board cuts 

like, you know, we did in sequestration. That is just not the smart 

way of doing business, or you won’t be in business for long. 

But we have an oversight function in Congress, and I am very— 

I am a strong believer in being able to rely on financial statements 

that have been audited by an independent group. So, I mean, I am 

not going to say I ever want to hear the words ‘‘BRAC,’’ but I definitely don’t want to hear them until I can—you know, I have reliable financial information that I can depend and make value-based 

decisions, and that I can go back and not only tell my constituents, 

but the American people can see that these are wise decisions, this 

is what the decisions were based upon. 

I think it is extremely important to have those kind of financial 

statements so Congress can fulfill its oversight mission, you know, 

for the American taxpayer. And it is with that I will yield back. 

Mr. CONGER. Can I have 15 seconds—— 

Mr. PALAZZO. Thank you. 

Mr. CONGER [continuing]. To respond to that? 

Mr. WITTMAN. Please. Quickly. 

Mr. CONGER. One, the Secretary is committed to having such a 

statement; and, two, we are deeply integrated with GAO when we 

do this process, and they are our auditors, for lack of a better description. So they are a big part of this, and I would recommend 

you talk to them about their opinion about how we do it. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Well, I would like to wrap up with thanking our 

witnesses for coming today. Thank you for answering our questions. 

I do want to close with a pretty direct statement. I haven’t heard 

anything today that indicates that there is a rational basis to pursue a BRAC, nor are there dollars available during these very austere times by which to pursue a BRAC. And with that, I want you 

to know that I am adamantly opposed to the pursuit of a BRAC 

at this particular time. I think that we have many, many other 

issues that we have to deal with with budgeting and strategy within the military. This is not the time to pursue a BRAC. 

And I will go to my ranking member to see if she has any closing 

comments before we leave. 
27 

Ms. BORDALLO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I guess I will 

have to concur with your thoughts. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you. Thank you, Ranking Member 

Bordallo. And with that, the Subcommittee on Readiness is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 5:00 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

A P P E N D I X 

MARCH 14, 2013 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

MARCH 14, 2013 

(33) 

Statement of Hon. Robert J. Wittman 

Chairman, House Subcommittee on Readiness 

Hearing on 

Is Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Appropriate 

at This Time? 

March 14, 2013 

Welcome to this afternoon’s hearing. I’d like to thank our panel 

of experts for being here today to address ‘‘whether BRAC is appropriate at this time.’’ 

After reading your opening statements, I understand one of the 

principal reasons why the Department requested a BRAC round 

last year was because of the imbalance between infrastructure and 

future force structure. This imbalance was caused by reduced force 

structure level imposed by the Budget Control Act. Unfortunately, 

this is a very good example of a poor plan. Whenever budget drives 

strategy, poor decisions result which in this case includes a reduced 

force structure. 

I categorically reject this notion that presumes to balance the 

Federal budget on the backs of our service members. Having budget decisions driving strategy is both immoral and only increases the 

likelihood of service men and women not returning from future 

combat. I believe that the Department of Defense needs a robust 

military capacity and that any diminution of this capacity should 

be staunchly opposed. 

Furthermore, this assertion that a reduction of 100,000 service 

members is a principal reason to have a BRAC round today is 

shortsighted. I compared the BRAC 2005 force structure numbers 

with the 2017 future force structure proposed by the Department. 

While it is true that we will have reduced the Active force structure by 130,000 service members, this is almost completely offset 

by the increase in civilian personnel of 120,000 over the same period. Where is the excess infrastructure? I have yet to see any empirical evidence that would provide even the slightest degree of 

support for another round of BRAC. 

As to the BRAC process itself, BRAC 2005 was an absolute failure. Cost estimates to implement BRAC 2005 recommendations 

have increased from $21 billion to $35 billion (66 percent) compared to the Commission’s reported estimates. GAO determined 

that BRAC 2005 payback would not occur for 13 years (until 2018). 

Even more efficient BRAC initiatives of the 1990s did not pay back 

until a few years after the BRAC implementation was finalized. At 

a time when there is significant variability in the budget and the 

ensuing force structure, would a BRAC round be effective in pro-
34 

viding rapid savings? Unfortunately, history has emphatically told 

us, ‘‘NO.’’ 

I believe that the Department should pursue a multiprong strategy that fully utilizes the available capacity. Leveraging the private sector to support the military and use excess infrastructure 

provides a valuable revenue stream in a time of diminishing resources. Furthermore, the Army and the Marine Corps heavily relied on temporary facilities to support the Grow the Force initiatives. I think that we need to reduce this temporary infrastructure 

first before we move forward with eliminating entire bases and 

other permanent infrastructure. 

While I look forward to the discussion today with our esteemed 

group of witnesses to see if there is a compelling argument to 

change my position, I continue to have significant reservations with 

authorizing another BRAC round because of critical flaws in terms 

of both the process and the underlying assumptions. I believe that 

aggressively moving forward with a BRAC round could significantly harm our military and their ability to project power. 

Joining us today are: 

• Mr. John Conger, Acting Deputy Under Secretary of Defense 

for Installations and Environment; 

• Honorable Katherine Hammack, Assistant Secretary of the 

Army for Installations, Energy and Environment; 

• Mr. Roger Natsuhara, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary 

of the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment; and 

• Mrs. Kathleen Ferguson, Acting Assistant Secretary of the 

Air Force for Installations, Environment and Logistics. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you all very much for being here. 

I appreciated your thoughtful statements and your insights into 

this complex topic. 

While I understand that we are in challenging budget times, it 

is a matter of record that this Administration has been unable to 

deliver a timely budget request for the fourth consecutive year. 

Considering this late submission, I understand that our witnesses 

will not be able to comment on the record as to whether the Administration will support a request for another round of BRAC in the 

fiscal year 2014 budget request. However, the Administration did 

request two additional rounds of BRAC in last year’s budget request and former Secretary of Defense Panetta indicated his support for additional infrastructure consolidations earlier this year. I 

expect our witnesses to be able to discuss their thoughts as to the 

applicability of BRAC with the current force structure and overseas 

force posture. 
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WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING 

THE HEARING 

MARCH 14, 2013 

(75) 

RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. SCOTT 

Mr. CONGER. BRAC 2005 eliminated 1,490 civilians positions in the National Capital Region which includes the Pentagon. In implementing these reductions we utilized government-owned office space like the Pentagon in order to minimize leasing 

costs. As such, the Pentagon’s population remains constant commensurate with its 

designed capacity. [See page 15.] 

Mr. CONGER. Section 142 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 

and Executive Order 13423, Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and 

Transportation Management, requires Federal agencies to achieve a 20 percent reduction in non-tactical fleet vehicle petroleum consumption by FY 2015 compared 

to a FY 2005 baseline. Executive Order 13514, Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance extends the reduction goal to 30 percent 

by FY 2020. In FY 2012, DOD’s non-tactical vehicle petroleum consumption was 

19.5 percent below the baseline compared to a goal of 14%. The DOD continues to 

pursue replacement of fleet vehicles with more efficient models, Alternative Fuel Vehicles, and hybrid electric vehicles to decrease petroleum consumption. [See page 

16.] 

Ms. FERGUSON. In Fiscal Year 2012 (FY12), the Air Force consumed 2.24 billion 

gallons of aviation fuel at a total cost of $7.92 billion, which results in an average 

cost of $3.53 a gallon. [See page 15.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

MARCH 14, 2013 

(79) 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. WITTMAN 

Mr. WITTMAN. Has the Secretary of Defense assessed whether excess infrastructure exists in the Department? What empirical support can the Department provide 

to support a request for additional BRAC rounds? 

Mr. CONGER. Parametric techniques used to analyze aggregate assessment of excess capacity in 2004 indicated that the Department had 24 percent excess overall 

relative to the force-structure plan developed by the Joint Staff. Because BRAC 

2005 eliminated only about three percent of the Department’s capacity, we believe 

we have significant excess at the aggregate level today. In addition, force-structure 

reductions in the Army (from 570,000 to 490,000 Active Duty personnel), in the Marine Corps (from 202,000 to 182,000 Active Duty personnel), and in the Air Force 

(reduced by 500 aircrafts) subsequent to the 2004 analysis point to additional 

excess. 

We believe the only fair and thorough way to determine whether there is excess 

capacity within the Department is to conduct the analysis in BRAC using certified 

data that collects detailed information from each base across a broad array of many 

metrics and compares this information to force structure. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Considering BRAC 2005 will not realize a payback on the $35 billion investment until 2018, 13 years after the start of the initial investment, can 

we afford to exacerbate the budget constraints placed on the Department of Defense 

by sequestration by undertaking an additional round of BRAC? 

Mr. CONGER. BRAC is a key priority to the Department and we will apply the 

resources necessary to support both a robust and thorough BRAC analysis and an 

efficient and effective implementation process. BRAC is expensive, to be sure, but 

it begins generating savings almost immediately, and those savings will partially 

offset its initial costs. Moreover, BRAC will generate recurring savings far in excess 

of the upfront investment. Furthermore, because BRAC 2005 was conducted during 

a period of growth and focused more on transformation than elimination of excess 

capacity, it was significantly more costly than prior rounds. The first four rounds 

of BRAC, which cost (in today’s dollars) $3.9B, $6.5B, $10.2B, and $8.5B, respectively, are a better gauge of what a capacity reduction round might cost. 

Mr. WITTMAN. GAO recommended that targets for eliminating excess capacity be 

provided as a selection criterion. This is particularly relevant considering the Department estimated 24% excess capacity in BRAC 2005 but closed less than 5% of 

the DOD infrastructure. DOD opposes this GAO recommendation because it ‘‘may 

lead the Department to pursue suboptimal recommendations that maximize square 

footage reductions.’’ Can you explain why infrastructure reductions are not the preeminent requirement? 

Mr. CONGER. We agree that the existence of excess infrastructure capacity 

underlies the need for BRAC. What concerns the Department about GAO’s report 

is its emphasis on establishing goals, measurements of effectiveness, and capacity 

reduction targets rather than on optimizing military value. The premise that we 

should be required to close a particular number of bases or eliminate a particular 

number of civilian jobs is arbitrary, counterproductive, and would undermine military capability. Again, the overall rationale for BRAC is driven by the presence of 

excess infrastructure and the need to optimize the allocation of infrastructure to 

support military forces, individual recommendations should be based primarily on 

optimizing military value. Goals or targets would subvert that process. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Considering the significant variability associated with the budget 

and the resulting force structure, is it premature to initiate a BRAC round? In 

terms of force structure and budget, what planning factors would the Department 

use to determine the appropriate infrastructure requirements? 

Mr. CONGER. The current budget situation and declining forces make it even more 

important to reduce overhead. The Department believes we have excess capacity in 

our infrastructure. Parametric techniques used to analyze aggregate assessment of 

excess capacity in 2004 indicated that the Department had 24 percent excess overall 

relative to force structure plans developed by the Joint Staff. Because BRAC 2005 

eliminated only about three percent of the Department’s capacity, we believe we 

have significant excess today. 
80 

A BRAC round would be based on a 20-year Force structure plan and a 20-year 

threat assessment. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Please provide an update as to when the Department is expected 

to complete the Study on Overseas Basing Presence of United States Forces required in Section 347 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 

2012. As a foundational document, shouldn’t the Department complete the overseas 

basing assessment before an authorization for an additional round of BRAC is 

provided? 

Mr. CONGER. An independent assessment of the Department’s overseas basing of 

military forces, as required by Section 347 of the FY12 NDAA, was completed by 

the RAND Corporation on December 31st. The Department delivered the assessment and the Deputy Secretary’s comments in response to the assessment to the 

congressional defense committees on April 18. Generally speaking, it is beneficial to 

undertake reviews of overseas and domestic infrastructure in tandem, so each can 

inform the other. 

We believe the only fair and thorough way to determine whether there is excess 

capacity within the Department is to conduct the analysis in BRAC using certified 

data that collects detailed information from each base across a broad array of many 

metrics and compares this information to force structure. 

Mr. WITTMAN. The difference between the commissions cost estimates and the actual costs identified by GAO varied significantly in BRAC 2005, with a 66% increase 

over the commission’s estimate. . In the March 2013 report, GAO recommended that 

DOD ‘‘improve the process for fully identifying recommendation-specific military 

construction requirements.’’ DOD disagreed with this finding. If an additional round 

of BRAC was authorized, how would the Department ensure a greater deal of accuracy in cost estimates and cost stability when executing the BRAC recommendations? 

Mr. CONGER. As I indicated in my written statement, GAO’s 2012 report found 

that most of the cost increase could be tied to only 14 of 182 recommendations. 

Those increases were largely due to deliberate and subsequent decisions to expand 

the originally-envisioned scope of construction and recapitalization to address deficiencies in our enduring facilities or to expand the capabilities they provide as opposed to issues of accuracy. Second, BRAC 2005 occurred during a time of growth 

(both personnel and resources) and as such contributed to scope increases. A future 

BRAC round would be similar to in terms of cost and savings to that of the 1993 

and 1995 rounds which had quicker payback (two to three years). Third, we will incorporate our own lessons learned and the findings of GAO to improve our cost estimating particularly for areas such as information technology. 

Mr. WITTMAN. With the exception of the Army and Air Force, the other Service 

Chiefs generally indicated last year that they did not anticipate any major closures 

or realignments as a result of a future BRAC authorization. Why would the Department request broad authority for an additional BRAC authorization when significant excess infrastructure does not appear to exist across the Department? 

Mr. CONGER. Parametric techniques used to analyze aggregate assessment of excess capacity in 2004 indicated that the Department had 24 percent excess overall 

relative to force structure plans developed by the Joint Staff. Because BRAC 2005 

eliminated only about three percent of the Department’s capacity, we believe we 

have significant excess at the aggregate level today. In addition, force-structure reductions in the Army (from 570,000 to 490,000 Active Duty personnel), in the Marine Corps (from 202,000 to 182,000 Active Duty personnel), and in the Air Force 

(reduced by 500 aircrafts) subsequent to the 2004 analysis point to additional excess. We believe the only fair and thorough way to determine whether there is excess capacity within the Department is to conduct the analysis in BRAC using certified data that collects detailed information from each base across a broad array 

of many metrics and compares this information to force structure. 

Mr. WITTMAN. What is the purpose of BRAC? Is it to enhance military value or 

is it to close installations and reap savings? What are the advantages to retaining 

the existing selection criteria that includes military value as the principal criterion? 

Mr. CONGER. BRAC is a statutory process by which the Department can comprehensively examine how well its infrastructure supports its force structure, and 

close and realign installations to improve that relationship. As such, the purpose of 

BRAC is to both optimize military value and reduce excess capacity through closing 

installations and that process reaps savings. The advantage of giving the military 

value criteria primary consideration is that when coupled with a 20-year force structure plan, the DOD and the Commission’s decisions are based on a rational analytical process. This is why we welcomed Congress’ decision in BRAC 2005 to make 

DOD’s practice of placing primary consideration on military value a legal requirement, and why our proposal last year contained the same provision. 
81 

Mr. WITTMAN. The Army has prepared a Programmatic Environmental Assessment to study the force-structure reductions from 562,000 to 490,000 soldiers. Is 

this assessment a method to obviate a BRAC assessment? What inefficiencies will 

be created without using the BRAC process to reduce the force structure? Can you 

provide a better understanding of the timing associated with this effort? How are 

communities best able to provide input into this process? 

Secretary HAMMACK. The Army’s reduction in force structure and end strength 

analyzed in the Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) is not an attempt 

to obviate a BRAC assessment. The Army has an obligation to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires an assessment of the environmental impacts of proposed actions prior to making irretrievable commitments 

of Federal resources. The Army conducted the PEA to comply with NEPA and consider the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of its force structure actions and 

proposed alternatives. 

The Army’s mandated force-structure reductions will create excess capacity at several installations. If an installation’s assigned military forces are reduced significantly, it logically follows that some civilian personnel functions may no longer be 

required to support our Soldiers and Families. The Army has not yet initiated any 

capacity analysis to determine the level of civilian personnel and infrastructure necessary to support a reduced force level. Determining whether excess capacity will 

exist across many installations, or will be concentrated in a few installations, cannot 

occur until after force structure and associated stationing decisions are made. 

Under current and foreseeable budget constraints, the Army will not be able to 

maintain that excess capacity without negatively impacting military readiness and 

other critical investments. The restrictions currently imposed by 10 USC § 2687 and 

Title 40 real property disposal authorities make it difficult for the Army to efficiently eliminate excess capacity once it has been identified. That process also results in attempting to eliminate excess infrastructure at each installation piecemeal 

rather than using the holistic and Joint/cross-service approach facilitated by the 

BRAC Commission process. 

BRAC’s proven decision making approach promotes efficiencies by optimizing military and civilian moves and excess property disposal in conjunction with current 

and future mission capabilities. It is for this reason that the Army supports authorization for additional BRAC authority to ensure that personnel and infrastructure 

capacity is properly aligned with planned force structure changes. 

The PEA was released for public comment on January 18, 2013. On February 19, 

2013, the mandatory 30-day public comment period was extended to March 21, 

2013. A Finding of No Significant Impact (FNSI) was signed on April 4, 2013, and 

a Notice of Availability (NOA) was published in the Federal Register on April 12, 

2013. The Army must reduce and reorganize its force structure in order to achieve 

the fiscal reductions required by the Budget Control Act of 2011, consistent with the 

reduction of commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the National Military Strategy. The Secretary of Defense issued guidance in January 2012 that the Army will 

reduce its Active Component end strength to 490,000 by the end of FY2017, and inactivate at least eight Brigade Combat Teams. The process has already started. 

Overseas forces are being reduced first, with two Brigade Combat Teams inactivating in Europe. To accomplish the remaining reductions inside the United 

States, the Army is currently analyzing all available options. At this time, no decisions have been made. 

The Army welcomes community input, and has taken steps to afford affected communities multiple opportunities to provide input into this process. First, the PEA 

for Army 2020 Force Structure Realignment and the draft FNSI were released for 

60 days of public comment. After signing the FNSI on April 4, 2013, the Army 

began holding ‘‘community listening sessions’’ at 30 installations that have a combined permanent party Army military and Army civilian population of 5,000 or 

greater. 

Listening sessions give the public and community leaders (e.g., Local, State, and 

Federal officials and staff; Chamber of Commerce, etc.) an opportunity to provide 

direct input and key community-unique points of interest they believe the Army 

should consider in its stationing decision process. The primary focus of these sessions is to capture community input for Senior Leaders to consider as part of the 

Army’s overall process, before final decisions are made. The first session was held 

on April 12, 2013, and the sessions ran throughout the month of April. 

Mr. WITTMAN. How will the decision to withdraw two BCTs from Europe impact 

the realignment decisions in the United States? 

Secretary HAMMACK. The decision to inactivate two BCTs in Europe was part of 

a larger effort to reduce Active Component end strength to 490,000 Soldiers by the 

end of FY17 in order to achieve the fiscal reductions required by the Budget Control 
82 

Act of 2011. To achieve the reductions, the Army analyzed the stationing of all units 

within the US and overseas. Inactivating two BCTs in Europe accomplishes multiple 

objectives. It preserves more units inside the US. As a result, the Army will adjust 

and consolidate units in Europe to its enduring bases and close smaller, less modernized bases 

Mr. WITTMAN. Has the Army participated in the overseas posture review and does 

the Army believe that the overseas force structure is correct in terms of position and 

size? How can Congress move forward with considering a BRAC if the Department 

has not concluded this analysis? 

Secretary HAMMACK. The Army is a member of the Global Posture Process and 

participates at all levels of the overall Department discussion of overseas posture 

and prioritization each year. The Army coordinates and provides input to each Global Posture Executive Council (GPEC) deliberation. Although Army forward stationed 

forces in Europe and Korea have decreased over the past decade, the current plan 

focuses on the right locations and structure, adequate to meet requirements of Combatant Commanders and to assure our Allies. 

The decline in force structure inside the United States will require the Army to 

bring infrastructure and civilian staffing into proper alignment with force structure 

demands. An independent assessment of the Department’s overseas basing of military forces, as required by Section 347 of the FY12 NDAA, was completed by the 

RAND Corporation on December 31st. The Department delivered the assessment 

and the Deputy Secretary’s comments in response to the assessment to the Congressional Defense Committees on April 18th. Generally speaking, it is beneficial to undertake reviews of overseas and domestic infrastructure in tandem, so each can inform the other. 

Mr. WITTMAN. During the Navy Posture Hearing of February 16, 2012, the Chief 

of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert and Commandant of the Marine 

Corps General James Amos said they did not see any bases they needed to close. 

Admiral Greenert said when he looks at his current bases, ‘‘Nothing jumps out at 

me.’’ But he said he would support the process because it might reveal something. 

General Amos noted he did not see any bases he would offer to cut. ‘‘My sense is, 

we’re pretty lean,’’ he said. Does Navy and Marine Corps seek another round of 

BRAC? Has the Navy assessed its overall infrastructure enterprise to determine 

whether excess infrastructure exists? What is the rationale to support such a 

request? 

Mr. NATSUHARA. The Department of Navy fully supports another round of BRAC. 

The American public expects the military to spend wisely the resources entrusted 

to us. The fiscal uncertainty we now face as a nation only heightens the need to 

make prudent investments that ensure our Navy and Marine Corps team remains 

ready to respond to crises wherever they may occur. Therefore, we must ensure the 

continuous alignment of our infrastructure with our evolving force structure. The 

BRAC process offers the best opportunity to assess and evaluate opportunities to 

properly align our domestic infrastructure with our evolving force structure and 

laydown, and the Department is making plans for another round of BRAC should 

one be authorized by Congress. 

Mr. WITTMAN. In light of the expected growth in Navy force structure and the 

shift to the Pacific, how is the Navy revaluating its infrastructure capacity and requirements? 

Mr. NATSUHARA. The Navy and Marine Corps team has had a significant forward 

presence in the Pacific for many decades, and we are continually evaluating our requirements there. These theater requirements, along with other Service priorities, 

are considered during the Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution 

(PPBE) process. 

Mr. WITTMAN. The Government of Japan has transferred to the United States 

$834.0 million toward the agreed total contribution of $3.1 billion for construction 

activities to support the relocation of 4,700 Marines from Okinawa to Guam. What 

is the plan for expending these monies? 

Mr. NATSUHARA. The Government of Japan (GOJ) has transferred $948.3 million 

toward the agreed total contribution of $3.1 billion for construction activities to support the relocation of 4,700 Marines from Okinawa to Guam. This includes a recent 

transfer of $114.3 million, for which formal notification is forthcoming. To date, we 

have obligated $109 million in GOJ contributions for Utilities and Site Improvements (U&SI) at Apra Harbor and Andersen AFB gate improvements and design. 

Future planned obligations include $10.8M for U&SI planning and design at Andersen AFB in FY13 and $114.3M for construction in FY14 (if the FY14 NDAA permits). The remainder of the balance of GOJ funds is primarily dependent on the in 

progress Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS). The SEIS is being 
83 

prepared to evaluate potential alternatives for construction and operation of a main 

cantonment area, including family housing, and a live-fire training range complex 

to support the relocation of a substantially reduced number of Marines than previously analyzed under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Decision on 

Preferred Alternative is targeted for July 2013. 

Mr. WITTMAN. The Air Force has been rather consistent in seeking another round 

of BRAC. Most recently, Air Force Chief of Staff General Welsh indicated ‘‘During 

BRAC 2005, I know the Air Force fell short of its goal to reduce excess capacity. 

Since then, we’ve lost approximately 500 aircraft through force-structure reductions. 

Although I haven’t been involved in the related studies, I would assume that we 

still have excess infrastructure. The only way I know to effectively eliminate excess 

infrastructure is to close installations. Therefore, if confirmed, I would fully support 

the Department of Defense’s request for additional rounds of BRAC.’’ Has the Air 

Force assessed its overall infrastructure enterprise to determine whether excess infrastructure exists? What are the results of this analysis? 

Ms. FERGUSON. The Air Force has not conducted a detailed capacity analysis since 

the March 2004 Department of Defense Report to Congress, as required by Section 

2912 of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990. This report confirmed the Air Force had 24 percent excess installation capacity prior to implementing BRAC 2005. The Air Force still has excess infrastructure as BRAC 2005 

did not contain any major infrastructure reductions and since that time we’ve further reduced our force structure by more than 500 aircraft and reduced our Active 

Duty military end strength by nearly eight percent. 

The Air Force supports the Defense Departments position that the only fair and 

thorough way to determine whether there is excess capacity within the Department 

is to conduct the analysis in BRAC using certified data that collects detailed information from each base across a broad array of many metrics and compares this information to force structure. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Has the Air Force participated in the overseas posture review and 

does the Air Force believe that our overseas force structure is correct in terms of 

position and size? How can Congress move forward with considering a BRAC if the 

Department has not concluded this analysis? 

Ms. FERGUSON. The Air Force has reduced both mission and manpower in Europe 

by 75 percent since 1990. We currently operate from only six main operating bases 

on the continent, and they remain critical to commitments to NATO and provide 

throughput and global access to three unified combatant commands. Even so, there 

may be further opportunities for consolidation. The Secretary of Defense directed a 

capacity analysis to provide the basis for reducing the long-term expenses through 

footprint consolidation in Europe and the Air Force fully supports this effort. The 

Air Force believes we need to look at reducing our footprint in Europe as well as 

domestically. 

QUESTION SUBMITTED BY MS. BORDALLO 

Ms. BORDALLO. I understand that there has been a substantial amount of litigation surrounding the housing management firm at Fort Benning and allegations of 

corruption that have led to the dismissal of the property manager. Specifically, I understand that Clark and Pinnacle initially jointly managed military privatized housing projects at several locations including Fort Benning, Fort Belvoir, Presidio of 

Monterey and Fort Irwin. Because of the alleged fraud and mismanagement, Pinnacle has been or is being removed as property manager, which has led to substantial litigation. 

1. What is the status of the litigation between the Army, Clark, and Pinnacle? 

2. How much legal costs have been generated in these matters? 

3. I understand that some of the legal costs are being funded out of accounts designated for housing improvement. How much legal costs have been funded out 

of these reserve accounts? Which exact accounts have been used? 

4. What if Clark and the Army lose the cases against Pinnacle and these funds 

are not reimbursed? Is there a potential that housing improvement funds will 

not be reimbursed? What impact would that lack of funding have on the ability of the housing improvement funds to accomplish their goals? 

5. Is there any ongoing effort to resolve and settle this litigation in order to limit 

the amount of litigation costs and potential exposure to the military privatized 

housing program? 

Secretary HAMMACK. The Project Companies (Fort Benning Family Communities 

LLC, Fort Belvoir Residential Communities LLC, California Military Communities 

LLC, and Monterey Bay Military Housing LLC) (collectively, ‘‘the Project Compa-
84 

nies’’) have filed lawsuits naming Pinnacle and others as defendants in both Georgia 

and California state courts. The Army is not a party to the litigation in either Georgia or California. 

The Army has not expended any funds on legal costs. 

All litigation and audit costs are funded out of the Projects’ collective operating 

cash flows as extraordinary expenses. 

While the loss of any resource to fund out year development is undesirable, it is 

not expected that a loss of funds used to fund the litigation will have a material 

adverse impact on the Project Companies’ ability to recapitalize their housing. 

There are no current settlement discussions ongoing between the Project Companies and Pinnacle. The Project Companies are engaged in preliminary settlement 

discussions with the Lockton Companies, one of the named defendants in the Georgia litigation. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. SPEIER 

Ms. SPEIER. The Government Accountability Office has made a number of recommendations for achieving cost savings in any future BRAC round, including requiring OSD to establish official goals to be achieved by the process. But I am particularly concerned about the level of cost growth in military construction that occurred in the last BRAC round, and the significant information technology costs and 

overlapping costs across the Department. GAO identified 31 potentially duplicative 

IT investments at DOD, totaling approximately $1.2 billion. How will you incorporate military construction and information technology requirements in developing 

the initial cost estimates for a future BRAC? 

Mr. CONGER. As I indicated in my written statement, GAO’s 2012 report found 

that most of the cost increase could be tied to only 14 of 182 recommendations. 

Those increases were largely due to deliberate and subsequent decisions to expand 

the originally-envisioned scope of construction and recapitalization to address deficiencies in our enduring facilities or to expand the capabilities they provide as opposed to issues of accuracy. Second, BRAC 2005 occurred during a time of growth 

(both personnel and resources) and as such contributed to scope increases. A future 

BRAC round would be similar to in terms of cost and savings to that of the 1993 

and 1995 rounds which had quicker payback (two to three years). Third, we will incorporate our own lessons learned and the findings of GAO to improve our cost estimating particularly for areas such as information technology. 

Ms. SPEIER. I think many of our concerns about another BRAC round is the lack 

of transparency in the process, and uncertainty about how DOD and the services 

weigh fiscal, environmental, strategic, and operational consequences of these decisions. What steps will the Department take to make this process more transparent? 

Would you consider submitting comments you receive or the thorough DOD data 

you consider to brac.gov as it is received? 

Mr. CONGER. The statutory commission process created by past BRAC legislation 

is a fair, objective, and proven method for eliminating excess domestic infrastructure 

and realigning what remains. 

The details of the BRAC decision making process must remain internal to the Department of Defense until the Secretary issues his closure and realignment recommendations in order to protect the integrity of the BRAC process. This is necessary to follow the statutory BRAC direction to treat all installations equally, preserve the deliberative process, and prevent public confusion and unnecessary alarm. 

Revealing details of the decision making process through the release of such 

things as data call questions, criteria weights, or any attributes before the Secretary 

has made his closure and realignment recommendations could: 

• Taint the integrity of the BRAC process by opening it up to external (and unequal) influences; 

• Inhibit open and frank discussions necessary to produce quality decisions; and 

• Create public confusion from the disclosure of reasons and rationales that 

were not in fact ultimately the grounds for a decision or from the disclosure 

of proposed decisions that were not in fact adopted. 

However, all of this information is provided to the Commission and the Congress 

upon submission of the Secretary’s recommendations. At this point, communities 

and members of Congress can engage in the Commission process which is anchored 

by public hearings. 

Ms. SPEIER. The last BRAC Commission raised concerns that that the BRAC process is divorced from the other strategic decisions the Department of Defense is making, and specifically recommended the next BRAC round should be after the Quadrennial Defense Review. What do you think of this recommendation? 
85 

Mr. CONGER, Secretary HAMMACK, and Ms. FERGUSON. Similar to how Integrated 

Global Presence and Basing Strategy informed BRAC 2005, the 2014 Quadrennial 

Defense Review will be used to inform a future BRAC round. 

Ms. SPEIER. The last BRAC Commission raised concerns that that the BRAC process is divorced from the other strategic decisions the Department of Defense is making, and specifically recommended the next BRAC round should be after the Quadrennial Defense Review. What do you think of this recommendation? 

Mr. NATSUHARA. There are many sources of information that are used to inform 

the assessment and evaluation of opportunities to properly align our domestic infrastructure with evolving force structure. If a BRAC round is authorized, we would 

anticipate using the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review to inform the future round 

in a manner similar to how Integrated Global Presence and Basing Strategy informed BRAC 2005. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. BARBER 

Mr. BARBER. Secretary Conger, you mention in your testimony that given the current budget situation and drawdown of forces that a BRAC is much more important 

so that military overhead can be reduced. I understand we need to find the waste, 

and cut the fat. But I want to shine a light on the importance of base installations 

to the communities that live around them, and the families and local businesses 

that support their local military. In my district, we have two installations, DavisMonthan Air Force Base and Fort Huachuca, with the 162nd Fighter Wing just 

across the district line in Tucson. Any base closure in Southern Arizona would have 

a destructive economic impact. Fort Huachuca, for example, is the number one economic driver for Cochise County. I was just talking yesterday with local officials 

from Sierra Vista who are already reporting a loss in revenue for community businesses with the uncertainty around sequester. If the Fort were to close completely, 

the economy in Cochise County would be severely impacted. I understand the need 

to eliminate inefficiencies at our facilities, but take the example I just laid out, and 

amplify it nationally. In a memorandum from the Secretary of Defense in 2005, the 

last time we had a round of BRAC, the Department did not weigh heavily the possible negative impacts a base closure would have on local or national economic 

growth. If we were to see a new round of BRACs today as our economy is still recovering and the full effects of sequestration are setting in, communities nationwide 

would be devastated. Is this the right time to conducting another round of BRAC 

when our economy is anemic? Would it not make more sense to first determine the 

effects that our budget uncertainty and sequestration are having on force structure, 

and our local economies, before we begin discussing the necessity of a new round 

of BRAC? 

Mr. CONGER. The Department is mindful of the significant impact a BRAC decision can have on a host community. In many places, a military base is an economic 

engine, and the closure of the base can lead to reduced local tax revenues, decreased 

student impact aid, falling housing prices and loss of retail and business revenue. 

Most important, a base closure can mean the loss of jobs. 

Defense employees, through the service and defense agency human resources offices can access a variety of priority placement, referral, and retirement programs 

that are designed to minimize involuntary separations. These services have worked 

in the past and we will use them in the future. These programs are complemented 

by Department of Labor‘s Employment and Training Administration’s reemployment 

and retraining initiatives. 

As the Armed Services Committee recognized (when it first enacted section 2687): 

‘‘Military bases cannot be maintained to support other than national defense requirements.’’ ‘‘The committee feels strongly that the Defense Department should do 

everything possible to protect existing jobs that meet national defense requirements. 

At the same time, the committee is concerned that in the desire to protect jobs, any 

inclusion of an unemployment rate threshold in the limitations placed upon the Defense Department could undermine the careful balance that has been achieved.’’ 

Mr. BARBER. Secretary Hammack, so good to see you again. I really enjoyed our 

meeting a couple weeks ago. I wanted to go back to that meeting if I might. In our 

meeting we talked about the Electronic Proving Ground at Fort Huachuca in my 

district. EPG, as you know, has the cleanest electromagnetic spectrum in the country and assets that can’t be duplicated nor found anywhere in the world. We also 

discussed how the Army is now in the process of reducing its force structure overseas, and that with the plans here at home, the Army is planning to reduce personnel outside of the BRAC process. But as you said in your testimony, there will 

be a price to the consolidation that will likely occur over the next few years. During 
86 

the last round of BRAC, the military weighed more heavily the ability of a location 

to support training, mobilization, and surge forces. This speaks to a time when we 

were surging large ground forces in Baghdad and subsequently Afghanistan. We 

now operate in a different environment with a smaller, more agile force. My question is when the Army looks over the next few years at base and mission realignment, shouldn’t the Army place a high priority on maintaining unique capabilities 

essential to national security at its testing and evaluation facilities, like the unique 

assets we have at EPG? 

Secretary HAMMACK. If a future BRAC round is authorized, and as the Army 

makes decisions on base closures and mission realignments, unique or specialized 

capabilities at an installation will be accounted for in a broad application of Military 

Value. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MS. SHEA-PORTER 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. How will BRAC data be normalized across DOD when Commands, Agencies, and Activities will be impacted differently under sequestration? 

For example, at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, sequester furloughs are going to place 

the Shipyard a month behind its schedule for every submarine availability subsequent to imposition of sequester furloughs. Would that kind of impact be taken into 

account as a delay not of the Shipyard’s making, and not counted against the Shipyard as an inefficiency? And the same with other impacts on other DOD Commands, 

Agencies and Activities. 

Mr. CONGER. The BRAC statute specifies that the analysis must consider all bases 

equally; that the data submitted for use in the analysis must be certified as accurate and complete; that the recommendations must be based on a force structure 

plan (looking out 20 years) and statutory selection criteria that make military value 

the primary consideration. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. As the 2005 BRAC round demonstrated, upfront costs for 

BRAC are extremely high. In fact, I don’t know why we are even considering a 

BRAC because, in this constrained budget environment, it is unaffordable. According to the GAO, the 2005 BRAC will not begin to show ANY savings until 2018, 

more than a dozen years after the closures started. Furthermore the savings in the 

2005 BRAC round are 67% lower than predicted, which proves the 

untrustworthiness of these predictions. If Congress and the BRAC Commission had 

realized how little the BRAC would actually save, they might have closed or realigned fewer bases. Why do you think that you can do a better job of predicting 

future costs now than in 2005? 

Mr. CONGER. Savings from prior BRACs are real and substantial. The first four 

rounds of BRAC (1988, 1991, 1993 and 1995) are producing a total of about $8 billion in annual recurring savings, and the comparable figure for BRAC 2005 is $4 

billion. These figures have been validated by GAO. 

The real issue is one of up-front cost to achieve those savings. That up-front cost 

was inflated during the 2005 round, largely due to deliberate and subsequent decisions to expand the originally-envisioned scope of construction and recapitalization 

to address deficiencies in our enduring facilities or to expand the capabilities they 

provide as opposed to issues of accuracy. Second, BRAC 2005 occurred during a time 

of growth (both personnel and resources) and as such contributed to scope increases. 

A future BRAC round would be similar to in terms of cost and savings to that of 

the 1993 and 1995 rounds which had quicker payback (two to three years). Third, 

we will incorporate our own lessons learned and the findings of GAO to improve our 

cost estimating particularly for areas such as information technology. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. I’d like to know how the costs compare should another shipyard be closed through BRAC (meaning that no public shipyards would remain on 

the East Coast) and the repair/refueling work transferred to private shipyards. Also, 

in addition to costs, can you compare public versus private shipyards in terms of 

efficiency, availability for emergency surges in work load, personnel productivity, or 

any other differences not directly related to costs? 

Mr. CONGER. BRAC is a process that does not have a predetermined outcome and 

we will collect certified data as a part of that process. Using statutory selection criteria that emphasize military value and a force structure plan looking out 20 years, 

DOD must complete a comprehensive review before it can determine which installations should be realigned or closed. The list of closures is then reviewed by an independent Commission that can (and has in the past) altered the list. Its review includes holding public hearings and visiting various sites. The commission’s review 

results in a list of closures and realignments that are sent to the President and are 

subject to review by Congress. It is this thorough process that produces the list of 
87 

installations that DOD will close or realign, and the estimate of the costs and savings associated therewith. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. How will BRAC data be normalized across DOD when Commands, Agencies, and Activities will be impacted differently under sequestration? 

For example, at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, sequester furloughs are going to place 

the Shipyard a month behind its schedule for every submarine availability subsequent to imposition of sequester furloughs. Would that kind of impact be taken into 

account as a delay not of the Shipyard’s making, and not counted against the Shipyard as an inefficiency? And the same with other impacts on other DOD Commands, 

Agencies and Activities. 

Mr. NATSUHARA. Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) assessments document 

existing military infrastructure requirements and capacities and the potential cost 

of realigning workload, from both a manpower and infrastructure perspective. Any 

scenario evaluating the transfer of work to private shipyards and closing or otherwise realigning public shipyards would need to consider the capacity of the receiving 

private/public shipyards in terms of facilities, dry dock availability, skills, infrastructure, and the difference between new ship constructions versus maintenance 

overhauls. 

In addition to evaluating workload and supporting infrastructure requirements, 

transferring work from public shipyards to private shipyards would need to consider 

the requirements of 10 U.S.C. 2464. Specifically, the law mandates the retention of 

certain critical core capabilities in the public shipyard that are not replicated in private shipyards. Often, certain unique public shipyard skills are considered inherently governmental and core capabilities under the law. In addition, 10 U.S.C. 2466 

requires that no more than 50 percent of the funds made available in a fiscal year 

to a military department for depot-level maintenance and repair workload may be 

used to contract for performance by non-federal government personnel, and this 

must be considered when public and private depot maintenance workload is assigned. There are additional performance attributes to be considered, such as emergent requirements, and workload surge capacity. Workload at both public and private shipyards varies cyclically. Private shipyards are more dependent on the combination of ship construction and repair cycles. All these attributes and considerations would need to be carefully and fully evaluated as part of any BRAC scenario 

that evaluated a realignment of work at the Naval Shipyards. 

Ms. SHEA-PORTER. I’d like to know how the costs compare should another shipyard be closed through BRAC (meaning that no public shipyards would remain on 

the East Coast) and the repair/refueling work transferred to private shipyards. Also, 

in addition to costs, can you compare public versus private shipyards in terms of 

efficiency, availability for emergency surges in work load, personnel productivity, or 

any other differences not directly related to costs? 

Mr. NATSUHARA. Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) assessments document 

existing military infrastructure requirements and capacities and the potential cost 

of realigning workload, from both a manpower and infrastructure perspective. Any 

scenario evaluating the transfer of work to private shipyards and closing or otherwise realigning public shipyards would need to consider the capacity of the receiving 

private/public shipyards in terms of facilities, dry dock availability, skills, infrastructure, and the difference between new ship constructions versus maintenance 

overhauls. 

In addition to evaluating workload and supporting infrastructure requirements, 

transferring work from public shipyards to private shipyards would need to consider 

the requirements of 10 U.S.C. 2464. Specifically, the law mandates the retention of 

certain critical core capabilities in the public shipyard that are not replicated in private shipyards. Often, certain unique public shipyard skills are considered inherently governmental and core capabilities under the law. In addition, 10 U.S.C. 2466 

requires that no more than 50 percent of the funds made available in a fiscal year 

to a military department for depot-level maintenance and repair workload may be 

used to contract for performance by non-federal government personnel, and this 

must be considered when public and private depot maintenance workload is assigned. There are additional performance attributes to be considered, such as emergent requirements, and workload surge capacity. Workload at both public and private shipyards varies cyclically. Private shipyards are more dependent on the combination of ship construction and repair cycles. All these attributes and considerations would need to be carefully and fully evaluated as part of any BRAC scenario 

that evaluated a realignment of work at the Naval Shipyards. 
88 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. ENYART 

Mr. ENYART. Scott Air Force Base in my district is home to a number of critical 

missions important to our national defense. Scott serves as headquarters to the Air 

Mobility Command and USTRANSCOM. We have a significant National Guard and 

Reserve presence and growing cybersecurity mission to meet the needs of 21st century threats and challenges. My question to the Under Secretary centers on scope 

and criteria. When you are determining the factors to label a base ‘‘excess’’ what 

would make a base ‘‘not excessive’’? 

Mr. CONGER. We believe the only fair and thorough way to determine whether 

there is excess capacity within the Department is to conduct the analysis in BRAC 

using certified data that collects detailed information from each base across a broad 

array of many metrics and compares this information to force structure. 

As such, BRAC is a process that does not have a predetermined outcome such as 

determining that a base is ‘‘not excessive.’’ Using statutory selection criteria that 

emphasize military value and a force structure plan looking out 20 years, DOD 

must complete a comprehensive review before it can determine which installations 

should be realigned or closed. The essence of the comprehensive process is that each 

base is evaluated on a host of capacity and military value factors. DOD leadership 

evaluates various closure and realignment scenarios as part of a holistic examination of installations across the United States. It is this process that the list of closures which is then reviewed by an independent Commission that can (and has in 

the past) altered the list. Its review includes holding public hearings and visiting 

various sites. The commission’s review results in a list of closures and realignments 

that are sent to the President and are subject to review by Congress. It is this thorough process that produces the list of installations that DOD will close. 

Mr. ENYART. In regards to equipment in Afghanistan, what is the cost to return 

and repair versus buying new? 

Mr. CONGER. Equipment in Afghanistan that provides future military utility to 

U.S. Armed Forces will be returned to maintain readiness. Where equipment is excess to the Department’s needs and/or the transportation cost to return exceeds the 

cost of the equipment, the equipment will be donated or disposed under existing authorities for disposition of Foreign Excess Personal Property, Foreign Military Sales, 

and Excess Defense Articles. 

Mr. ENYART. There was 24% excess capacity in 2004. How much of this capacity 

was reduced during the 2005 BRAC? 

Mr. CONGER. The 2005 BRAC round focused principally on reconfiguring capacity 

to maximize war fighting capability and efficiency as opposed to eliminating excess 

capacity. BRAC 2005 only eliminated about 3 percent of the Department’s capacity. 

Mr. ENYART. Is the drawdown of forces equal to the forces deployed to Iraq and 

Afghanistan during the timeframe of 2005–2012? 

Mr. CONGER. The drawdown of forces is independent of the withdrawal of forces 

deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The withdrawal of forces deployed in Iraq and 

Afghanistan will have little to no impact on our excess infrastructure in the United 

States because when troops deploy from bases in the United States those bases are 

not backfilled with additional forces. 

The Department will still have excess infrastructure regardless of the return of 

forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. The parametric techniques used to analyze aggregate assessment of excess capacity in 2004 indicated that the Department had 24 

percent excess overall relative to the force-structure plan developed by the Joint 

Staff. Because BRAC 2005 eliminated only about three percent of the Department’s 

capacity, we believe we have significant excess at the aggregate level today. In addition, force-structure reductions in the Army (from 570,000 to 490,000 Active Duty 

personnel), in the Marine Corps (from 202,000 to 182,000 Active Duty personnel), 

and in the Air Force (reduced by 500 aircrafts) subsequent to the 2004 analysis 

point to additional excess. 

Mr. ENYART. What will happen with deactivated A–10s from Europe? 

Mr. CONGER and Secretary HAMMACK. The Air Force is deactivating the A–10 

squadron at Spangdahlem and, after fleet management, will place the 20 worst A– 

10s from the fleet into our inactive inventory. Most of these aircraft will be put in 

Type 2000 storage at the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at 

Davis-Monthan AFB for parts harvesting and a handful will be used as ground 

trainers. 
89 

Mr. ENYART. What will happen with deactivated A–10s from Europe? 

Mr. NATSUHARA. The Navy does not manage A–10 aircraft. This question would 

be best answered by the U.S. Air Force. 

Mr. ENYART. What will happen with deactivated A–10s from Europe? 

Ms. FERGUSON. The 21 A–10s stationed at Spangdahlem Air Base will depart nolater-than 31 May 13 to comply with the FY 13 NDAA direction requiring unit deactivation before the end of FY 13. All A–10s will transfer to the 354 Fighter Squadron at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona. This transfer involves no manpower 

gains. 

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