BRAC

The Argus is reporting that 11,000 people turned out to cheer for Ellsworth Air Force Base yesterday.  The Rapid City Journal says 7,000 and notes the important testimony from a former general:

"The Pentagon, in its zeal to consolidate and reach some perceived quota for base closures, picked the wrong base by putting Ellsworth on the list," retired Air Force Gen. John Loh told three members of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission.

The BRAC Commission held a hearing at the civic center arena Tuesday afternoon.

Loh had sharp words for the Pentagon's plan to close Ellsworth and move its B-1B Lancer bombers to Dyess AFB in Texas. "It's a recipe for unmanageable congestion and never-ending chaos that spells inefficiency, waste and degraded operational readiness for the B-1s," he said. ...

As commander of Air Combat Command in the 1990s, Loh was in charge of all the Air Force's bombers and bomber bases. He said one of his "guiding principles" was to never base more than 36 long-range bombers at a single base.

"Putting more than 36 bombers at one base results in a very inefficient operation," he said. "Operational readiness suffers because too many crews share too few training ranges and air space."

Loh was followed by his former deputy ACC commander, Lt. Gen. Thad Wolfe (Ret.), who told the commissioners, "Ellsworth has been a well-kept secret. Perhaps too well kept."

Wolfe said he believed the Air Force had underestimated intangible benefits of Ellsworth, including its quality of life for airmen, which he said affected performance. He quoted Napoleon, who once said, "The moral is to the physical as 3 is to 1," or in other words, morale is important.

Wolfe also cited Ellsworth's "remarkable access to uncrowded airspace" and a series of construction projects over the past 20 years that have converted Ellsworth into a virtually new base.

The BRAC commissioners toured Ellsworth on Tuesday morning, and after the hearing, Commissioner James Bilbray said he was impressed with the new buildings at the base. But Bilbray said, "Whatever we close, we'll lose hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure."

All three members of the state's congressional delegation spoke at the hearing.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. - a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a strong ally of the Bush administration on most issues - probably has the most political capital to lose from Ellsworth closing. But Thune also earned one of the longest standing ovations of the afternoon.

"We need to increase our flexibility, not decrease it," Thune said.

Citing the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and emerging threats from Iran, North Korea and China, Thune, like almost every speaker Tuesday, argued against consolidating the B-1s at a single base "where a single terrorist attack could wipe out our entire fleet."