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Bay State wary of Air Force base cuts

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February 13, 2012|By Bryan Bender

The bases also have a commercial impact, said Rep. Richard Neal, a Springfield…

WASHINGTON - State and congressional leaders are bracing for a battle over a Pentagon plan to strip aircraft from one Air Force base in Western Massachusetts and possibly cut personnel at another.

Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee, the largest Air Force Reserve base in the country, is set to lose half the C-5 Galaxy planes assigned to the 439th Airlift Wing, according to an Air Force proposal made public last week. The nearby Barnes Air National Guard Base in Westfield is expecting details as early as this week about personnel cuts at Air National Guard bases nationwide.

Bay State officeholders are scrambling to determine the potential economic impact. Massachusetts officials say the bases are an important source of jobs in the western part of the state. Together they accounted for nearly 5,000 Air Force-related jobs in 2011, according to statistics compiled by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s Aeronautics Division.

“The economic impact is huge,’’ Lieutenant Governor Timothy P. Murray, who toured the Barnes base earlier this month, said in an interview. “Barnes and Westover are also incredibly important from a strategic national defense perspective.’’

Personnel cuts at Barnes, if they materialize, would be part of nationwide program to retire old equipment, reduce the size of the Air National Guard, and trim excess overhead costs. The program will be part of the president’s budget unveiled today.

The Massachusetts congressional delegation is trying to convince Air Force leaders that substantially reducing the role of military aviation in Western Massachusetts, which dates to the early part of the 20th century, would be a mistake.

They Massachusetts members of Congress also worry that the Air Force cuts could be a harbinger of bigger reductions in the state’s half-dozen military facilities. The Pentagon recently announced it is seeking a new round of base closures, which will trigger a review of all military facilities across the country to determine which ones should be shuttered or restructured.

Westover is part of the Air Force Reserve, the 50,000-strong force under the control of the regular Air Force. The base was established in 1940 and is located on 2,500 acres within the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge.

Barnes, located at the Westfield-Barnes Regional Airport, is part of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, which is under the control of the governor unless called to active duty by the president. It has been used as a military training area since 1905 and received its first Air National Guard planes in 1946.