Sustainable development on federal facilities: ARMS model proves an alternative to base closure - Development, Sustainment, Recapitalization

Program Manager, Sept-Oct, 2002 by Rand H. Fishbein

The United States has long regarded its domestic military installations as more than just compounds in which to house, equip, and train its soldiers. For over two centuries they have served as model cities--foundries of excellence, where the best of American industry, manpower, and technology have organized for war.

All of this began to change in the last quarter of the 20th Century with the advent of high-mobility warfare, forward pre-positioning, and stand-off munitions. Overnight, Pentagon planners began to question the utility of many of the Department's approximately 519 domestic installations, preferring to see them as costly relics of a bygone age rather than as pearls woven into the fabric of our national defense. With every cut in force structure, and every improvement in strategic air and sealift, their purpose seemed to diminish.

Strategic Inflection Point

Then came the events of September 11, 2001. As America mobilizes for what could be a protracted war against terrorism, the need for superior military infrastructure is once again becoming evident. Many in Congress now see the nation's defense installations as key components of homeland security and as vital elements in sustained power projection. This new attitude was most clearly reflected in the FY 2002 National Defense Authorization Act, which postponed any decision on future base closures until 2005.

Even so, there are those Pentagon planners who persist in the belief that continued DoD control over vast swathes of real estate represents little more than an expensive exercise in nostalgia. At a cost of billions of dollars annually in operations and maintenance funding, just the upkeep of this infrastructure, extending over some 25 million acres, represents a huge drain on the cash-strapped DoD. Even with an increase in defense spending in 2003, the cost of infrastructure maintenance and modernization is skyrocketing.

In pressing for another round of base closures, Pentagon planners argue that at least a quarter of the nation's remaining military installations are redundant. Retain them, they say, and the Department will be unable to muster the funding necessary to pay for everything from equipment modernization and spare parts to much-needed quality-of-life improvements for the nation's 1.4 million active duty servicemembers.

Assets, Not Liabilities

While DoD's budget concerns are well-founded, the reality surrounding base closures is something quite different. Instead of being liabilities, America's vast collage of military installations are, in actuality, assets. If carefully nurtured, prudently funded, and creatively managed, many can be transformed into revenue centers for a cash-starved military or serve as host sites for other federal, state, or local governments' activities. The key is sustainable development. The goal is recapitalization.

Understanding the potential of military installations, including their native endowments and manpower, is central to developing a reuse plan that allows commercial business to coexist, side-by-side, with the military mission.

Creative solutions are already being implemented throughout the DoD. Many, like facility use contracting, consideration-for-use, enhanced lease authority, Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADA), the rehabilitation tax credit, and the Residential Communities Initiative (RCI), have shown great promise in tests run by installation commanders across the nation.

What is needed now is for the Department of Defense to embrace the full range of public-private partnership strategies to make military infrastructure not just affordable, but profitable as well.

The ARMS Alternative

Perhaps the most successful of these public-private partnership strategies is the Army's Armament Retooling and Manufacturing Support (ARMS) initiative. Enacted into law in 1992, ARMS is spearheading a revolution in facility reuse by demonstrating how active, inactive, and even excess installations can be made largely self-financing.

The program is run by an eight-person ARMS Team belonging to the Army's Operations Support Command (OSC), in Rock Island, Ill. A 16-member ARMS Public-Private Task Force (PPTF), Executive Advisory Committee (EAC), appointed by the Army to represent each of the primary stakeholder interests, is chartered to oversee the operation of the program. The EAC reports directly to the Secretary of the Army on how the operational efficiency of the initiative might be improved.

The ARMS mission is to evolve off-budget methods for funding all, or part of, the cost centers at a given installation. Principal among these cost centers are: maintenance and repair, environmental compliance and remediation, facility modernization, historic preservation, and in some instances, pension and personnel benefits. A flexible, innovative, market-driven orientation is to guide all activities overseen by the installation commander.

ARMS was established by Congress in 1992 as a way of saving the Government-owned, Contractor-operated (GOCO) ammunition base from complete collapse. By 1992, ammunition appropriations had fallen by well over 70 percent in just eight years, triggering widespread layoffs and sparking a series of plant closures.