Base closings hit Army IT

“Closure and Realignment Impacts by State”

The Defense Department has recommended closing a New Jersey base that has housed many of the Army's warfighting and business information technology organizations.

Fort Monmouth, N.J., houses the Communications-Electronics Life Cycle Management Command, which oversees development and acquisition of the Army’s warfighting IT and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems. The site also contains some offices of the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems, which manages the service's procurement and implementation of business IT systems. The Army Small Computer Program Office, for example, resides at Fort Monmouth.

The New Jersey site is one of 33 bases that Pentagon officials today proposed closing in the next round of Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) proceedings.

Officials at Fort Monmouth were not immediately available for comment. They will hold a press conference on the BRAC announcement today at 3:15 p.m.

Pentagon officials recommended realigning into regional headquarters the Army's Army Contracting Agency, Installation Management Agency and Network Enterprise Technology Command, which oversees operation, management and protection of the service’s computer networks at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. The organizations' East Coast sites will move to Fort Eustis, Va., and their West Coast locations to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, according to an Army statement.

The department also recommended moving Army Materiel Command from Fort Belvoir, Va., to Redstone Arsenal, Ala. The command oversees procurement of warfighting materiel including the implementation of backoffice software to better order and track water, ammunition, food and hygiene products for soldiers.

DOD also proposed moving all of the offices of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in the Washington, D.C.-area to Fort Belvoir, Va. NGA provides imagery analysis and delivery services for the military.

NGA officials will hold a press conference on the BRAC announcement today at 2 p.m.

DOD recommended closing 33 major military bases and restructuring 29 more. The department expects the recommendations, if fully implemented, to save $64.2 billion through 2025.

"Our current arrangements, designed for the Cold War, must give way to the new demands of the war against extremism and other evolving 21st Century challenges," said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a statement today.

The BRAC commission will now review DOD's recommendations. The commission will then present its findings for approval to The White House, which then submits them to Congress for review and action -- proceedings that should come to an end later this year.