Ø           Joint Base McGuire/Ft. Dix/Lakehurst:

          “Enthusiastically Welcomed and Embraced”

Ø           Ft. Monmouth:  

          “Save the Fort.  Would attach neatly and seamlessly with new Joint Base”

Ø            DoD’s Plan to Retire NJ Guard’s 108^th Refueling Fleet:

          “A Patently Absurd Suggestion”

            Baltimore, Maryland – In his testimony today to the BRAC Commission, Rep. Chris Smith (Hamilton Township) hailed the creation of the joint base McGuire/Ft. Dix/Lakehurst, urged that Ft. Monmouth be saved and attached to the joint base, and called the Pentagon’s plan to retire the NJ Guard’s 108^th refueling fleet “a patently absurd suggestion”.

            “DoD's recommendation to merge Navy Lakehurst with two other contiguous installations, Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base - is enthusiastically welcomed and embraced and reflects the concept of jointness some of us have been aggressively pursuing for years,” said Smith who ten years ago led the fight that reversed the BRAC 95 decision to close Lakehurst.  He cited concerns over brain drain and erroneous cost savings as reasons for the BRAC reversal.

            Smith said “with more than $82 million in milcon and warfighter enhancing projects we’ve  poured into the base over the last decade, Navy Lakehurst stands out as a world class, one-of-a-kind facility on the cutting edge of new products and designs that are critical components of the CVN-21 next generation carrier program.”

            Smith said the joint base will be “an incubator of best joint practices” that will continue to be a hub for military jointness, homeland security efforts and other military and federal tenants.

            “With your imprimatur, New Jersey's new mega-base is poised to become the first - and only - triservice joint base in the United States…and you can make it even stronger,” he said again lending his support to saving Ft. Monmouth and attaching it to the mega-base.

            “The next panel will make a compelling case as to why a modestly scaled down, almost contiguous Ft. Monmouth would attach neatly and seamlessly to the proposed new mega-base. Ft. Monmouth and its unique mission, if moved to Aberdeen, is likely to experience serious brain drain, not unlike that which we averted at Lakehurst,” he said.

            Turning towards the Pentagon’s recommendation to retire two flying squadrons of the 108th Air Refueling Wing from McGuire, Smith called it “a patently absurd suggestion that flies in the face of good management and military value.” 

            “The New Jersey mega-base offers far more--not less--operational and training synergies for all three services,” he said.  “Moreover, the recommendation fails to appreciate the $70 million tanker wing infrastructure that would be abandoned and the difficulty receiving stations will have in recruiting the personnel to support the mission.”

            Smith whose district includes Lakehurst described the new joint base as a 42,000-acre unencroached facility surrounded by over 60,000 acres of protected land that has the further advantage of built-in either restricted or controlled airspace. He said it supports a variety of military research, testing and evaluation missions; it contains 2 airfields, a 12,000 ft long test runway and has the transportation capability to deploy en-masse the troops and their equipment to any destination.

            For Homeland Security purposes, the joint mega-base is within 300 miles of 25% of the US population and provides a venue for co-location of assets to defend against attacks. Today, 25 cost-reducing tenants, including the National Guard, Emergency Response Team, DOJ and the Coast Guard all call Lakehurst, McGuire, or Ft. Dix home.