WASHINGTON - The Pentagon will recommend a list of military bases for closure on Friday, setting in motion a major shakeup that will reverberate through local economies from west Texas to western Europe.
The proposed closures will trim excess capacity, save billions of dollars a year, and reposition US forces in the United States to respond swiftly to crises, officials said.
"They were decisions that were made as part of a cloth, a fabric," said US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who added that he had made no changes to a list drawn by teams of military and civilians who have been working for more than two years on the plan.
In a show of unity, Rumsfeld was joined at a Pentagon press conference by the chiefs of the military services and General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs Staff. Each endorsed the changes.
The secretary estimated the savings at 48 billion dollars over 20 years, or about 5.5 billion dollars a year. When base closures overseas are added the estimated savings total 64.2 billion dollars, or 6.7 billion dollars a year, he said.
"We're going to keep the same size military and have a surge capability and reduce the number of bases," he said.
Only bases in the United States will be on the list presented Friday.
But the proposed closures also mark the start of an exodus from bases occupied by the US military in Germany since World War II.
The return of an estimated 70,000 military personnel from Europe, and about 100,000 dependents, will soften the blow for some US communities. About half the US military facilities in Germany are to be vacated by the move, Defense Department officials have said.
"The department is recommending fewer major base closures than had earlier been anticipated, due in part to the return of tens of thousands of troops through our global posture review and also due to decision to reduce lease space by moving activities from leased space into owned facilities," Rumsfeld said.
These will be the first base cuts in the United States in 10 years.
The four previous rounds were traumatic for the communities involved although studies show that most managed to eventually replace the jobs lost through base closures, and some have found innovative uses for the old bases.
Once again, though, communities around the United States are nervously waiting to see if their hometown bases survive the cut.
The process has created a bonanza for Washington lobbyists and consultants hired by communities to help them make their cases in Congress and at the Pentagon.
The Pentagon's recommended base cuts will go to an independent commission, which can remove bases from the list if it finds that the Defense Department did not follow its own criteria in making a cut.
If President George W. Bush approves the final list submitted by the commission, then it goes to Congress, which must vote to approve or reject the list in its entirety.
The Pentagon had estimated that it has 24 percent excess base capacity in the United States.
Rumsfeld, however, said that in the end analysts found that only 5 to 10 percent of the basing capacity in the United States was superfluous.
The military has about 625 bases in the United States, but some 3,700 sites of varying sizes around the country. It has 860 sites in foreign countries, including 305 in Germany, 158 in Japan, and 105 in South Korea.
The closures are linked to a global realignment of US forces that calls for replacing Cold War-era bases in Western Europe with a network of logistics hubs, smaller bases and lightly manned and unmanned operating locations in the world's most unstable regions.
The strategy calls for keeping combat forces at US bases but having them ready to deploy rapidly to trouble spots anywhere in the world.
Officials said that in deciding which bases to keep and how to use them they considered for the first time its ability to handle a surge in military activity, as well as possible increases in active-duty troop levels.
"We were doing this whole round during the time that we were actively engaged, our forces were actively engaged, which gave a sense of urgency, if you will, to the definition of surge," said Michael Wynne, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.
The prime criteria for judging whether a base should be cut was its military utility, he said. The economic impact of a closure on the community was a secondary consideration.
"By law, military value is the primary consideration," he said.

05/12/2005 23:04 GMT