San Antonio avoids the worst of Army’s cutbacks

Fort Sam Houston will lose 329 soldiers over the next three years, a much smaller reduction than other posts across nation

SAN ANTONIO — San Antonio was spared from the worst of the Army’s cuts Thursday as another round of military and civilian force reductions was announced that will bring the service to 450,000 soldiers, its lowest total since 1940.

Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston will lose 329 soldiers over the next three years, a much smaller reduction than at a half-dozen other posts around the country. The base here also will gain military and civilian workers, but the Army could not say how many.

The Fort Sam cuts will come through reduced positions at U.S. Army North, U.S. Army South, the Installation and Management Command and the 106th Signal Brigade. The Army also said civilian jobs would likely be lost through attrition.

Military and civilian jobs will increase at the San Antonio Military Medical Center, it said.

“Obviously, we hate to lose that many positions, but it could have been a lot worse when you compare us to what’s happening at Fort Bliss and other Army installations,” Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said. “We’re in much better shape than what they face, so we’ll make our way though this. The fear is what would happen under sequestration.”

The reductions are part of a dramatic slashing of the Army’s budget that will pare 40,000 soldiers and 17,000 civilians from a force that now stands at 490,000. Before the latest cuts were announced, the Army, Army National Guard and Army Reserve had more than 1 million soldiers, a figure that will fall to 980,000 when the cuts take full effect by Sept. 30, 2018.

Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered the Army to eliminate 70,000 soldiers, but the 2011 Budget Control Act requires even deeper cuts.

The law, dubbed the sequester, requires the Pentagon to make $454 billion in across-the-board spending cuts, with domestic programs taking a similar hit. If those go through as now planned, the Army would eliminate $95 billion from its budget and cut its activeduty force to 420,000 soldiers by 2020.

Cuts that deep would entail “significant risk,” the Army has said.

“Budget constraints are forcing us to reduce the total Army,” said the service’s deputy chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson. “All of our installations and their communities offer tremendous value to our Army and the nation. In the end, we had to make decisions based on a number of strategic factors, to include readiness impacts, mission command and cost.”

Six of 30 posts nationwide are the most affected by the latest cuts, with 3,402 soldiers lost at Fort Benning, Ga.; 3,350 soldiers at Fort Hood; 2,631 soldiers at Joint Base ElmendorfRichardson, Alaska; 1,251 soldiers at Joint Base LewisMcChord, Wash.; 1,214 soldiers at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, and 1,219 soldiers at Fort Bliss.

Georgia will lose 4,400 3rd Infantry Division soldiers, with most of those coming from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team at Fort Benning.

The 25th Infantry Division’s 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson will lose 3,500 soldiers.

Both states’ brigades will become battalion task forces.

‘Understand their pain’

“We have been in the same situation as those other communities have that are experiencing big losses, and we’ve had closures of bases, so we understand their pain and, of course, feel empathy for them and are hopeful that this is it. But I know this is not,” said Richard Perez, president and CEO of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce.

As the Army hits 450,000 soldiers, the Army National Guard will dip to 335,000 and the Army Reserve will fall to 195,000.

But those end-strength figures would dwindle further under sequestration, with the active-duty force sliding to 420,000, the guard to 315,000 and the reserve to 185,000.

Brig. Gen. Randy George, director of force management for the Army, said “incredibly difficult choices” were made and said towns near the posts would be affected. The Army had to work within its budget and relied upon a GAO-endorsed analysis based on “the threats we face and the current fiscal environment we must operate in,” he said.

Moves questioned

One critic said it made no sense to cut soldiers at major installations in Alaska, Georgia, Texas and Washington state, where excellent rail and road systems link them to major ports.

He said Texas could have fared better by facing another Defense Base Closure and Realignment commission, called BRAC.

“These are unsettling numbers,” said Dave Davis, a base-closure consultant and who once served as chief of staff to former U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

“I don’t think if there were an open, transparent process like a BRAC this would be sustained.”

He said Fort Stewart, Fort Benning, Fort Bliss and Fort Hood have greater military value than posts that were not affected, adding, “It doesn’t make sense when compared against Fort Carson, Fort Drum. It doesn’t make sense against Fort Riley, possibly, and the other thing is there are no overseas reductions.”