FAIRBANKS — The U.S. Air Force chief of staff will be in Alaska next week on a visit scheduled prior to the announcement that Eielson Air Force Base’s F-16 fighter planes are to be moved to the Anchorage area, leading to calls from the state’s congressional delegation that he discuss the move while in the state.
Gen. Norton Schwartz will visit the state in 10 days, according to a statement from Alaska’s congressional delegation, whose three members met with Schwartz on Thursday in Washington.
Details of Schwartz’s Alaska trip were not immediately available, although he will attend a Feb. 17 gala in Anchorage to salute the military.
Delegation members invited Schwartz to visit Fairbanks to discuss the F-16s while he is in the state, said Max Croes, a spokesman for Democrat Sen. Mark Begich. It was not immediately clear if Schwartz will come to the area.
Of Thursday’s meeting with Schwartz, Rep. Don Young, Republican, said he was “pleased with the candidness” of the session.
“The Air Force has indicated that this decision was made to make Eielson more efficient, and while that may be true, I would rather not move a squadron but instead work toward lowering energy costs and making it cheaper to operate the base,” Young said in a written statement.
“I think that it is critically important that Gen. Schwartz hear from the Alaskans on the ground who will be affected the most by this decision,” he said. “That is why I requested that he not only set foot in Alaska, but visit Fairbanks and speak to the people there as soon as he can.”
Schwartz is quite familiar with Alaska. He was commander of the Air Force’s Alaska Command, the Alaska North American Aerospace Defense Command Region and the 11th Air Force at Elmendorf from September 2000 to October 2002.
Alaska’s lawmakers said they hope Schwartz will talk with Alaskans about the F-16 plan.
The Air Force proposed moving the F-16s last week as one of several cost-cutting measures that would also include retiring more than 200 planes from across the Air Force this year, including four C-130 transports in Anchorage.
Eielson’s 21-plane F-16 Aggressor squadron is used for training and is the principal active duty force at Eielson.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski remained skeptical of the Air Force’s plan.
“It was good to hear Gen. Schwartz say he believes America still needs Eielson Air Force Base, and that it should play a significant role as America’s military shifts its future focus to the Pacific Rim,” she said in a joint statement with Young and Begich. “But I still feel like Alaskans and I have seen this movie before — and we saw how it ended in 2005.”
It was in 2005 that then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and military leaders proposed removing all active-duty aircraft and personnel from Eielson, leaving only a small Alaska National Guard refueling wing. The move, along with others across the nation, were part of a lengthy downsizing process that eventually involved the Base Closure and Realignment Commission, an independent panel created by Congress and given authority in base closings so as to reduce the role of politics in the process. The panel, after a hearing in Fairbanks that filled the Carlson Center, ultimately disagreed with the Defense Department and said some aircraft — the squadron of F-16s — should remain at Eielson.
Begich said Alaskans concerned about Eielson should make their case.
“I made one thing clear to Gen. Schwartz, the Alaska Delegation is not backing down,” he said. “I look forward to the general’s upcoming trip and hope Alaskans will take the opportunity to share their thoughts with him in 10 days.”
Contact staff writer Sam Friedman at 459-7545.
Ask yourself if out of 100 customers walked into your business and bought something, then suddenly one day only 70 percent of those customers came in would your business not suffer? The reality is closed stores, business moving out and finally someone shuts off the lights in Fairbanks. That is the reality of closed bases with no back up plan.
I would think you can pretty much put the closed sign on the gate after this meeting.
Ya think maybe you could include that happening for us civilians to?
But if they do close the base, then the Air Force should be forced to give up all training areas north of the Alaska Range too. Let them train over the North Pacific because they will not be welcome here.
We can sit by with our normalcy bias and watch this nation go into bankruptcy. It will be catastrophic. Today we see people like Mitt Romney putting his money in foreign bank accounts to protect it from the coming collapse. We are also seeing China buying much more gold and some countries using gold for buying oil instead of the dollar. If the dollar loses its status as the world reserve currency our financial system will collapse. It is time for the Defense Dept to do its part.
The republicans will not make the rich pay their fair share and that is why they have got to go.
...what they're going to do...
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