RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas –
San Antonio has successfully met the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure mandate.
Lt. Gen. Douglas H. Owens, Air Education and Training Command vice commander, called efforts to meet the mandate a "job well done" during the final Executive Integration Oversight Board meeting Sept. 7. The board has been meeting for more than five years to monitor progress on BRAC 2005 actions.
"Although it was a complex overall undertaking, with a significant amount of construction, 160 construction projects, we have accomplished the statutory requirement before Sept. 15 and, in some cases, well before Sept. 15," CEM Maxwell, San Antonio Joint Program Office deputy director, said.
Maxwell has been a key leader in the successful accomplishment of BRAC 2005 in San Antonio.
"No community was more impacted in terms of numbers, than was San Antonio," he said. "We have a significant number of government employees, both military and civil service, whose positions were moved as a result of these BRAC recommendations. The total number of positions either moved into, out of, or within S.A., was more than 21,000."
BRAC 2005 became law Nov. 9, 2005, and required all actions be completed by Sep. 15, 2011. Of the approximately 200 BRAC recommendations enacted into law, San Antonio bases were impacted by 19. This is more than any other city in the US. Every military installation in San Antonio is feeling the impact of BRAC 2005.
Maxwell said everyone involved in BRAC 2005 in San Antonio has significant bragging rights.
"When you drive through Fort Sam Houston, Randolph Air Force Base, Camp Bullis or Lackland AFB, these workers helped shape the ability of our military to produce corpsmen and medics, to take care of the wounded, to train doctors, as well as conduct valuable research," he said. "We are now doing business in much better facilities, in more efficient ways, and I think that everyone, not just me, deserves to hold their head up and look back on this period with significant pride."
Randolph Air Force Base has been greatly affected by BRAC.
BRAC brought Randolph into Joint Base San Antonio. In addition, Introduction to Fighter Fundamentals training for instructor pilots was relocated here while undergraduate navigator training was relocated to Naval Air Station Pensacola, Fla.
Another action that impacted the base was the relocation of numerous locations to Randolph for the transactional function of Air Force Personnel Center.
The strong relationship between the U.S. military and the city of San Antonio in "Military City, U.S.A." was instrumental in meeting the BRAC deadline on time, Maxwell said.
"The city of San Antonio has been our wingman and our battle buddy throughout this whole process," he said. "The city was quick early on in the BRAC process, to understand what it was all about."
In the future, whenever there is a call for a medic on the battlefield, that medic will have received training in San Antonio. Maxwell said while the BRAC deadline was met, there are some projects that will continue after Thursday.
"For example, we are going to put a new access control point at Brooke Army Medical Center with BRAC funding fully supported by the Department of Defense and that project we will see go on," he said.