Name that base

by: Jason Springer

Fri Oct 02, 2009 at 10:30:00 AM EDT

As of yesterday, the McGuire Airforce Base, Fort Dix and Lakehurst Naval Air Engineering station no longer exist:

Fort Dix is being merged with the neighboring McGuire Air Force Base and Lakehurst Naval Air Engineering Station to make the military's first three-branch base, a 65-square-mile behemoth stretching through farmland and forests and given the clunky moniker Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.

What a name. This merger has been in the works since 2005 and October 1 was the deadline set by the Department of Defense to reach "full operational capacity." This isn't the only merger going on around the country:

It's part of a strategy of reorganizing and standardizing the services. Twenty-six bases around the country are to be merged into 12 new joint bases, a move Defense officials say could save $2 billion over 20 years.

I didn't realize that over 77,000 soldiers have mobilized for service at Fort Dix since October 2001. Here's some reaction to the merger:

And even though the Air Force will be in command of the joint base, it did not seem to ruffle the feathers of Army and Navy personnel.
"We fight together anyway. In Iraq and Afghanistan, there are soldiers (from all the branches) fighting side by side. We also already train together and go to school together. So our young service members understand what this is all about," said Army Col. Joseph Poth, the joint base's deputy commander. "And now we'll be able to look at things from three different perspectives. That's the way it should be if we expect to win America's wars. Especially the kind of warfare we're currently involved in."

And they're not done making improvements or trying to secure more funding for future development:

Grosso said $275 million worth of projects are still under construction that will help the joint base reach its full potential.
And Adler said efforts are ongoing to secure even more funding for the joint base, money he said would trickle down to surrounding communities.
"A lot of the people who work here commute here from nearby towns," Adler said. "We have an opportunity to grow the economies of Ocean and Burlington counties ahead of the rest of the nation in coming out of this recession."

The alternative to merging the bases would have been some form of closures. Former Congressman Jim Saxton was credited with helping avoid that:

Saxton said one of the main reasons he fought so hard to keep the bases open was the negative effect that closing them would have on the surrounding communities.
"There are close to 30,000 people who come to work here," he said. "Closing them would have left a tremendous gap in the local economy that would be irreplaceable."

That is certainly an economic impact. Lakehurst's Director of support said they are the largest employer in Ocean County and they don't expect that to change. The joint base is actually the nation's first all service facility.

Jason Springer :: Name that base