L.A. Launches Effort to Save Air Force Base

Responding to an announcement of possible base closures, city and county officials began a campaign Friday in hopes of keeping open the Los Angeles Air Force Base.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s announcement last year has spurred states to jockey against one another in hopes of keeping their own bases by lobbying for others to close. As many as 100 of the nation’s 425 military bases could be earmarked for closure by next year, when the decisions will be made.

On Friday, the county and the city each presented $100,000 checks to the Los Angeles Air Force Base Regional Alliance, a conglomeration of South Bay civic and economic groups, politicians and other organizations created to lobby for the El Segundo base’s preservation. The 110-acre base has been in the South Bay since the 1950s and is one of the Pentagon’s most prized research and development centers.

“It’s truly one of the best-kept secrets in the state of California,” said county Supervisor Don Knabe. “We’re going to put up a real fight in Washington. We will not go quietly.”

The base is considered vulnerable to closure, military officials said, because it’s not part of a larger military facility and is due for costly earthquake renovations, and because of the narrowness of its mission: overseeing space hardware contracts. Colorado and New Mexico are lobbying to have the base closed to preserve their own, and to take over the lucrative space and missile systems operation.

The base, which has an annual budget of about $10 billion, directly employs more than 3,000 military employees and civilians. All told, the jobs of about 65,000 workers in the county, including subcontractors and service workers, depend on the base.

Closure “would just be devastating to our economy,” Knabe said.

David Herbst, an alliance spokesman, said that although most of the lobbying efforts will focus on Washington, local efforts will concentrate on communicating the importance of the base.

“We need to let people know we even have this economic asset, and that this asset is worth retaining,” Herbst said. “The only proof you need that it’s worth retaining is that Colorado and New Mexico are actively trying to steal it from us.”

The base -- officially called the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center -- developed the GPS satellite navigation system. Its programs include the latest space-based radars, infrared satellites used to track enemy missiles and some of the nation’s most covert space weapons.

The complex, which has no runways, supersonic jets or barracks, looks more like a spartan college campus than a scene from “Top Gun,” the Tony Scott movie starring Tom Cruise about an elite U.S. flight school for fighter pilots.

The base opened in 1954, amid the Cold War, at an empty church in Inglewood. Its objective was to create intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs. In 1956, the Air Force began developing military satellite systems at the facility.

The Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, and military leaders believed that the nation that controlled space would eventually dominate the world with space-based weapons. Early-warning satellites developed at the base in the 1970s removed the possibility of surprise ICBM attacks.

Knabe said the goal would be to keep the base from being included on a list of proposed closures expected to be issued early next year. That list would later go to the president for approval, he said.

“You can’t wait until the last minute on something like this,” Knabe said. “It’s all going to be won or lost early on.”