Defense Cuts: Assessing the Casualties : Southland: Three area facilities are facing closure or cutbacks, including air base in El Segundo, Long Beach Naval Shipyard and Edwards Air Force Base.

More than 3,400 military and civilian employees at the Los Angeles Air Force Base, a research and development branch of the Air Force in El Segundo, could be relocated to Vandenberg Air Force Base under a plan to reduce the defense budget announced Monday by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

The 96-acre base also may lose 361 civilian and military jobs over the next four years under proposed manpower cuts. The base, which has no aircraft and houses mostly engineers and support personnel, serves as headquarters for the Air Force Systems Command’s Space Systems Division, which acquires military satellites and boosters. It also is a developing ground for missiles, including the Atlas, Titan and Minuteman III.

The closing could force the relocation of personnel at the Air Force’s military housing facilities for 570 families in San Pedro, said spokesman Lt. Johnn Kennedy.

If the base is closed, Air Force officials “would do what we could to help other people who would not want to relocate find new jobs.”

The El Segundo facility is one of three military facilities in the Los Angeles County area that may be closed.

Cheney also has proposed shutting down the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, affecting thousands of jobs. Military officials also have recommended phasing out more than 400 jobs at Edwards Air Force Base in the Antelope Valley.

At the Los Angeles Air Force Base, officials already have begun a study of the economic feasibility of closing the base, a research and development branch of the Air Force which employs 1,791 military personnel and 1,654 civilians.

The closing of the Los Angeles Air Force Base will have a “ripple effect” throughout the economy and community life in the South Bay, said Tom Quintana, a spokesman for the city of Hawthorne.

“Obviously, we’d be very sad to see that facility close,” Quintana said. “With Northrop and the aerospace community right here, any cutbacks in defense, any scaling back of defense contracts, we feel immediately.”

Personnel at the base oversee testing of satellites that are launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base and Cape Canaveral, Kennedy said. Engineers at the facility also work with aerospace firms that are contracted to manufacture satellites and other aerospace technology, he said.

“If they decided to close the base and move us to Vandenberg, the military would go out there and a large number of civilian slots would go with us,” Kennedy said.

Chaotic’ in Long Beach

An environmental impact study will be completed in about 10 months, before a decision is made about the Los Angeles Air Force Base, said Kennedy.

“If the decision is made to close, that recommendation will be part of the 1992 fiscal budget,” Kennedy said. “It’s impossible to say what they’re going to recommend. They may even say stay here.”

At the Long Beach Naval Shipyard on Monday, the mood ranged from “depressed” to “chaotic” as official word from the Defense Department came in a three-page faxed letter, confirmation that rumors circulating for days were indeed true.

“The mood is why work? Why the hell try when the people we work for don’t care if you’re here or not?” said Joanne McCaughey, who supports three daughters and a son on her salary as a sheet metal mechanic.

Thirteen labor unions representing most of the 4,100 workers who stand to lose their jobs are organizing an informational picket line, preparing leaflets, faxing letters to Washington and encouraging employees to write and phone their city officials, congressmen and senators.

Long Beach Mayor Ernie Kell vowed to fight the Pentagon, calling it senseless to eliminate a shipyard that performed work under cost last year, saving the Navy $20 million in ship repair bills.

The news was not so bad at Edwards Air Force Base, located at the far northern edge of Los Angeles County. The base’s famed Air Force Flight Test Center will have to phase out 417 of its nearly 5,800 Air Force jobs over the next four years. A spokesman said the cuts should come through retirements and attrition, not layoffs.

“It’s not as bad as it could have been here. We don’t feel there will be any measurable impact on the local economy,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Jan Dalby.