This Is Not the Base to Move : Pentagon should take another look at its plans to move El Segundo Air Force facility
California invented aerospace and for years could afford to look down its nose at out-of-state hustlers trying to pry loose bits of the business.
Times are changing. The Pentagon is talking these days not about closing some obsolete cavalry post in California, but of moving a center of excellence in the design and deployment of space satellites, a growth industry with a bright future.
Satellites can serve as eyes in the sky over flash points like the Persian Gulf and other places where regional conflicts are more likely now than clashes between the superpowers. They will have a growing role as the means of verifying compliance in the arms control agreements that the United States and the Soviet Union expect one day will put a formal end to the global nuclear threat.
Yet the Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo, which is in many ways an anchor that may well keep some of Southern California’s big satellite manufacturers from drifting away, is on a list of seven bases that may be moved to save money.
The base is home to the Air Force’s Space Systems Division, which handles satellite procurement for Washington. Another El Segundo operation is the Aerospace Corp. whose 4,000 employees provide the research and development expertise for decisions on what hardware to buy.
The air base is not on the list because satellite manufacturers are themselves moving out, and the space division and the Aerospace Corp. want to stay close to them. So the base should be left where it is.
The base made the list because housing and services are so expensive in Southern California that it has trouble keeping civilian employees, and two-thirds of its military personnel have trouble paying the rent.
Housing shortages are not new to the region. Nor are traffic jams, smog, and other results of the volcanic growth that makes Southern California less attractive to people than it once was.
This is the first time Sacramento, our congressional delegation in Washington and business leaders have had to think seriously about scrambling to hold onto something that always seemed a birthright.
As James Miscoll of the Bank of America, chairman of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, put it: “We can’t keep saying we don’t have to make deals because in California the sun shines every day.”
Business and political coalitions are forming to fend off the idea of moving the base and to make more housing available for space division workers.
But having rediscovered the virtues of hustling, the region can’t stop until it learns how to deliver better education, cleaner air and water, more housing and the other necessities to offer hope that the future can be as bright as the past.
