Future Gets Hazier for Edwards AFB : Pentagon Reports Should Be Enough to Pressure Legislators Into Defensive Actions

Last month, we said that the growth of Edwards Air Force Base was one of the few economic bright spots to savor in this region. Indeed, Edwards AFB in the Antelope Valley’s high desert had actually grown and prospered in the rounds of military base closings to date.

Well, we’ve had a month to savor it. Now, it’s about time to start worrying again about the future of the sprawling 300,000-acre base.

Just last Monday, for example, The Washington Post was reporting that the Pentagon’s top leadership has ordered each of the military services to plan for the possible cancellation or delay of nearly every large new weapons system now in the planning or development stages. The Air Force, for example, was told to prepare for the outright cancellation of a new attack missile, and for delays of from four to seven years on its F-22 fighter jet and its Joint Primary Aircraft Training System.

Edwards AFB is the Air Force’s top flight test center, and military installations that perform weapons testing functions have largely been spared. But 1995 and the next round of closings will be upon us before we know it, and the base closure commission is expected to take a hard look at test installations.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer already have been entertaining thoughts about Edwards and have proposed linking it with other high-tech weapons testing facilities as a kind of “Southwest Complex.”

In case you needed an indication of what kind of a turf battle this is going to be, it is only necessary to note the howl of protest that the Feinstein-Boxer proposal produced in Maryland and Florida, where bases that are similar to Edwards are located. Now is clearly the time for the region’s elected officials to put their heads together to consider the Feinstein-Boxer idea, and any others that might emerge. The future of Edwards AFB may depend on them.