Study Analyzes Economic Power of L.A. Air Base
The California military space industry, led by the Los Angeles Air Force Base, supports $16 billion of economic activity in the state each year, according to a report by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. to be released today.
The report comes amid the possibility that the nondescript military facility, located in a commercial area of El Segundo, could be put on the Defense Department’s chopping block when a base closure list comes out next year. The Pentagon wants to close 25% of the nation’s military bases to eliminate surplus capacity and save billions of dollars.
“We don’t know, if the Los Angeles Air Force Base should close, how much of that $16 billion would be at risk,” said John Parsons, a Redondo Beach councilman who is co-chairman of an alliance trying to protect the base. “But cutting into any of that is too big a risk.”
The Los Angeles Air Force Base manages most of the service’s military spacecraft acquisition programs, including communications and navigation as well as many intelligence spacecraft.
The base has about 5,000 direct employees, but it sustains the Aerospace Corp., a nonprofit federal research center also in El Segundo.
The report estimates that the industry supports 49,300 jobs in Los Angeles County and 111,700 across the state, including many direct jobs at companies that receive contracts from the base and many indirect jobs that the economic activity generates.
Even if the Pentagon were to close the base, it would not directly affect the current contracts in the aerospace industry to produce spacecraft, but the loss of synergies between the base and the area’s technical workforce could eventually spread job losses far beyond the base.
“Los Angeles Air Force Base is an anchor for a lot of the businesses here, and the cluster is a very powerful force in the industry,” said Parsons, a former aerospace engineer. “If you break up that synergy, a lot of the companies will start to go elsewhere.”
