Dangerous winds in JFCOM closure

It's hard to overstate the effects of Monday's announcement that the Pentagon will shutter the U.S. Joint Forces Command, headquartered in Norfolk.

JFCOM has an operating budget of nearly $704 million; payroll for 2,800 civilians and military members and about 3,000 contractors; and more than 1 million square feet of buildings in Norfolk and Suffolk.

The impact won't be confined to jobs lost, of course. It will be seen in fresh holes in neighborhoods and schools and churches, particularly in Suffolk but all over Hampton Roads. More houses will be on the market. Fewer cars will be sold. Restaurants and theaters will be emptier.

It's likely to dwarf the effect of jobs lost at International Paper, Verizon Wireless, Cooper Vision, Smithfield Foods and USAA, said James Koch, economics professor at Old Dominion University and co-author of the annual State of the Region report.

If those previous closings were storms, Koch said, "this is going to be a hurricane."

The shutdown of JFCOM is likely to exceed even the shuttering of Norfolk's Ford truck-assembly plant, which eliminated thousands of jobs.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced JFCOM's demise as part of a massive restructuring to reduce overhead.

He said the reassignment of JFCOM's role and personnel would take six months to a year, but that "a substantial number will no longer work for this department."

His announcement galvanized Virginia's leaders, including the governor, both senators and members of Congress. But it's not clear what power - if any - they have to change his mind.

JFCOM oversees a force of more than 1.16 million people. It trains troops from various branches of the military to work together on specific missions, works to make sure equipment is compatible and coordinates operations with other nations.

As the military has been stretched thin by two wars, that "jointness" has become a way of life and survival.

But JFCOM's mission is more than that. It is also part think tank and part college.

The command and its advanced modeling and simulation technologies have long been hailed as integral to the future of the military itself and to the region's effort to become a high-tech business and education hub. Its partners include Old Dominion University and its Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center.

Its operations - especially in northern Suffolk - have attracted dozens of contractors. It was JFCOM's disproportionate reliance on private contractors that Gates cited as a reason it had to go.

The money saved by closing JFCOM, he said, will be used elsewhere in the Defense Department, perhaps to build ships in Virginia.

Gates was not specific about what pieces of JFCOM will remain in Hampton Roads, but modeling and simulation should remain a local priority.

In recent years, the region's reliance on the military has been tested. The Navy has proposed sending an aircraft carrier to a base in Florida at a cost of $1 billion. In 2005, Virginia Beach came close to losing Oceana Naval Air Station because the area around the base had become too developed.

Koch, whose State of the Region report last year concluded that Hampton Roads depends on defense spending for about 45 percent of its economic activity, warned then that the region was vulnerable to the slightest changes in the budget.

In the next six months, that vulnerability - unfortunately for us all - will be put to the test.