Warner: Local offensive on JFCOM closure has begun

Hampton Roads’ top elected officials have begun to challenge the proposed closure of Joint Forces Command using legal, political and business arguments, but they also are exploring a “Plan B” if their efforts aren’t successful, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said Thursday.

In a 90-minute closed meeting in Virginia Beach called for and led by Warner on Thursday morning, more than a dozen officials and retired senior naval officers agreed to a multipronged offensive that includes trying to convince the military that keeping the command, known as JFCOM, is more efficient than closing it.

“We need to change the argument from simply saying, ‘Oh my gosh, I think Hampton Roads is going to take a hit,’ to why it’s in the best interest of our warfighters to maintain Joint Forces Command and why, from a business standpoint, this actually saves money rather than costs money,” Warner said after a separate event in Portsmouth.

Warner said his “top priority” is reversing Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ plans to close JFCOM, which provides about 6,000 jobs, most in Suffolk and Norfolk, and hundreds of millions of dollars in the region. “But you’ve got to have a Plan B as well,” he added, in case some elements of the command don’t survive.

The local effort has to examine the benefits of both JFCOM as a whole and its components to gauge their importance, Warner said. JFCOM’s mission includes training troops from different branches of the military in how to operate together, or jointly, as well as experimenting with potential new military technologies and strategies.

Hampton Mayor Molly Ward, who attended the meeting, said local leaders need to be certain they can make a sound case for everything they fight to preserve.

“We all want to make sure we are living in reality and our expectations are reasonable. … That’s part of the business case analysis,” said Ward, who is vice chairwoman of the Hampton Roads Military and Federal Facilities Alliance. The alliance, a publicly funded organization that lobbies on behalf of local governments, will provide staff for the JFCOM effort.

Also represented Thursday were the mayors of five other cities, the region’s congressional delegation, Gov. Bob McDonnell’s office and state legislators.

Warner said he’s convinced the region can make a strong argument to keep and possibly expand key components of the command, particularly the modeling and simulation work.

“We cannot rest,” he said, adding that the region needs to mobilize as it did a few years ago to successfully block a proposal to close Oceana Naval Air Station.

Gates announced Aug. 9 that he would shut down JFCOM within a year and cut spending on defense support contractors by nearly one-third over three years – all as part of a larger effort to redirect defense spending away from overhead and support contractors and toward troops and modernization.

The region’s congressional delegation, which has been critical of Gates for failing to provide any analysis to back up his plan, might get some answers in two weeks. The Defense Department has agreed to provide a briefing Sept. 8 for the region’s federal lawmakers and McDonnell’s office, said Jessica Smith, spokeswoman for Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va.

The officials who met in Virginia Beach agreed to establish work groups that would focus on several areas that include challenging the legality of Gates’ decision to close the facility without timely congressional notification or review; conducting congressional hearings to press defense officials to explain their actions; starting a lobbying campaign aimed at the White House and defense officials; and working with private contractors who have made significant financial investments in JFCOM operations.

Warner said that while the group needs to move swiftly, a report last week that President Barack Obama would sign off on the JFCOM shutdown by Sept. 1 is not valid. Exactly when a decision will be made isn’t clear, he said.

As of Thursday, he said, there has been no change in JFCOM’s operations.

Bill Bartel, (757) 446-2398, bill.bartel@pilotonline.com