Brac Base Realignment And Closure

Base Realignment and Closure (or BRAC) is a process created by the United States federal government in an attempt to save money on military operations and maintenance. In short, BRAC is intended to make our military more efficient.

The BRAC procedure entails closing excess military installations and realigning (relocating) the total asset inventory. Soldiers based at facilities slated to be closed must find another base to which they can transfer. This process has been carried out four times to date with more than 350 installations being closed. These four BRAC rounds took place in: 1989, 1991, 1993 and 1995. The most recent round of BRAC completed in the fall of 2005 and with the commission's recommendations became law in November 2005.

Congress created the BRAC as what they hoped would be a politically palatable method of affecting excesses in the military. Because any given military base brings millions of dollars to its surrounding area it is not unusual for challenges to be raised by members of Congress from affected districts. This makes initiatives such as BRAC very difficult to make happen.

On the flip side of things, when base closures do take place it can mean an influx of soldiers and their families to other bases and their surrounding cities. This has lead to massive innitiatives being taken in order to court those soldiers still undecided as to where they will go. Just as a base closure can have a dramatically negative impact on its surrounding town, a mass influx of soldiers to another base can skyrocket the economy of the area in which that base is located.

BRAC is a difficult thing for many soldiers particularly if they have families. Soldiers themselves are often quite used to being somewhat transient over the course of their carreer. Many times the men and women of our armed forces enjoy the element of travel and adventure involved in their jobs. It is once a soldier has a family and that family starts to grow up that having some stability in where one is living becomes important. It is for that reason that to what base a soldier and his/her family relocates is very important.

The base alone is not the home of a soldier. When the BRAC process affects a base and the associated soldiers must move there are many elements to consider. If the soldier has children then they need to look at items like:

Schools
Physicians
Hospitals
Real estate
Recreation
Transportation
Shopping
And a host of other considerations

Brac can be a blessing for a military town getting an influx of soldiers but does make life worrisome for those same soldiers forced to relocate. It is one thing to have yourself shipped around the world for work, it is quite another to pick up and move an entire family.

Yes, BRAC may be making our overall military a more efficient, well oiled machine but the process required to get there does produce a whole new world of concerns and headaches for all invloved.