Joint base rapidly becoming reality for Elmendorf, Richardson

  • Published
  • By John Pennell
  • Fort Richardson PAO
ELMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska --  Years of hard work and planning are beginning to pay big dividends for teams of workers making Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson a reality. 

With functional working groups for every major moving part of the process and a 29-member "Enterprise" team detailed to work joint basing issues, the new installation is steamrolling to its Initial Operational Capability date in January 2010, according to Air Force Col. Jeff Vinger, commander of the 673rd Joint Base Wing (Provisional), the command which will operate support functions for the joint base. 

"It's been a huge investment on the part of the 3rd Wing and the Garrison (Fort Richardson)," Vinger said. "They definitely gave up their best and brightest to solve this extremely complex issue. It's really a testament to, and indicative of, the leadership and their great concern over making this happen and doing the right thing for JBER - taking care of the Airmen, Soldiers, civilians as well as the families JBER is going to support."
Elmendorf and Fort Richardson were two of 26 Department of Defense installations directed in Base Realignment and Closure law in 2005 to merge into 12
joint installations, Vinger said. This joint-basing initiative assigns one service as the lead agency for each joint installation. For JBER, the Air Force was assigned as lead and will host the Army on this future joint installation. 

Vinger said the bulk of the effort so far has been aimed at drafting a Memorandum of Agreement between the two services defining the installation support relationship and how the joint base will operate on a daily basis providing more effective services and capabilities to the JBER community. 

"We've submitted several draft versions for review and comment by Pacific Air Force and Installation Management Command. Our final draft went in at the end of last month - that was pretty much our 95 percent answer and we just got comments from Office of Secretary of Defense last Friday," Vinger explained. 

The next step in the process is a joint face-to-face meeting at the MOA Workshop scheduled next week at Elmendorf, with representatives from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Department of the Army and Department of the Air Force to go over the MOA and hammer out a consensus. 

"We'll be going through that MOA line-by-line to come to resolution as to what that final product should look like in order to gain approval up at the OSD level," Vinger said. "We're on target with the MOA; the workshop will get us to the point of the final scrub - the final analysis to get the right numbers and the right agreements in there."
Vinger said the agreement will be ready for the Service Vice Chiefs to sign in Au
gust.
"Once they sign off on it, they will also approve our organizational change request that will then allow us to put all the parts and pieces together to build the organization that will stand up at IOC, next January," he explained. "It's coming up very fast." 

He said workers at the two bases shouldn't fear the coming combining of the workforce.
"With what we're putting together here, we're not looking at any loss of service, we're not looking for any reduction of jobs - that's first and foremost on our minds as we're going about putting this organization together," he said. "There will be name changes to some of the organizations to make them fit the jointness requirement of the new joint organization, but we're going to be providing all the same services and it's going to be the same people providing that service. 

"The only big change that can be expected is that everybody who is an Army (garrison) civilian, will become an Air Force civilian employee," he continued, "We're striving to ensure equities, preserve rights and respect for all our civilians involved in this merge."
For the customers currently supported by the two installations, the Soldiers, Airmen, family members and others, Vinger said the goal is seamless transparency. 

"We're looking at making this totally transparent to them," he explained. "They should not see any change in the store fronts they're using right now. We're going to continue to maintain the store fronts here on the Army side that they're familiar with." 

"There should be no reduction in service," he continued. "We're not looking to reduce any services; in fact there should be an enhancement in services. We're looking at joint basing as an opportunity." 

Vinger explained both the customers and the workforce should benefit from a higher level of funding which will come with joint basing. 

"If you look at both the Air Force and the Army side, we're only being funded at an 'amber' level or about 65 percent," he said. "But under joint basing, we should see an increase in sustainment funding to the 90 percent or 'green' level, an increase on both sides that will be reflected in the level of services that can be provided," he continued. 

Part of next week's MOA conference will also deal with getting the funding for necessary manpower and equipment upgrades for the joint base, Vinger explained. He said DoD has set Common Output Level Standards which all the various joint base support activities must meet. These COLS increase our ability to standardize support processes to meet user needs and have provided a baseline to allow functional working groups to formulate requests for increased manpower and budgets as part of the Presidential Budget process 14. 

"All of the functional working groups have identified the resources they need in order to rise to that level of common output level standards," Vinger explained, "and that translates to providing more services to the customers - Soldiers, Airmen and their families." 

The work being done on the MOA and PB-14 is instrumental in a successful launch of the joint installation Vinger said. JBER is scheduled to reach Full Operational Capability Oct. 1, 2010. 

Don Weckhorst, 673rd Joint Base Wing Chief of Staff, said workers and customers on both sides of the soon-to-be joint installation should look to cooperation, not competition, as the way ahead for JBER. 

"We want to overcome the perception of winners and losers," he explained. "This is not a game of winners and losers; it's an attempt right now on the part of both the Air Force and the Army to come together. 

"There's a Joint Base Partnership Council that includes the (Fort Richardson) garrison commander, the 3rd Wing commander and Col. Vinger as the provisional commander, and they go through a series of decisions based on consensus and unanimous decisions to come up with the best organization as if you had a blank sheet of paper and you were going to draw out the best organization to support the 7,000 Airmen that we have here and the 7,000 Soldiers that we will have," Weckhorst continued. "So that partnership council is coming together to really draw out the structure that will best support this organization." 

"The leadership here is committed to the win-win," he said. "When you combine the best of an Air Force organization, the best of an Army organization to service the Airmen and the Soldiers, all their families, and the other populations that depend on these two installations for support, we're going for win-win solutions to how we're going to do this job." 

Vinger said the final product will be unlike most other military installations.
"That's really what we're striving for overall, a model joint base installation," he explained. "The concept of joint basing, in itself, is unique. There's only going to be a handful of joint bases out there. It's not an Air Force base, it's not an Army base - it's a joint base. So what we're looking for is what's best for JBER as a whole." 

"Some of the (offices) will have air force names because the Air Force has the lead and the Air Force, by the guidance, provides the structure," Weckhorst explained. "The partnership council has come together and believes it ought to be named the joint base wing. Obviously 'wing' is an Air Force term, but 'joint base' is the primary and principle term to key in on. 

"It will be a joint base supporting the Airmen and the Soldiers who depend on the platform they have here to train, to live, to support their families when they're not here," he continued. "They've got a really important mission; our focus is to support them so they don't have to worry about the support they get back home, whether it be when they're here training or when they're away and their families are here. There will be Air Force names, certainly, but there will be a joint base approach to supporting those who live and work here."