Telling residents of military towns that the U.S. needs to close more bases is probably not a fun job. Yet that’s what Defense Secretary Leon Panetta did last week when he spoke at the annual meeting of the Association of Defense Communities about the inevitability of another round of closures by the Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC).

“There is a strategic and fiscal imperative that is driving the Department…towards a smaller, and leaner, and more agile force. That’s a reality,” said Panetta . “It is an important debate that we have to have, and frankly, it’s not going away.”

Militaries must constantly transform themselves to meet current threats, and realigning base structure is an integral part of that process. The end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has collided with our debt crisis to make military modernization especially urgent. But any process that picks winners and losers is bound to meet opposition in Congress . The prospect of another BRAC round was “dead on arrival,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Naval Submarine Base, CT) shortly after of Panetta’s speech, echoing the sentiment of several lawmakers when the idea was floated earlier this year.

The Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1988 attempted to take politics out of the base realignment process by establishing an independent, non-governmental commission to create a list of bases to close or realign. The list is then subjected to a simple up-or-down vote (no amendments) by the President and Congress to prevent selective cutting. New lists are generated in “rounds,” the fifth and latest of which began in 2005.

The 2005 round focused on realignment rather than closure, leaving lots of excess overhead to drain resources from the military. A study by Business Executives for National Security found the 2005 round only cut 5 percent of the military’s 20-25 percent excess infrastructure. That excess baggage has a disproportionate effect on DOD in times of budget cutting, resulting in a hollow force, Panetta said. “If I’m taking the force structure down and then maintaining large infrastructure costs, then the money that ought to be going for training, for assistance, for help, for our soldiers, is going to maintain the infrastructure,” he said.

Panetta doesn’t take base closure lightly: He was the local Congressman when Fort Ord, a large Army training base in his district, was closed in 1994. But he called the experience “a story of a community finding opportunity in the face of some very significant challenges. And in many ways it is an appropriate backdrop to the situation confronting the Department of Defense…as we emerge from a decade of war and confront a very real fiscal crisis in this country.”

That parallel extends to finances as well. As Panetta pointed out, DOD sees annual savings of at least $8 billion as a result of past BRAC rounds. Local communities can also emerge from a closure even stronger than before, as our 2001 report New Beginnings: How Base Closures Can Improve Local Economies and Transform America’s Military found. The study determined that most communities experienced higher employment rates and median incomes post-BRAC, thanks in part to abundant government economic revitalization funds.

It’s clear that another round is in our future, even if it doesn’t happen in this election season. Yes, the Government Accountability Office has found that initial BRAC costs can exceed projections, but the long-term savings are inarguable. And at least two years will elapse between the launch of a round and its effects on the ground, by which time our economy will hopefully have dug itself out of the current slump.

Congress has demanded that our national security be shaped by strategy rather than budgets, so it should not stand in the way of BRAC savings—especially when it’s our troops that pay the price.

TCS Quote of the Week:

“I've been to lots of military bases and talked to everything from four-star generals all the way down to privates and when I ask them this question, not one of them has told me 'No' … If you had to tomorrow, without affecting our readiness or in strength, could you cut 10 to 15 percent out of your budget? Nobody's ever told me 'No” … The last place we need to not do oversight and hold people accountable is the Pentago n.” ( US News )

– Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) discussing the automatic federal budget cuts slated to take effect next year.