Tu, Jan 27, 2015, 6:30-8:30pm, Oahu Army downsizing listening session at Hale Koa Hotel, 2055 Kalia Rd, Waikiki 96815. Details
Community Briefing on Oahu Army Downsizing Opportunities
Submitted by Guest on Fri, 10/17/2014 - 07:28
Filmed October 14, 2014
(1 hour 49 minutes)
Description on YouTube:
Oahu Army Downsizing Presentation held in the Waianae community on October 14, 2014.
Please consider signing the Petition asking our Legislators to embrace the Army Downsizing opportunity. The petition link is in GREEN on the right side of www.oc4ad.com webpage.
Late in June of 2014, the Department of Defense (DoD) released its Quadrennial Defense Review for 2014 (QDR 2014). DoD releases a QDR every four years as a way of articulating its strategic direction and providing end strength and force structure decisions for the Services to implement over a fixed period of time. The DoD is facing ever-increasing fiscal challenges and is unable to sustain itself at current and future levels of funding projected by the Congress. In the case of the Army, QDR 2014 calls for a reduction of as many as 130,000 active duty Army soldiers world-wide. To meet this fiscally constrained personnel cap the Army identified bases within 19 States to absorb these cuts; Hawaii is one of the States on the Army’s cut list. Bases in Hawaii now being considered by the Army to meet these cuts include Schofield Barracks (16,000) and Fort Shafter (3,800). The impacts of these cuts are significant, but the members of the Oahu Council for Army Downsizing (OCAD) see most of these as positive impacts that will greatly improve the quality of life for Hawaii’s people, particularly the Hawaiian community on Oahu and throughout Hawaii Nei.
The OCAD supports and actively advocates for the downsizing of Army Forces on Oahu. The OCAD does not consider the bulk of the Army’s forces on Oahu to be strategically located since these forces do not have readily available airlift or sealift to support their transport to anywhere in the Pacific as quickly as may be needed. Moreover, the OCAD believes the Army on Oahu lacks critically needed ‘forced entry’ capability to allow it to enter hostile environments, a capability already possessed by the US Marines presently on Oahu and throughout the Pacific. The OCAD believes taxpayers cannot afford to pay for redundant forces competing to do the same job and redundant, geographically isolated forces occupying critical lands and consuming valuable resources that are important to the State of Hawaii and the Hawaiian community.
The OCAD wants the people of Hawaii and Oahu to understand the goodness that can occur if the Army is downsized in the quantities proposed by DoD. The OCAD believes the cuts proposed should occur in the near term and that the following bases and geographic areas be returned to the State of Hawaii: Schofield Barracks, Wheeler Army Airfield, Makua Valley, Dillingham Military Reservation, and Kolekole pass with unimpeded access on Lualualei Naval Road.
The OCAD believes the DoD’s recommendation for cuts provides a ‘once–in–a–century’ opportunity for Hawaii Nei; if military forces on Oahu are not cut during this round of force structure cuts, then nothing will change on Oahu militarily — there will never be another round of cuts like this for Hawaii in any of our lifetimes.
The worst case scenario would be for Hawaii’s Congressional Delegation to naively negotiate a compromise deal with other State Legislators to reduce the projected personnel cuts on Oahu (i.e. only 10,000 personnel cuts versus 19,800). Because any cuts smaller than what is proposed by the Army will allow the Army to retains its current facilities on Oahu at the status quo; resulting in NO LONGTERM BENEFITS FOR THE PEOPLE OF HAWAII. This would be unforgiveable!
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