Joining forces as the new McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst base

Long before the melding process began in Burlington and Ocean Counties, the Army, Air Force, and Navy were crossing traditional service boundaries.

They shared real estate and worked together on multimillion-dollar projects at Fort Dix, McGuire Air Force Base, and Lakehurst Naval Air Engineering Station.

And that cooperation - as far back as the early 1990s - paid off when defense budget-cutters passed over South Jersey.

This week, after years of acting as one, the bases officially become one: Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.

The nation's only contiguous triservice megabase takes its new name on Thursday. And its long transformation will help make it not only more efficient but also less vulnerable to future closing.

"This day has been a long time coming," said Air Force Col. Gina M. Grosso, who "wears two hats" as the 87th Air Base Wing commander and joint base commander. "We have worked extremely hard to ensure a seamless transition."

Grosso will host a ceremony at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow to welcome hundreds of Army and Navy personnel to the 87th Air Base Wing.

The changes are part of the evolution of the American military into a leaner, meaner fighting machine. About $2 billion in savings are expected over the next 20 years from 2005 Base Realignment and Closure legislation directing the Defense Department to collapse 26 installations into 12 joint bases. The Army portion of the base will be one of six mobilization-training centers in the country.

"I consider this a great opportunity," Grosso said. "I have the functions of a mayor. Instead of three people [commanding at McGuire, Dix, and Lakehurst], there will be one."

And in that role, Grosso will make sure the services have what they need to complete their missions. "I don't own tanks or airplanes or soldiers going forward," she said. "My team takes care of the facilities, the hole in the runway or the heat in the buildings."

More than 42,000 airmen, soldiers, sailors, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, civilians, and their families live and work in and around the base.

"I didn't have any expectation that it wouldn't be challenging," Grosso said. "We have a workforce here that is uniquely capable for bringing the joint base together."

Joint-basing "is a cutting edge strategy of the Department of Defense," said Rep. Chris Smith , whose district includes more than half of the new joint base. The joint base "is the evolution of a new standard in intraservice cooperation and efficiencies.

"As the only Army-Navy-Air Force base in the country with additional elements of the Marines and Coast Guard," he said, "it is truly a unique and utterly irreplaceable asset to national security."

The 65-square-mile base is bordered by 10 municipalities: New Hanover Township, North Hanover Township, Pemberton Borough, Pemberton Township, Springfield Township, Wrightstown Borough, Jackson Township, Lakehurst Borough, Manchester Township, and Plumstead Township.

It has billions of dollars of impact each year on the region's economy, spurring local development and job creation.

As though to drive home that point, military and state and local government officials announced the completion in May of a $300,000 joint land-use study that recommended preservation of a buffer zone around the base, improved traffic flow, reduced noise, cluster housing, and coordination of business development.

This week, the base's neighbors will begin seeing new signs going up at the security gates: "Welcome to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst."

Getting to this point, though, was not easy. After surviving cuts by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission by finding new missions, the three bases took on joint projects, often with help from friends such as now-retired Rep. Jim Saxton (R., N.J.), who was a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

In one project, Dix permitted McGuire in 1994 to build an Air Mobility Warfare Center on the fort's grounds. In the same year, Dix and McGuire split the $40 million cost of a water-treatment plant.

In more recent years, Lakehurst agreed to allow McGuire to use a landing strip, and McGuire and Dix have been cooperating on a $500 million housing project at the bases involving 2,400 new, renovated, and converted units.

The Army and Air Force also cooperated on construction of a $5 million gate to X-ray trucks at Dix to serve both bases.

Other more mundane elements of the triservice relationship in South Jersey have to be worked out to determine what services can be combined, such as grass-cutting, road repairs, and snow removal. Standards are being developed that will be applied at all bases across the country.

"In the short term, there won't be dividends, but in the long term, there will be," Grosso said. "My job is to be an enabler, to enable all the mission commanders across the services."

The operations at the joint base will mean changes for the services, but much of the mission will remain the same.

"Fort Dix has been in the business of training and mobilizing soldiers for the last 92 years," Fort Dix spokesman Dave Moore said. "As a partner with the joint base, we continue with that mission of training and preparing service members for deployments."

The latest evidence of the streamlining process is the establishment Thursday of the Warfighter and Family Readiness Center, which will support the health, welfare, and readiness of members of the Air Force, Army, and Marines and their families.

It was formed by merging the community and family-services centers on the three bases into one. The organization will continue to operate out of separate locations until a new building is ready in 2011.

"All three centers have actually worked closely together for years," said Don Divis, 87th Force Support Squadron flight chief. "Joint-basing opportunities have just placed these great programs and professionals under one leader."

The centers offer Hearts Apart meetings for families of those deployed, Bundles for Babies for expectant parents, the Transition Assistance Program for service members separating and retiring, several career-service programs, and many other services.

The transition to a joint base also will pump new life into the 87th Medical Group Family Advocacy Program at McGuire. The family-advocacy programs at each of the bases will now be part of one program, under the 87th, and will combine the staff from all three offices.

"Mission and family life are closely connected," said Melodye Giovanni, Family Advocacy outreach manager. "When issues surface in either area, both are affected.

"Well-adjusted families and service members can have a positive effect on the mission," Giovanni added. "It takes a lot to win a war, and family-support programs do make a difference in that effort."

Family Advocacy will continue to offer to all service members preventive domestic-violence services, stress-management classes, parent-support programs, and more.

While barriers among services come down, the separate cultures and heritage of the Air Force, Army, and Navy remain. The members of each "have a strong loyalty to their services," Grosso said. "I don't minimize that . . . what they do is critically important."

The changes at the base should make it less of a target for defense budget-cutters in the future.

"How could you close the joint base?" the commander asked. "There is so much mission here. It will be a tremendous training platform with members of every service."