To ease deployments, Army revamps way it runs bases.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold

Seeking to ease longstanding problems exacerbated by frequent troop deployments to fight the war on terrorism, the U.S. Army is reorganizing the way that it runs its military bases across the United Stares and around the world.

For the first tune, the mission has been handed to one organization--the Army Installation Agency, which was established in 2002.

The IMA, headquartered in Crystal City, Va., is the brainchild of former

Army Secretary Thomas E. White, who previously had retired from the service as a brigadier general. When he returned as secretary, White "took a look at Army installations, and be saw they weren't going anywhere," said the agency's director, Maj. Gen. Anders B. Aadiand. White "saw the same old problems, and he said this isn't working," Aadland told National Defense.

What bothered White--and other Army leaders--was the service's tradition of funding weapons and equipment programs at the expense of base infrastructure needs.

"Army installations are our nation's power-projection platforms," Gen. John M. Keane, who retired in September as the service's vice chief of staff, told a congressional hearing earlier this year.

The Army depends upon its bases to support its troops and all of their supplies and equipment, he said. "However, a decade of chronic under funding has left [more than] 50 percent of our facilities in such poor condition that commanders rated them as 'adversely affecting mission requirements."

As a result, base commanders have been hard pressed to meet the needs of troops in recent deployments. As an example, Aadtand cited Fort Carson, Colo., which in early 2003 served as the temporary home for approximately 3,600 National Guard and Army reserve troops on their way to Iraq. The numbers far exceeded the space available in the base's barracks, he explained.

"We had troops sleeping in folding cots on gymnasium floors and in motor pools for weeks," he said. "This was in the winter, in the Rocky Mountains, and those places aren't heated very well."

Unit commanders didn't complain much. "They said, 'after all, we're going to war. It's better here, even under these conditions, than it will be there,'" Aadland noted. Still, base offidals moved as quickly as they could to set up portable heaters, shower facilities and latrines, he said.

Returning troops also have experienced difficulties. In October, complaints surfaced that injured and sick Guard and reserve troops--on medical hold at Fort Stewart, Ga., after returning from Iraq were being housed for months in barracks without air conditioning, attached showers or latrines.

The barracks were designed for...