Military bases are going great guns.

• Position: Economic impact on North Carolina - Interview

BNC: Where does the military rank as an industry?

It would rank fifth or sixth, depending on whose statistics you use. The Department of Commerce would say they rank fifth in the state as an industry. That's right up there with the furniture, pharmaceuticals and software industries.

BNC: What is the direct impact on the state?

There is an impact of $5.62 billion directly from the military bases. In addition, there is half a billion dollars of direct impact from contracts that the Pentagon has with companies in North Carolina, for everything from engine parts to uniforms.

BNC: Aren't there a lot of states with much bigger contracts?

I think we may have jumped to 27th or 28th in the number of dollars that we receive. The reason is, we don't have any major defense contractors in the state. The biggest defense contractor in North Carolina is AT&T in Greensboro.

BNC: Since so many personnel are stationed here, doesn't that impact vary depending on military involvement elsewhere?

Yes. Out of 42,000 at Camp Lejeune, more than half of those were airlifted to the Gulf. So all of those dollars were gone out of the economy. The same thing is true with Fayetteville with the 82nd Airborne - literally the first troops on the ground in Kuwait at the time. They all left. The base was down to, I think, 5,000 people.

BNC: What can those areas do about that?

There's not a whole lot that they can do to avoid that. But the Pentagon has done a pretty good job of trying to plan for those deployments, trying to soften the negative impact of the troops leaving. There were some special programs set up, like credit lines, to get businesses through that bad period.

BNC: What's the plus side?

The nice thing about having a large military facility like Bragg, like Lejeune, like Cherry Point, that are critical installations for the military and are not likely to be shut down or downsized, is that the impact of those dollars is there regardless of the economy. You might be in a recession or you might be in an inflationary period or a period of growth, but the military personnel are always there. The impact is constant and much more stable and much less liable to the business cycle than any industry like furniture.

BNC: What surprised you most about the figures?

Because I was somewhat familiar with the figures for individual bases in the state, the total numbers did not really surprise me. They were...