WASHINGTON -- Anxiety is high among some military families as they await word of which units will be caught in the Army's next round of cuts.
In the coming weeks, the Army will announce the final details of plans to eliminate 40,000 troops nationwide, the result of major budget cuts that are already locked in place.
And even if Alaska's soldiers make it through this round, there is still a chance that the Army would have to eliminate another 30,000 soldiers in the coming years. For now, Congress is searching for a workaround to stave off further belt-tightening that some say could hollow out the nation's forces.
The military remains mum as discussions continue about which soldiers the branch will have to do without. But speculation continues, especially about potential cuts at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. Lately, the rumor mill has the 25th Infantry Division, 4th Brigade Combat Team at Fort Richardson getting the ax.
"In recent weeks we have been picking up a persistent buzz that the Army intends to eliminate or relocate the 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division at JBER," Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski wrote in a May 26 letter to Defense Secretary Ash Carter. "The rumors are deeply concerning to me."
Pressing for inside information, Murkowski said that "if the rumors are not true, we would like to have the confidence necessary to put them to rest."
But she gained no such confidence in the official response from Secretary of the Army John McHugh. At "this time, no final decisions have been made," McHugh wrote in a June 12 letter. "The Secretary of Defense and I both recognize the strategic importance of Alaska. At the same time, we know that very difficult choices lie ahead," McHugh wrote.
At an Army 240th birthday celebration at the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage on June 19, there was talk of the cuts among soldiers, said Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, also a Republican. "Of course, all the troops hear rumors and have concerns," he said. "And I share those concerns."
Over and over, Sullivan said, he's been told "that no decision has been made yet."
But what's known for sure is that the cuts are coming, and they're coming soon.
"The Army is facing a very challenging fiscal environment" with required cuts of $95 billion over 10 years, said Lt. Col. Joseph Buccino, an Army spokesman. "As a result the Army is directed to reduce its end strength to 450,000 (soldiers) by the end of fiscal year 2017," Buccino said.
At its peak in 2012, the branch had 570,000 soldiers. Today, there are about 490,000.
"That is definitely happening. There's no turning back," Buccino said, and "once the decision is made it will not change."
"With defense budgets much lower than requested and a political solution out of sight for the foreseeable future, Army leaders have really no other choice but to cut the force," said defense analyst Mackenzie Eaglen, with the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
"They've already reduced readiness and cannot arguably let it fall further without risking the safety of those left who will be serving in the near future in harm's way," Eaglen said. "And the Army has virtually no modernization program from which they can rob Peter to pay Paul. So that leaves endstrength."
The cuts won't come in the form of pink slips handed out on a Friday -- it will be a two-year process to eliminate 40,000 positions, ending in September 2017, Buccino said.
And, he noted -- "it's worth explaining that these are directed cuts. The Army does not desire to make reductions down to 450,000."
For the last two years, the branch has been working on deciding just where and what to cut.
The Army is considering reductions at as many as 30 posts across the nation. A recent assessment of the impacts of cuts to bases, going out to 2020, drove home just how major the impacts could be for Alaska.
The environmental and socioeconomic analysis of the 30 largest installations garnered 110,000 public comments in response, according to Buccino.
In terms of the local impacts of cutting the 4-25th, the Army's Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Assessment for 2020 realignment provided a bit of fodder for those who want to keep the brigade in place. The report described potential force reductions at bases across the country that showed stark results for Alaska's installations. But it also found that the socioeconomic impacts of a troop drawdown at JBER could be "significant," unlike the results at many other bases.
"There are a variety of factors that are in play" as the Army goes through several detailed analyses meant to help with the decision, Buccino said. Maintaining presence and interest in the Asia-Pacific theater is part of that, he said. "The idea is to maintain as much capability and combat power as possible with a smaller force."
Since that warning shot, the military has held town hall meetings to hear community concerns, including in Anchorage and Fairbanks in February.
Meanwhile, a "Total Army Analysis" examined the Army's war-fighting capabilities and infrastructure priorities, among other issues. A "Military Value Analysis" was "strictly focused on the Brigade Combat Teams," and ranked them using 16 attributes, Buccino said. It "has been a very complex process," he said.
BCTs are "the basic package that can project combat power and fight on its own," and generally each have about 4,000 soldiers, Buccino said. There are 14 U.S. Army installations that are hosting at least one BCT.
It's one of those BCTs that has been the subject of the rumors Alaska's Senators are asking about.
The 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, often called the "4-25th" and nicknamed the "Spartans," is an airborne division stationed at Fort Richardson near Anchorage. It's both the only airborne brigade combat team in the Pacific theater, and the newest such team in the United States.
The 4-25th was born out of the Army's expansion following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The unit's soldiers have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, with 21 troops killed in action.
Sullivan noted that the 4-25th is the only Arctic-capable team of its type in the nation. "You just cannot take troops from any other part of the country or any other part of the world, send them to the Arctic, and ask them to operate," Sullivan said. It requires training, acclimation and new culture norms, he said.
The importance of Alaska's location -- near the Pacific and the Arctic -- has been a big focus of the arguments made by Alaska's congressional delegations in their efforts to keep the unit in place.
Several military experts said that the case for Alaska as a strategic military location sometimes falls on deaf ears back in Washington, D.C.
"In certain areas I think people understand it," such as in terms of missile defense, Sullivan said. But an Alaska-focused understanding is "a little bit lacking" in terms of "unique" Arctic capabilities and airborne capabilities "that even senior officials in the Department of Defense are not always aware of," Sullivan said.
Talk of military needs in the Arctic has increased in recent months, particularly given Russia's increase of activity there. Last week, Icelandic ministers visited the Pentagon, where they discussed defense cooperation with Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work, particularly Nordic and Arctic regional security.
"I know of no Combatant Commander who believes it is prudent to reduce Alaska Army force structure at this time given the high threat environment at Alaska's back door," Murkowski told the Secretary of Defense in May. "Our airborne troops are globally assignable and given our geographic advantage can get where they need to go pretty quickly."
Some worry that elimination of the 4-25th could lead to total closure for Fort Richardson.
But that's highly unlikely, said Larry Korb, a defense analyst at the the liberal Center for American Progress. With a smaller Army, reliance on the National Guard and reserves will go up, he said. "I think up in Alaska it'd be pretty hard for the guard and reserve to drill" without Fort Richardson, he said. "And they need a place to go to train."
"Alaska's unique because of where it is," Korb said. "Let's say I close a base in Maryland. Well, I can go to Virginia to train if I'm in the guard." But another base won't be so close in Alaska, he said. "So that's a consideration. You're always going to have something in Alaska."
And besides, Korb said, "you can't close the base unless you have a base realignment and closure commission."
The Defense Department asked Congress for another round of Base Realignment and Closure -- known as "BRAC," but didn't get the go-ahead.
Congress is "not going to do it in an election year, and they turned it down this year," Korb said.
Without authorization for base realignment and closure, which the Army would prefer, "it is forced to salami slice units away from multiple installations," said Raymond DuBois, senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. For now, the Army continues "feverishly analyzing the options," he said.
DuBois argued that the BRAC process "is far more advantageous to local communities" given the planning process.
Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson was created under the 2005 BRAC, one of 12 such combined bases that emerged from that process. JBER hosts the Alaskan Command, the 11th Air Force, and the Alaskan North American Aerospace Defense Command Region, and maintains $11.4 billion in infrastructure over 84,000 acres, according to the base.
"For now, bases are safe from outright closure but none are immune to going hollow from within as Congress punts on another BRAC round but continues to let the force shrink in size -- particularly the U.S. Army," said American Enterprise Institute's Eaglen.
Eaglen was bullish on Alaska's chances of holding forces. "The geo-strategic significance of Alaska's physical location will always mean the state is a premier choice of basing and force posture across the services and for a variety of reasons. The size of the oceans and transit times to the Pacific are not getting smaller or shorter," she said.
But the cuts won't necessarily end with the July announcement.
The budget agreement known as "sequestration" requires even more stringent belt-tightening in fiscal year 2016. If the sequestration requirements aren't addressed, the Army will have to trim its forces to 420,000 by fiscal year 2019, Buccino said. That would mean losing 150,000 soldiers over a seven-year period -- 26 percent of the force.
The Army argues that 450,000 soldiers is the lowest bar for meeting its current commitments and operational readiness. "So we're just at the water's edge there," Buccino said. The Army would be "challenged to do that with 420,000 soldiers."
Many in Congress are hoping for a workaround in the next budget. A defense authorization bill that recently passed the Senate used the "OCO" -- Overseas Contingency Operations account -- to fund the Army above the budget caps.
"Some people have been critical of that," Sullivan said. "To me that was a way to be able to get to the levels of spending that we need."
Korb said that given the efforts to use the OCO account, he thinks the Army will end its population drop, for now, at 450,000 soldiers.
When it comes to appropriations, "I'm optimistic," Sullivan said. "I think in this time with these challenges, saying you're going to vote against the defense authorization act, or funding the military, I think people are going to have a hard time going home and explaining that vote."