U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Centerville, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, sent letters Thursday to President Obama and Burgess opposing the Alabama proposal.
“This attempt to take jobs from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and ship them to Alabama does not support our national security or our national intelligence community,” Turner wrote. “This is only about one state trying to steal jobs from another.”
“No decisions have been made,” Betsy Hawkings, Turner’s chief of staff, said of the issue.
About 3,100 people work in the NASIC building at Wright-Patterson, including military and civilian personnel and employees of partner organizations housed there, the Defense Intelligence Agency and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
There have been periodic proposals over the years to shift jobs either from NASIC to the Missile and Space Intelligence Center (MSIC), or from Alabama to NASIC, because their missions are somewhat similar.
NASIC bills itself as the primary Defense Department source for air and space intelligence. NASIC uses information available to the U.S. intelligence community to prepare reports evaluating foreign military capabilities and weapon systems for the president, senior U.S. military advisers and others.
MSIC employs about 650 people and is managed by the Defense Intelligence Agency. The center is responsible for intelligence analyses of adversaries’ surface-to-air missile and ballistic missile capabilities.
“This is a very serious threat to NASIC jobs,” said Michael Gessel, the Dayton Development Coalition’s vice president for federal government programs. “We have seen this kind of play before, a little bit more subtly.”
Employment in the intelligence community is increasing, so any loss of current jobs from Wright-Patterson could cost the Dayton region future job growth, Gessel said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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