Hanscom to Lose 300 Civilian Jobs in Air Force Restructuring

By Greg Turner
Thursday, November 3, 2011

Hanscom Air Force Base is bracing for the loss of nearly 300 jobs in a restructuring of the U.S. military’s civilian work force.

More details are expected to emerge later today when Air Force brass brief Congress about their plan for 9,000 civilian layoffs overall. More job cuts because of Pentagon budget cuts could come later.

“We are making difficult choices about how to deliberately restructure and posture the force and will continue to look for new ways of accomplishing the mission,” Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said in a statement released yesterday. “We can’t afford business as usual.”

The Air Force is slashing management and support staff but also adding 5,900 new civilian jobs in other areas such as nuclear weapons management and the fields of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

So it’s unclear if Hanscom will see a net gain or loss of civilian jobs, according to Chris Anderson, head of the Massachusetts Defense Technology Initiative.

“It’s not a harbinger of a base closing but it raises the issue,” Anderson said today. “This illustrates we’re literally living in a virtual (base-closing) environment.”

Anderson’s group — made up of defense contractors and government agencies — helped defend Hanscom’s Electronic Systems Center and Natick Labs from the U.S. military’s last round of base closings in 2005.

The Air Force plans to cut 154 command staff jobs at Hanscom as part of a consolidation of its Materiel Command into Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. A separate consolidation would cut another 143 civilian jobs at Hanscom.

The restructuring is expected to be done by next October.

Herald wire services contributed to this report.