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By
Davis
Bushnell, Globe Correspondent | October 2, 2005
A scientist at the Hanscom Air Force Base's research laboratory is making an 11th-hour appeal to keep the laboratory complex open through a takeover by an outside organization.
The
Bedford
air base itself was spared from the Defense Department's 2005 list of installations nationwide to be closed in the next two to six years. But plans to move the Air Force Research Laboratory's two operations and 233 researchers to bases in
Ohio
and
New Mexico
were included on the final base closure and realignment list approved by President Bush on Sept. 15 and sent to Congress.
The closings and other changes take effect early next month, unless Congress rejects the entire list, which observers consider unlikely.
Spearheading the effort to preserve the Hanscom research laboratory under a new operator is Edward E. Altshuler, a physicist at the laboratory and a member of the National Federation of Federal Employees, Local 1384.
''Many people know that Hanscom Air Force Base will remain open, but not a lot of people know that the research laboratory will be closed, resulting in many job losses," Altshuler said in a telephone interview.
Altshuler estimates, based on his conversations with lab employees, that only about 10 percent of the 233 researchers are willing to relocate to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in
Ohio
or Kirtland Air Force Base in
New Mexico
. Also, the operations of 20 to 30 laboratory contractors in the area would be hurt, he asserted.
The laboratory specializes in two areas of research: electromagnetic, or radar, applications, and geophysics, or the study of space, said Altshuler, who is doing antenna research.
In a Sept. 19 memorandum sent to Governor Mitt Romney and members of the state's congressional delegation, Altshuler outlined three proposals for keeping the research laboratory complex intact. Laboratory operations, he suggested, could be turned over to the
University
of
Massachusetts
; to a tri-service team of Air Force, Army, and Navy researchers; or to a federal laboratory.
Altshuler said he hasn't contacted UMass, military, or federal laboratory officials about his proposals.
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