Is Hill too good to die?

In a nutshell, Hill is the best at its game, said Lt. Col. Mike Moore.

"Nobody trains to the level of depot proficiency that we do," said Moore, who leads the 649th Combat Logistics Support Squadron in repairing F-16s. "Nobody does it. We deploy anytime, any day. We are on call 24/7 and we will go anywhere in the world, any time."

That's just the beginning. Hill has much more room to grow.

Hill sits on 6,698 acres of land on the Davis/Weber County line. The base houses more than 1,400 buildings on that land and can easily build more, Mayfield said.

With so much room to grow, Hill can easily accommodate Defense Department needs, Huntsman said.

"If it's software development that is important, then that is where we want to place our resources," Huntsman said. "If it is the depot component, as the F-16 phases out and the FA-22 phases in for depot work and longer term bringing in a wing of F-35 Joint Task Force Strike Fighters, then we want to make sure we are there to play whatever supporting role we can to make that all a smooth and seamless transition."

Room to grow

That ability to grow could be the thing that hurts Hill most in the BRAC process, Mayfield said.

Defense Department officials might look at all the excess space at Hill and see it as a waste, he said.

"We have a tremendous amount of room to grow, but it is a double-edged sword," Mayfield said.

Some of that growth came from a new process base officials are using that cuts down on excess capacity. For instance, at the Ogden Air Logistics Center's F-16 repair line, production chief Wayne Hansen has employed a "lean manufacturing" process that pinpoints inefficiencies in every step of the repair process.

Every F-16 in the entire United States mobility will, at some point, be repaired at Wayne Hansen's F-16 repair line, he said.

"We get these planes in and out of here and back to the war fighter as fast as possible," Hansen said. "You can't figure out how to do this out of a book. This is strictly depot maintenance."

With so much excess capacity, Defense Department and BRAC officials could say "you're not fully utilizing your installation" and move work from Hill to another base and reduce cost, McCall said.

But, on the flip side, defense officials could reward Hill for reducing excess capacity by granting the base more workload, she said.

No matter how BRAC or Defense Department officials decide to interpret Hill's lean transformation, the base will continue to follow waste-cutting principles.