"As one of Utah's largest employers, Hill clearly makes a significant contribution to the state and has an even greater impact on those communities in close proximity to the base," the study says. "The loss of Hill AFB translates to lost jobs and income for Utah workers, reduces the number of households that can be supported and permanently changes the structure and size of the Utah economy."

Stacking the deck

Avoiding that fate is no easy task.

One possible strategy is to educate the Pentagon that Hill is the perfect example of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's new vision for the military — a transformed fighting power that works and trains together, said Vickie McCall, executive director of the Utah Defense Alliance.

"The base is better if it has a diversity of missions," said Jim Hansen, the former Utah congressman who has been appointed to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission.

Done.

Hill already has a diverse mix of missions, McCall said. It's what people at Hill call the "three-legged stool" — a maintenance depot, the Utah Test and Training Range and two F-16 fighter jet units.

The Ogden Air Logistics Center is one of three huge air logistics centers in the nation. It is responsible for engineering and logistics management of the F-16 fighter and the A-10 "tank killer" aircraft, as well as the Peacekeeper missile. It performs maintenance for the F-16, the A-10 and the giant C-130 cargo plane.

The Utah Test and Training Range is an "indispensable asset" to the Defense Department, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said. The range includes 12,574 square miles of airspace, where F-16 pilots can train in air-to-air combat in a geographical match to the places U.S. troops are fighting today — Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two F-16 fighter wings support U.S. operations abroad.

Pilots from Hill's active-duty 388th Fighter Wing patrol the no-fly zone south of the 33rd parallel in Iraq about six months per year. During Operation Desert Storm, pilots from the 388th dropped more than 2.7 million pounds of conventional munitions in Iraq and Kuwait during almost 4,000 combat sorties without a single combat loss.

Reserves from Hill's 419th Fighter Wing provide combat-ready forces capable of worldwide deployment.

"We're the best of the best," said John Grubb, 309th Missile Maintenance Group ground system repair section chief. "We need to keep our workloads here."

Another factor in Hill's favor is the base's highly trained, dependable and educated work force, McCall said.

The base runs a partnership with local colleges to provide continual education to employees at the base. Personnel problems are at a minimum, and the work gets done with few complaints, she said.