It didn’t take long for the state’s Washington lawmakers to respond with a full-throated repudiation of three lines or so written by the Army secretary that said the Army is “developing options to determine the future for Pine Bluff to reduce redundant capabilities.”
Apparently, that line hit like a brick when those at the Arsenal read it, and once the word — those words — were passed on to Sens. Tom Cotton and John Boozman and Congressman Bruce Westerman, all Republicans, they quickly put together a long letter that could be condensed to: Are you nuts?
Some of the key points included the fact that if you, the Army brass, were doing what President Trump wanted done, you would be taking advantage of the capabilities of the Arsenal and not dismissing or ditching them.
There was also the aspersion of the Army for not adding to the missions at the Arsenal because of its many attributes.
“While it’s true that the arsenal is underused, that’s because the Army bureaucracy has repeatedly resisted our proposals to expand its operations,” the three said in their joint letter.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
They go on to mention the kinds of munitions that could be made at the Arsenal and how the production there would eliminate critical shortages — chokepoints — in the supply of those munitions.
The Army, they said, “has never offered persuasive explanations for its bureaucratic hostility to expanding operations at Pine Bluff Arsenal. We’ve heard from the Army that commercial facilities or building new facilities are a less expensive, more efficient alternative to using the current arsenals for its munition needs. But this argument is far-fetched.” They go on to say that commercial operations can’t expand and that creating something from scratch would take years and a half-billion dollars.
This move or potential move by the Army is from an old play book: Reduce missions and cut staff at an installation and, drip, drip, drip, one day you look up and there’s not enough going on to keep the installation in existence. In essence, it turns into a ghost town, as one elected official put it.
White Hall Mayor Noel Foster, who likely knows more about what goes on at the Arsenal than the Army Secretary Dan Driscoll — the person to whom the lawmakers’ letter was sent — talked about the impact the Arsenal has on the area around it. For one, hundreds of people are employed there — people who live in White Hall, sure, but also in Pine Bluff and Sheridan and Star City and on and on.
Whether the Arsenal lives on, of course, would not be based on how much of an economic impact it has on the area, and Foster knows that. It’s one reason he spends a lot of time and expends a lot of effort in supporting the missions of the Arsenal and working to expand them because he knows what the potential is for the installation. And it’s why his arguments lean into the idea that the Arsenal’s existence is crucial for the welfare of the country.
“I’m also very concerned about the impacts to the war-fighter and national security,” Foster said. “Pine Bluff Arsenal is known for its sole-source capability for numerous ammunition and chem-bio defense commodities. Nothing is redundant or duplicate. Most importantly, the Arsenal’s numerous environmental permits are invaluable to the Defense Department and enable the production of specialized smoke and phosphorus ammunition. Efforts to restation or reposition the Arsenal’s manufacturing operations would certainly prove wasteful and a setback to building a leaner and more lethal military.”
These are the first salvos in what could prove to be a very contentious fight over the future of the Arsenal, which has been part of the Pine Bluff-area landscape since the start of World War II. It’s good to see that this has the attention of Cotton, Boozman and Westerman, who mostly look the other way when Trump and his DOGE minions take chainsaws to longstanding, necessary programs and entities. At least on this one issue, perhaps they are willing to push back against their beloved president and his administration.