THE GAZETTE
YourHub
Where is
the support for Army expansion?
BY DAVE HUGHES
YOUR HUB CONTRIBUTOR
Where is the support for Army expansion? Editor's note: This is the first part of a two-part story by YourHub contributor Dave Hughes.
Some of us in Colorado Springs are deeply angered by the antimilitary stupidity of the entire Colorado Springs congressional delegation — less the ineffective Doug Lamborn.
I was chief of staff at Fort Carson in the early 19708 when both the El Paso County and Pueblo County commissioners denied Fort Carson the ability to expand to the federal reservoir for needed cross-water (the Elbe in Europe) training.
Where are the senior officers from El Paso County who understand mechanized warfare training needs? Why aren’t they speaking up?
Where are the really loud voices of the local politicians? Or the Chamber of Commerce? I’ll tell you.
They don’t care about the training needs of the Army at Carson, only that it pours federal dollars into El Paso County. They want a free lunch! Where is a really in-depth Gazette piece about how and why Carson was made a permanent fort after McNamara was ready to shut it down
And about why it had to expand, and then why it had to buy Pinon Canyon or be shut down for lack of training space on Fort Carson?
Where is the report about how it incurred huge costs to train so far away from the post?
Where is the in-depth look at the needs of the National Guard in Colorado — and surrounding states — which have to train on Fort Carson? Where is the parallel look at the needs for helicopter battlefield operations? And why the Army says it needs the expansion (urban encroachment)? And why there are damned few alternative posts!
Am I the only local retired warrior who understands war and what it takes to prepare to fight them across the entire spectrum. of warfare — nuclear, stand up tank and mechanized combat -— like Desert Storm — and large-scale insurgencies requiring mechanized transportation? If any training space for soldiers and their officers and head- quarters is shorted here, I’ll be the first in line to demand Carson be , shut down, no matter what that will do to the El Paso County economy, which never has, since I grew up here in the 1930s, been able to make a buck other than sucking at the fed- eral military payroll teat.
