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Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, the month of May is a special time to celebrate the Americans who serve our country in uniform. May is Military Appreciation Month.

On Saturday, we celebrate those currently serving on Armed Forces Day, and toward the end of the month, on Memorial Day, we honor those who gave their lives in defense of our country.

South Dakota has a rich heritage of military service, and I am proud to represent the men and women carrying on that heritage in the South Dakota National Guard at Ellsworth Air Force Base and serving in our military around the globe.

South Dakota is proud to support our troops. Our State is home to two major military installations that are fixtures of their communities. But 20 years ago, South Dakota was at risk of losing one of these bases.

On May 13, 2005--20 years ago--the Defense Department announced that it was recommending South Dakota's Ellsworth Air Force Base for closure.

I am not the only one for whom this was a gut punch. Ellsworth is a point of pride in the Black Hills. It has been a national security asset since World War II, and it is home to the 28th Bomb Wing's squadrons of B-1B Lancers, which were performing a critical role in the Global War on Terror.

But, at the time, Ellsworth was a single-mission base, and the Air Force saw savings in moving that mission elsewhere and closing the base.

In May 2005, I was a freshman Senator, 5 months on the job, but now my State faced a major test. Losing the base would have been devastating to western South Dakota and a significant loss, I might add, to our national security. So failure was not an option.

But Ellsworth faced long odds. Past rounds of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission suggested we had a 12-percent chance of keeping the base open. Some, at the time, were ready to write Ellsworth's obituary, knowing it would take a miracle to save the base. Some thought it would take a political deal, and they doubted that South Dakota had the clout to pull that off.

We knew we weren't going to save Ellsworth through politics, and we weren't going to wait around for a miracle. Instead, we did it the South Dakota way. We worked hard--harder than we ever had. There were just over 100 days from the announcement in May to the financial decision in August, and saving Ellsworth consumed that entire summer.

My staff and I called everyone we could think of. I am sure the BRAC Commission was tired of seeing me that summer, but I was determined to drive home the case for keeping Ellsworth open. We poured through reams of data to make that case.

It was a team effort. Bob Taylor, in my Washington office, and Qusi Al-Haj, in my Rapid City office, didn't see much of their families that summer. The rest of the South Dakota delegation was involved. Then- Governor Mike Rounds was involved as well. Retired Air Force officers like Gen. John Michael Loh and Col. Pat McElgunn lent their voices and expertise to the cause. And countless local officials, community members, and, of course, the 11,000--11,000--South Dakotans who came to the BRAC hearing in Rapid City that June were all part of that team.

In the end, Ellsworth was not saved by miracles or politics. It was saved because we proved that Ellsworth was too valuable to close. Moving all the B-1s to another base was supposed to save money, but we proved that wouldn't actually be the case.

Plus, we demonstrated the Pentagon's analysis failed to account for a number of other factors. Consolidating the entire fleet of bombers in one place was a major vulnerability. An attack, extreme weather, or any issue at that base could ground the entire fleet of B-1s. And consolidation risked overwhelming maintenance and training capacity at that base.

It turned out that Ellsworth was just what the Air Force needed. That is the argument that we made. As Colonel McElgunn put it to the BRAC Commissioners, ``Ellsworth has operational advantages to make it the ideal base for the 21st century.'' And as General Loh testified, ``closing Ellsworth will deny the Pentagon a valuable base for future missions.''

Ultimately, in August, the BRAC Commission agreed, and it voted 8 to 1 to keep Ellsworth open. And since then, those predictions have proven right. Ellsworth's B-1s have been a consistent asset to our national security.

In 2011, B-1s left Ellsworth to strike targets in Libya, marking the first time a B-1 fleet launched from the United States to strike overseas targets.

Last year, Ellsworth B-1s conducted a CONUS-to-CONUS mission, taking a continuous 31-hour flight to the Indo-Pacific and back without landing.

And we have continued working to demonstrate Ellsworth's value and to ensure its future will never again be in jeopardy.

In 2007, the Air Force Financial Services Center arrived on base. In 2012, the 89th Attack Squadron came to Ellsworth to control MQ-9 Reaper drones from ground control stations in South Dakota.

In 2015, after a decade of work, we expanded the Powder River Training Complex, nearly quadrupling its size and making it the largest training airspace in the lower 48.

And in 2021, the Air Force announced that Ellsworth would officially be named the first operating base for the new B-21 Raider, a sixth- generation long-range strategic bomber.

From BRAC to B-21, and the story continues.

Madam President, 20 years ago, Ellsworth was said to be a liability. Today, it is very clear that it is a national security asset, and I am working to make sure the base and the surrounding community have what they need to continue to play a key role in our national defense for generations to come.

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