Now that the shock from the base-closure news has passed, Maine turns to its strategy for convincing the Base Realignment and Closure Commission that the Department of Defense has made a terrible mistake in recommending the broad closures in Maine. BRAC will hear any number of emotional appeals; Maine can make its case on the facts.

The state’s congressional delegation Friday was expected to receive an initial round of information used by the Defense Department to propose closing Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service center at Loring and realigning the Brunswick Naval Air Station. But many more documents will follow, allowing the state to refine its argument.

For now, it is important to know BRAC will use eight criteria for judging the value of a base, four of military value, which get priority, and four more community-oriented considerations. The first four are mission capability and operational readiness; availability of land facilities and air space; ability to accommodate contingency, mobilization and future force requirements; and the cost of operations. The second four are extent and timing of potential savings; economic impact on communities; local infrastructure support for forces and missions; and environmental impact and cost related to restoration.

The explanation from DoD so far on why Portsmouth was chosen, however, is less detailed. There are four shipyards – also at Norfolk, Va., Bremerton, Wash., and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The Pentagon wanted to close one to save money, while keeping at least

one on each side of the country. The choice was between Pearl Harbor and Portsmouth, and because the perceived future threat is from Asia, Portsmouth was chosen to close. Portsmouth is the yard so efficient that in an era of military overruns and delays it keeps track of its string of projects completed ahead of time and under budget. Its current record stands at six ships, 60 weeks early and $26 million returned to the fleet.

It is so efficient its workers are sent to the other yards to train workers there. In its long history, it has transformed itself numerous times as Navy technology has evolved and stands ready to transform itself again. It could build submarines, and given that the Navy needs more than what it has but cannot afford to increase to the number needed, having an efficient, effective yard take on the challenge of building them is just the kind of cost-saving idea the DoD should embrace.

There is more to the argument for Portsmouth. As Sen. Olympia Snowe notes, once a nuclear-qualified yard is gone it is gone for good. This finality, she says, is particularly disturbing given the Pentagon’s assessment of threats. “They’ve missed the mark every time. Even four years out from 2001, homeland security was a fourth-tier concern.”

She emphasizes that the point of BRAC is cost savings. How much does it cost to clean up, shutter and prepare for reuse a nuclear shipyard and how is that calculated in the savings? You can bet it isn’t.

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If the Portsmouth closure is cost-ineffective, the decision to cut the force in Brunswick and remove all its airplanes is the Southern shift taken to the extreme. BNAS is not only the last active-duty airfield near the major population centers of the Northeast and well placed for surveillance of the North Atlantic sea lanes, the Navy has spent $140 million in the last decade to prepare it for the next generation of planes.

Instead the new multi-mission maritime aircraft will follow the P-3s to Jacksonville, Fla., which lacks the new hangars of the sort built for them in Brunswick. The decision illustrates, says Rep. Tom Allen, “Homeland defense planning out of step with BRAC planning and reflects the Pentagon’s confusion about the mission there. They’re removing the planes, but don’t want to give up the air base because of its value.”

Keeping the base intact is economically important to Brunswick and to Maine; a closed base brings on its own challenges, for which Brunswick was preparing. But a realignment decision presents an entirely different picture. The announced force cut is 2,400 from 4,800 military personnel and civilians currently working there. But with the planes gone, there is a distinct threat that the number of people will slowly drop, whittling away at the economics of the community but not freeing up the base for re-use. The value of the naval air station in carrying out its current mission is clear enough; its value, for military and civilians, in several years should the DoD plans for the station remain is much less clear.

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The DFAS decision was baffling nationwide. As back-shop offices are located wherever broadband reaches and regions compete for jobs; when you call for computer help and get Bangalore, India, because it is cost effective for your service provider to contract there, the military’s proposes to move in the opposite direction, to consolidate its back offices. The 361 employees at the Loring site -the Pentagon got the number of people working there wrong by more than 100 – have been lauded for their high standards and performing work at the lowest cost across the system – moving those jobs to a centralized site is unlikely to save money.

DFAS has been used as a way to offset the economic impact of base closures, such as Loring in 1994. Proposing to remove the Loring DFAS now is essentially breaking an agreement to a base hit hard initially by closure. For bases willing to face the prospect of closing if they have federal support to make the transition, the message that sends is awful.

Gov. John Baldacci referred to the fight to keep these facilities open as a four-month sprint. It is that, but it is a sprint Maine can win only by recovering from its shock and building a case that demonstrates the Defense Department erred on the facts. The race, in this case, goes to the swiftest thinkers.