By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

BRUNSWICK – Brunswick Naval Air Station might still close at the hands of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission.

The commission has added bases to the closure list before. Yet, experts say even a flightless air base might be strong enough to survive. New rules make it tougher for a base to be added to the list this late.

“Adding a base is going to be very hard to do this time,” said Christopher Hellman, a policy analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a Washington think tank. “But anything can happen.”

The difference is a move late last year by Congress.

In each of the four prior closure rounds, a simple majority of the commission – five of nine members – was needed to add a base to the dreaded list. It happened in places from Guam to Oakland, Calif., where installations were weakened by military reductions.

This time, Congress made it tougher. In a change in the rules, a vote of seven of the nine commissioners is needed to add a base to the closure list.

Hellman was puzzled by the way Brunswick and several other bases were treated this time, he said. Pentagon recommendations would eliminate about half of the jobs at the Brunswick base.

Currently, 4,710 people work there. Of those, more than 700 are civilians, people who do everything from crunching numbers for the commanding officer to flipping burgers in the base kitchen. Other civilians provide security, road maintenance and computer assistance. Only 61 civilian jobs would be cut.

The cuts are far deeper on the military side. Of the 4,008 uniformed people who work at the base, 1,341 are reservists, mostly part-timers. They, too, would be untouched by the cuts.

However, of the 2,667 active-duty personnel, 2,317 would be sent to Jacksonville, Fla. They are the people who fly and maintain the squadrons of planes that have been there for decades.

Hellman, the Washington analyst, has been studying the Pentagon reports since they were released early on Friday. He discovered the same kind of cuts at Air Force installations in Eielson, Alaska, and Grand Forks, N.D.

In both of those cases, the written Pentagon justifications highlight the importance of each base’s location while taking away the aircraft – fighter planes in Alaska and refueling planes in North Dakota.

Perhaps the Pentagon has a mission in mind for those bases, suggested Hellman. However, he doesn’t know what that might be.

Whatever the reason for the cuts, supporters of bases such as Brunswick need to make a case for survival as if all of their planes were staying, said Loren Thompson, an analyst with the Lexington Institute in Washington.

Richard Tetrev, who is leading the Brunswick-area fight to save the base, was not worried that Brunswick might still be closed.

“I don’t have any concern about that,” he said.

Like Hellman, Thompson said he is puzzled by the Pentagon’s decisions.

“They left it open while taking all the jobs,” Thompson said. “They really kind of screwed Maine.”