MDA moving jobs to Huntsville

By Martin Sieff Mar 15, 2006, 15:06 GMT

The director of the Missile Defense Agency said Monday that recent worker polls show many of the agency`s employees would not leave the Washington area to relocate in Huntsville, Ala.

About 2,200 jobs are slated to move to Huntsville as part of a work transfer of Missile Defense Agency programs that was recommended by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission last year. About 4,700 total federal BRAC jobs are expected to come to Huntsville because of the relocation of major command headquarters such as Army Materiel Command, Army Security and Assistance Command, Space and Missile Defense Command along with other military work.

MDA Director Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering said surveys of agency workers asking if they would be willing to relocate to Huntsville indicate that about '15 to 20 percent will actually go through with this move.'

Obering spoke during a presentation for North Alabama business leaders at Adtran in Huntsville. Obering estimated about 500 of the 2,200 would move to Huntsville, the Huntsville Times reported Tuesday.

To fill the gap, Obering said the agency would recruit people in Huntsville and search nationally for employees with the skills required by MDA for missile defense work.

'The good news is that the ones who come, I feel, will be younger people who are dedicated to (the Missile Defense Agency) and will move here,' Obering said. 'That will be good for the program.'

Obering said he expected the bulk of those 500 people would move to Huntsville before 2009, but the agency has until 2011 to complete the relocation of its work to Huntsville.

Obering said the BRAC law allows some flexibility on the number of positions that will be moved to Huntsville. MDA managers are evaluating leaving 300 positions at the agency`s new headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Va. The original recommendation was for 150 people to staff the headquarters, but Obering said that figure was not enough to accomplish headquarters work.

The headquarters decision should not affect Huntsville overall, Obering said, 'because I had made the decision to move' other offices to Huntsville. Sensor, radar and communications work would have been moved to Huntsville with or without the 2005 BRAC recommendations.

All MDA offices are being restructured, Obering said, and the cost savings will allow the agency to speed up missile defense programs and to add and improve interceptor rockets in other programs.