Andrews is an Air Force base - Air Force Community - Air Force Times

Andrews is an Air Force base

To me, it will always be Andrews Air Force Base.

On Oct. 1, as part of the Defense Department’s base realignment effort, officials re-named the Washington area’s best-known air base. Now, Andrews Air Force Base, Md., is officially Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Reserve Facility Washington — a tongue twister that military folk won’t accept easily.

It’s the latest of several similar moves. The proclaimed purpose is to save money by consolidating the services’ housekeeping functions. The Air Force didn’t respond to my request for a dollar figure, but the renaming was accompanied by a new logo that taxpayers footed the bill for.

The jury is out on whether the new arrangement cuts costs. But the new name is an atrocity.

Andrews is my base. I grew up nearby and have been visiting since 1947.

So it troubles me when politically correct wordage replaces plain English. In July 2003, 89th Airlift Wing commander Brig. Gen. Scott Gray banned the term “tenant units” — the only accurate phrase —and began describing non-Air Force components at Andrews as “partner units.”

The 89th ran Andrews for decades. Then, in 2006, the brass created the 316th Wing and put it in charge of the base, relegating the 89th into a “partner unit.” Somehow, the argument goes, having two major active-duty wings instead of one at Andrews makes the base leaner.

In some locations, it makes sense to consolidate installations. I can’t stand the name “Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst” in New Jersey, and I know my friends in Hawaii won’t like the forthcoming “Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam,” but there’s logic behind those names since different service branches are represented equally in those places.

That’s not the situation at Andrews.

No matter what you call it, Andrews is an Air Force base.

Named for Lt. Gen. Frank M. Andrews who launched the American daylight bombing offensive in Europe in World War II, the airfield was constructed far from the capital — as distances were measured in 1943 — so it could be widely dispersed and thereby less vulnerable to German or Japanese bombers. Andrews Army Air Field was renamed Andrews Air Force Base when the Air Force became an independent service branch in 1947. The name is now deeply entrenched in the base’s Maryland community and within the Air Force.

The new name adds the word “Navy” and subtracts the words “Air Force” even though the naval air facility, long a fixture on the base, has a presence far smaller than the active-duty, Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve units at Andrews.

Airmen, who make up the bulk of the population at Andrews, don’t like the new name. One told me, “It doesn’t describe who we are.”

I’ll await judgment on whether the new command arrangement saves money or is justified for some other reason, but the verdict is in on the new name.

I want my Andrews Air Force Base back.

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Robert F. Dorr is an Air Force veteran.