Naval Complex Philadelphia Base Closure And Realignment

The end of the Cold War left the United States with a larger defense infrastructure than needed to ensure the nation's security in the post-Cold War era. Accordingly, at the instigation of the Defense Department, Congress passed Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) legislation to enable the department to close, reorganize, or other-wise convert assets to other purposes. Four rounds of BRAC closures ensued, resulting in the closure of 97 of 495 major installations. One of these was the Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Although considerable work has been done to examine the economic consequences of closing or scaling back shipyards, ' these efforts have not had a great deal of quantitative data to examine. Thus, the closure of four shipyards during the BRAC process provided a unique opportunity to gather specific data about costs of closure and reuse of temporarily excess shipbuilding facilities. Recognizing this opportunity, the Navy asked RAND's National Defense Research Institute to develop a case study of the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard (PNSY).