FORT DRUM, N.Y. — Fort Drum will lose 28 soldiers in military job cuts that the U.S. Army announced on Thursday.
That’s according to a reaction statement that U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.) issued Thursday.
“The fact that Fort Drum is seeing minimal cuts at a time when the Army is downsizing significantly across the country underscores that Fort Drum and the 10th Mountain Division play a unique and critical role in U.S. national security,” Gillibrand said in the statement.
The troop reduction is part of the Army’s move to reduce 490,000 active soldiers to 450,000 by the 2017 fiscal year, according to a news release posted Thursday on the website of the U.S. Department of Defense.
Fort Drum, home of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, is the largest single-site employer in New York state, according to an article in the March 16 issue of CNYBJ.
In a statement issued Thursday morning, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D–N.Y.) called it “a victory for Fort Drum and the whole North Country.”
“This wise decision by the [U.S. Department of Defense] brass duly recognizes that the [U.S.] Army of the future — nimble, highly-trained, and rapidly deployable — is living, training and working right here, right now in the form of Fort Drum’s 10th Mountain Division… It is a lynchpin for both the region and our nation’s defense,” Schumer said.
In a March 30 visit to the base, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter reassured soldiers and civilians at Fort Drum that the base is here to stay, according to a March 30 article on the website of the Albany Times-Union.
“Fort Drum isn’t going anywhere,” Carter said during his visit, as reported in the Times-Union. “I couldn’t say that everywhere, at every post, camp and station everywhere in the United States, but I sure can say that at Fort Drum. No problem.”
Supporters of Fort Drum and economic-development organizations in Jefferson County have been concerned about the military cuts.
The U.S. Army’s 970-page Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Assessment indicated Fort Drum had the potential to lose 16,000 of its 19,000 soldiers currently assigned at the post, according to the March 16 CNYBJ article.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com