Joint Base Langley-Eustis is the only joint base in the military that meets the Department of Defense goal for maintaining the two bases, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
The defense department's goal is to have the two bases run on 90% of the cost of running each base separately. Langley operated at 98%. Operated by the Air Force, Langley is home to the F-22 fighter, while the nearby army base Fort Eustis is the tenant command, where the Army operates a logistics and training hub.
At nearly the bottom of the list is Joint Base Little Creek-Fort Story, which is run by the Navy.
Little Creek is the East Coast hub for amphibious landing ships as well as the Navy SEALs. Fort Story is another Army logistics hub. The joint base operated at only 34% of the Defense Department requirement, just above Joint Base Marianas in Guam. The three joint bases run by the Navy are at the bottom of the GAO’s funding list.
Congress created joint bases in the 2010s coming out of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRACC), which closed and consolidated bases throughout the military. The concept was to save money by having one service oversee the day-to-day cost of running two nearby bases from different services, including maintenance, childcare and security.
GAO investigators surveyed all of the bases and found the tenant base typically suffers when resources are tight. Auditors also could not get good estimates for how much was being spent on upkeep and determined that modernization projects were often being delayed.
The GAO did not visit either of the joint bases in Hampton Roads.
Throughout the 12 joint bases, auditors found that the process for deciding how to share costs between the services was often ineffective. The services were disputing the cost-sharing for over $1 billion in projects. An ongoing disagreement between the Air Force and the Navy over how much each service should pay for a $178 million levee at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington D.C has been ongoing since the joint base was established in October 2010, according to the report.
In 2024, the secretaries of the Navy and Air Force had to intervene in a dispute over the cost of a $1.1 billion runway project at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
The GAO recommends the Pentagon reevaluate the staff needed to run two bases, as well as provide better figures on how costs are being shared. Auditors also found that many of the lead bases had never looked at the number of additional people needed to serve two bases, which contributed to the backlog of maintenance projects.
Mark Sinder Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Infrastructure Modernization & Resilience concurred with the GAO’s recommendations to have each service evaluate the risk to readiness because funding goals are not met.
