On November 4, voters in Cascade County overwhelmingly defeated a bond proposal to keep the land near the Malmstrom AFB runway free from development. The proposal failed miserably 63%-37%.

I had endorsed the proposal. The Great Falls Tribune did a story today with the headline, “What’s next for property near runway?” Several supposedly in-the-know local officials chimed in with their opinions.

In my humble opinion, if this bond issue had passed then it would have sent a signal to the leaders of the Air Force, the Department of Defense and the Obama Administration that Cascade County Montana residents were open for more military missions.

Since it did not pass, it probably sent the opposite message to those in position to send a new flying mission to Malmstrom. That’s a chance the backers of Malmstrom had to take. The defeat of the bond issue also sent a negative message to any private company that may be looking at Malmstrom’s runway for use in the future.

To be quite honest, Malmstrom’s future looks very dim today. In 2007, the Air Force decided to take one-quarter of the missile mission. Along with that came the loss of several hundred personnel assigned to the base and cuts to the number of new homes being built for base personnel, which harmed local businesses.

It is unclear how the Obama Administration will handle our land-based nuclear missions since he has only started to get the highly classified briefings about the happenings in the world. While running for President, Obama said, “It’s time to send a clear message to the world: America seeks a world with no nuclear weapons.” He added, “As long as nuclear weapons exist, we’ll retain a strong deterrent. But we’ll make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy.”

The strong deterrent part should (hopefully) include Malmstrom AFB.

There are several ways of looking at what the future of Malmstrom holds:

The first thing is that Malmstrom personnel are already trained to dismantle a missile mission. Since 50 missiles were just removed, it just might be easier to take more. The equipment and the training are in place to do it again.

The second thing is politics. Yes, it matters in everything. President-elect Obama is a Democrat and so are Montana’s two U.S. Senators. So are North Dakota’s senators, but not Wyoming’s. They might sway his opinion and urge him, if he’s bound and determined to disarm land-based missiles, to remove them from a place like Wyoming. Wyoming is the home of the current Vice President. He will soon be gone as will his clout. The states that have land-based nuclear missiles all went for McCain, with Wyoming being McCain’s strongest supporter of the three. Cascade County Montana supported Obama, while the counties that are the home of Minot AFB and F.E. Warren AFB supported McCain.

The third reason is it would be easy to close Malmstrom. Malmstrom really has only one other mission (RED HORSE), so some may be think why not just close it and move the RED HORSE mission somewhere else. I’m sure there are other pro and con reasons.

Hopefully one or more of Montana’s three elected officials (Baucus, Tester or Congressman Denny Rehberg) will get a seat on a defense or military committee in the next session of Congress to drive some a new mission to Malmstrom that would help expand its worth in the “defense of our nation” world.

Sadly though, with the overwhelming defeat of the bond issue, the road ahead for Malmstrom may be a bumpy one.