Port San Antonio has made an audacious, unsolicited pitch to the U.S. Department of Defense that, if realized, could solidify San Antonio’s place as a national center of gravity for cybersecurity and related innovations.
The Port has proposed building a state-of-the-art, secure campus for the 16th Air Force and related units, as well as partner federal agencies. Through an intergovernmental support agreement, the Port would design and build the campus while the federal government would pay for it.
Recently announced restructuring within the Air Force that includes elevating the 16th Air Force to its own command has given the proposal more urgency, said Jim Perschbach, president and CEO of Port San Antonio, who formally pitched the Pentagon last year.
If accepted, the proposal could save the DOD as much as $1 billion and enable the campus to be built years earlier than if the military constructed it, said Perschbach, with rough estimates showing the Port could build the campus for between $1.2 billion and $1.4 billion.
Moving the 16th Air Force from its current home in a disparate collection of aging buildings at Joint Base San Antonio into the Port would place it adjacent to its growing academic, commercial and research capabilities. To further that aim, the Port would build, separately from the intergovernmental support agreement, a joint-use classified training and collaboration center.
“The real value is not just in the cost and time savings,” Perschbach said, but in having government, academia and industry in one place. “It’s the creative collision concept.”
Elevating Air Forces Cyber
The Port’s pitch comes as the 16th Air Force, also known as Air Forces Cyber, is expected to be elevated to command status as part of a sweeping reorganization of the Air Force and Space Force, announced in February. The goal of the shakeup is to ensure continued supremacy over U.S. adversaries such as Russia and China, said Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall in a Feb. 12 story in the Air Force Times.
Right now, the 16th Air Force reports to Air Combat Command in Langley, Virginia, which in turn reports to the Secretary of the Air Force. Under the restructuring, it would become its own command, renamed AFCYBER, and would report directly to the secretary.
The promotion reflects “the importance of the cyber mission to the Joint Force and across the Department of the Air Force,” according to a news release from Air Force Public Affairs.
“I think it’s part of the reason Jim is leaning in right now,” said Jenna Saucedo-Herrera, president and CEO of Greater:SATX. “This is something that we’ve been talking about for the last two to three years, [but] the specifics of it have really come together within the last six months.”
Perschbach said he hopes to get back to Washington “in the next couple weeks” to answer any questions officials might have about the proposal and revise it if necessary to meet the Air Force’s requirements. He said the proposal has already been refined by earlier conversations, which appear to have started in earnest during this year’s SA to DC lobbying trip.
A non-traditional approach
The Port’s proposal recommends a two-phase project, the first a predevelopment agreement that would allow the Port to solicit schematic designs and come up with a firm budget — the same process it is using to develop the futuristic winged tower that Perschbach has said he hopes will command some of the highest office rents in the city of San Antonio.
He believes Air Force campus predevelopment could take as little as 18 months. “So even if they said, ‘Thank you, we’re just going to do this on our own without the [intergovernmental support agreement],’ at least we’ve moved years ahead on the process.”
He said the Air Force is currently challenged by having an excess of outdated infrastructure and not enough capacity for the types of missions it focuses on today. Using an intergovernmental support agreement to build the campus could help the Air Force create that capacity more efficiently, reducing the burden to taxpayers, he said.
These agreements are typically used by the military to outsource services that local governments already provide, such as road maintenance and 911 services, in the interest of saving money. Perschbach said because the Port checks the statutory boxes — it is a political subdivision of the state and already does real estate development — there’s no reason a project like this, despite its size and complexity, couldn’t be done through such an agreement.
Reading in the stakeholders
While developing the proposal, Perschbach briefed San Antonio’s entire Congressional delegation, the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, Greater:SATX and other stakeholders. Not surprisingly, they’re all fans of the concept.
Saucedo-Herrera said fully building out the Port San Antonio campus, “to support AFCYBER and strengthening their capabilities, but also the infrastructure to support the broader capabilities across research, academia and industry” is a top priority for Greater:SATX.
“It’s an exciting opportunity,” said Dave Peterson, the Greater Chamber’s longtime executive vice president who served as interim CEO during last year’s search. Perschbach said he sought Peterson’s input, given his knowledge as a retired Brigadier General and former F-15 pilot who served 30 years in the Air Force.
“They’ve already got the world-class people, now if they have world-class facilities, it really makes San Antonio a huge beacon on the map for those kinds of professionals and people who want to be part of these activities,” said Peterson.
Rep. Henry Cuellar, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, declined to comment on the proposal but submitted a letter into the record on April 17 as part of a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies hearing that day.
In the letter, Cuellar thanked Ravi Chaudhary, assistant secretary of the Air Force for Energy, Installations and Environment, for the Air Force’s “willingness to engage” in preliminary discussions about Port San Antonio’s proposal.
“We all understand the need for innovative approaches that will not only potentially save the Air Force significant money, but also result in a state-of-the-art facility for our warfighters delivered more expeditiously than other delivery methods,” he wrote.
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He sought a commitment from Chaudhary to “continue the discussions, so that the Congress can fully evaluate the most efficient and cost-effective way to complete this important campus.”
The Air Force did not respond to requests for comment.
In his remarks to the subcommittee, Chaudhary described how, although the Air Force’s military construction program is foundational to its efforts to maintain installations and infrastructure, “solely relying on direct investment at the currently budgeted levels is insufficient to reverse the longstanding trend of deteriorating facilities and infrastructure.”
The Air Force “continues to pursue a variety of approaches to infrastructure management, such as privatization, third-party investments and community partnerships, to reduce the Department’s financial liability,” he said.
This article has been updated to clarify that Port San Antonio would build a joint-use classified training and collaboration center separately from the intergovernmental support agreement through external funding.
