Fort Huachuca in Sierra Vista, the state's largest military installation and one of Southern Arizona's largest employers, will phase out nearly 200 soldier jobs during the next six months.
The local staff reductions are part of an Army effort to organize military capabilities more effectively, a fort spokesman said.
Two units assigned to Fort Huachuca's 11th Signal Brigade — the 269th Signal Company and Headquarters Detachment, 504th Signal Battalion — will be inactivated in the changes.
Many of the affected personnel will move to other jobs within the 11th Signal Brigade. Some may be transferred to other Army posts with signal units, such as Fort Lewis, Wash., or Fort Hood, Texas.
When the staff shuffles are complete, the net effect will be 199 fewer soldiers at Fort Huachuca.
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"We are trying to put the signal soldiers where the Army needs them most," said Gordon Van Vleet, a spokesman for the Network Enterprise Technology Command/9th Army Signal Command at Fort Huachuca.
The move is not a cost-saving measure because the Army is not trimming the total number of soldiers — just the number stationed in Southern Arizona, Van Vleet said.
Locally, the cuts should have "minimal impact" on the economy because they represent a 1.5 percent reduction in the fort's work force, he said.
Bob Strain, the mayor of Sierra Vista, about 75 miles southeast of Tucson, said while no one likes to see local jobs cut, the changes are nothing to worry about in any larger sense.
Strain said the cuts are not linked to a 2005 move to close or downsize dozens of military bases nationwide, nor are they due to concerns about water availability in the area.
"This is just an internal realignment," Strain said. "It's nothing of any local magnitude, and it's not a portent of anything to come."
Fort Huachuca is the fourth-largest employer in Southern Arizona, with a staff equivalent to about 9,100 employees, according to the Star 200, an annual survey of the region's workplaces.
