The panel voted during hearings in Washington not to shift the electronic weapons warfare jobs from Crane to another base. The jobs were among more than 600 the base stood to lose under an earlier recommendation.

Mike Gentile is the director of the Southern Indiana Business Alliance. He says the jobs included those of about 31 engineers and 107 technicians.

Crane supporters tried to persuade the commission that its plans to shift the center's work elsewhere didn't make economic or strategic sense. They also suggested alternatives that would keep some of the targeted jobs at Crane and even bring other work to the base.

Destroying the VX nerve agent stored at the Newport Chemical Depot may take longer than the Army previously thought, an analyst told the federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission on Wednesday.

The panel approved the long-anticipated closing the depot in western Indiana once its military mission is complete, but it extended the time frame set out in the Defense Department recommendation.

More than 250,000 gallons of the Cold War-era chemical weapon are stored at the depot about 30 miles north of Terre Haute. VX is so deadly that just one drop can kill a person.

The Army had projected the VX would be destroyed by 2008 as required by the Chemical Weapons Treaty.

But George Delgado, an analyst who studied the Army's recommendation for the panel, said during hearings Wednesday that it could be as early as next year or as late as 2012 before all the VX is processed. Closing the base could take up to another three years, he said.

Newport depot spokeswoman Terry Arthur said Wednesday the Army has estimated that it would take about 30 months for a private contractor to destroy the VX stockpile. That work began in May but has been temporarily halted.

Arthur said the Army estimates that after the VX is destroyed, possibly by late 2008, work to remove certain equipment from the complex and other closure actions would take at least two years, placing Newport's planned closure in 2010.

"It's a very loose timeline at this point because everything is contingent on the destruction of the VX and the ultimate disposition of the wastewater," she said.