The Virginian-Pilot
©
WASHINGTON
The Navy's top admiral signaled Friday that he's prepared for a fight over plans to relocate a Norfolk-based aircraft carrier to Florida and insisted that the shift is "in the best interest of the nation."
Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations, said that while the Navy and other military branches face increasingly tight budgets, "making sure that the fleet is best postured, positioned and prepared to respond has to be a priority."
"That is what I get paid to do and that was the basis for my recommendation" to assign a carrier to Mayport Naval Station, he said.
Norfolk is the Navy's only East Coast base equipped to maintain a nuclear-powered carrier. Roughead and outgoing Navy Secretary Donald Winter have proposed spending about $600 million to build and upgrade facilities at Mayport to provide a home for one of the five flattops assigned to the Atlantic Fleet.
The planned move is predicated on concerns that the fleet is vulnerable to a terrorist attack or natural disaster if all the Atlantic carriers are housed in one port. The Navy has three nuclear-capable carrier ports in the Pacific, Roughead noted.
The transfer would shift about 3,000 sailors from Norfolk to the Jacksonville area and siphon hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the Hampton Roads economy.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates promised this week to review the plan, which state and local officials argue is unnecessary.
U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, a former Navy secretary himself, is pressing Gates to demand that the Navy provide a more detailed assessment of the risk involved in maintaining just one nuclear-capable carrier port on the East Coast.
Webb argues that the current alignment of nuclear ships was in place throughout the Cold War, when the Soviet Union's navy posed a far greater threat than any nation or terrorist poses today.
A conventionally powered carrier, the John F. Kennedy, was in service and based in Mayport through most of that period, however. The Kennedy was retired in 2007.
Dale Eisman, (703) 913-9872, dale.eisman@pilotonline.com
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Twitter
Google
Yahoo
This is so amusing it is sad
Honestly, why would anyone advocate keeping all of your eggs in one basket unless they had something to gain? There have been carriers in Florida all along they just weren't nuclear. Now the time has come to make the facilities in Florida capable of being a port for the new carriers. Its not like they are ever going to close Norfolk. It seems to me pettiness and greed is driving the objections. I frankly think this area could use a little relief from the population load that it is under now. The purpose of the military is to protect the nation, not to provide Tidewater with an economy. Its just plain stupid to put your entire Navy in one spot with a big red X on it that says BOMB HERE in the caption.
"All but one and one for all"
Actually, the truth is that some of the pols and good folks in Florida believe that all but one of the East Coast carriers, as well as most of the F-18's, should be homeported at bases in Florida. As one of them said: "Let's start with the USS George H.W. Bush and go from there. It'll take quite a number of years to get the rest of them down here, but you gotta start somewhere." :>)
MCSEVA
Less jet noise?
Are they opening a new NAS in Florida? If not then grin and bare the sound of freedom.
Cost of Move
It appears to me it could be included in the 800 plus BILLION economic plan, Look how many jobs it would create!. Whats a 600 million project actually going to benefit the people that need work?? A GREAT DEAL. Let the PEOPLE that get payed to do there JOBS do them and Keep the POLITICIANs out of it!!!. It would be harder to HiJack two large ships at one time than it would to do ONE!.
The terrorists are too stupid.
If this whole thing is about terrorists blowing up the channel and bottlenecking our carriers in one port, then I assume we consider the terrorists too stupid and inept to be able to blockade TWO channels. Come on! We know better. This has NOTHING to do with hurricanes, terrorist threats, expenditures, or facilities. It is political one-upsmanship ... plain and simple. Neither the SecDef, the Chairman; JCS, SecNav, nor the CNO, nor anything they have to say, are going to be what ultimately matters in this decision. President Obama will make the most politically expedient choice ... period. My bet ... the carrier stays in Norfolk.
Goldfinch........Gimme a Break.
Let me get this straight. You say Concentrating the Fleet in One Location will make them safer? You mean like PEARL HARBOR? The only reason the Carriers were not sunk on December 7 was that they WERE NOT located with the rest of the Fleet. Those that do not REMEMBER History are DOOMED to repeat it.
The Bright Side....
Let's look at the bright side...
If they move the carrier to FL....Real estate prices will have to drop further due to increased supply. Less traffic, and Less Jet Noise! Oh happy days!
Come on! You KNOW the decision will be reversed.
Why? It will be reversed merely because the decision to MOVE a carrier there was made during the Bush administration. Obama will turn it around just to show everyone who's boss now. If a decision had been made to KEEP all the carriers in Norfolk, Obama would have reversed that call, too. The CNO is a small potatoes player in this decision. His input is all window dressing. This is (and will be) a political issue thinly disguised a startegic military issue. Senators Webb and Warner will win this one because Virginia came through in November.
Move it....
Not that I want to see jobs shift out of HR, but defense should come first. During the Cold War, one was enough because every base was already targeted with ICBMs. However, we face a different kind of threat from this current war. No ICBMS, but the potential for dirty bombs, etc. In this case, dispersal is an advantage.
I think that it is good to have a carrier in Mayport
I have to agree with the admiral on this one. I think that putting all our carriers in one port leaves us open to them all getting disabled or attacked at one time. Furthermore, yes that means a second facility to maintain and support a nuclear powered carrier, but again, if something should happen here in Norfolk (heaven forbid), there would be an alternative place for the nuclear carriers to get maintenance support for their engineering departments. In fact, to help cut down long term cost and improve the quality of work there could be somewhat of a competition between the two facilities and ports to see who does a better job of servicing the carriers. I know that it would take away jobs from Hampton Road just in the middle of economic hard times, but we have pretty much the lions share of the fleet here in regards to the rest of the carriers on the east coast and the rest of the US Navy's fleet inventory on the east coast. We have got to stop being so greety and think more about the good of the US Navy and the defense of our country.