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Oceana in the Cross Hairs

Posted on: Wednesday, 20 July 2005, 15:01 CDT

Jul. 20--WASHINGTON -- A federal commission added Oceana Naval Air Station to the military's list of endangered bases on Tuesday, voting to join in a Navy and Defense Department search for a new East Coast hub for the Navy's attack aircraft.

The 7-1 vote by the 2005 Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission stunned local and state officials and the area's congressional representatives, many of whom had predicted the commission would not put Oceana into the mix of bases being considered for closure.

It "came as a shock," said Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf.

However, U.S. Rep. Thelma Drake, R-2nd District, said the commission's action just means it's going to look more closely at whether to close Oceana.

U.S. Rep. Thelma Drake, R.-Va., and Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf issued a joint statement Tuesday vowing to fight for Oceana. It reads:

"The BRAC Commission's decision to further consider NAS Oceana for possible realignment is the next step in the process. We must make it clear that this does not mean Oceana will necessarily be closed or realigned. We knew when the list came out in May that it was only the beginning of a long fight to protect Hampton Roads' military bases.

"The addition of Oceana to the list gives us an opportunity now to show the base to two BRAC Commissioners and to hold a public hearing, allowing us to make a strong case for maintaining Oceana as the Navy's East Coast master jet base.

"We and the members of the Virginia Beach City Council, along with other key community leaders, as well as former Navy personnel, will continue working with the BRAC Commission to assure them that the Navy's mission to protect our freedom is best served by preserving NAS Oceana -- not by closing it."

A vote to actually decide the fate of the Virginia Beach base and its nearly 12,000 military and civilian workers could come before the end of August. The commission faces a Sept. 8 deadline for recommendations on 33 major base closures and dozens of adjustments to existing bases.

Defense officials say the proposed closings nationwide will save $50 billion over 20 years, money they want to invest in new weapons and higher salaries for troops, among other things.

Navy officials say closing Oceana would reduce those savings because the service would have to invest $500 million or more to build a replacement base or refurbish an existing facility to accommodate Oceana's personnel and 244 aircraft. But, they argue, a new master jet base is necessary because Oceana is surrounded by development that limits its operations.

"No matter what, I am convinced the Navy will not close down Oceana and walk away," said Oberndorf, who watched Tuesday's brief discussion and vote from a seat in the rear of a crowded Senate hearing room. "They may put in other commands at a future date."

U.S. Sen. John W. Warner called the vote "very perplexing" and urged Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to join in efforts to persuade the commission to spare Oceana.

The panel has decided to put the installation's future in question even as Oceana-based pilots are flying and training for combat in Iraq, Warner complained.

"How you suddenly throw this frightful situation on top of Oceana while she's doing combat operations, I know not," he said.

"This is an illogical, horrible proposal," said Sen. George F. Allen, who, like Warner, is a Republican.

In Richmond, Gov. Mark R. Warner, a Democrat, said the base closure commission made "wholesale additions and deletions from the list. This is unprecedented in prior BRAC processes." During a hearing earlier this month, the governor all but begged commission members for a chance to address questions about state and local support for retaining Oceana but none was asked.

Several commissioners said Tuesday they acted out of a desire to help the Navy deal with safety hazards and noise issues stemming from the growth of shopping centers and residential developments around the base, which was in the midst of farmland when it was created during World War II.

Oceana, Virginia Beach's largest employer, is now the military's busiest master jet base. The base records 220,000 take-offs and landings every year -- an average of one every 150 seconds; an additional 100,000 take-offs and landings are conducted yearly at Fentress field, an auxiliary strip in Chesapeake.

The panel was told by its staff that over the past 30 years, the Navy has made repeated efforts to discourage development around the base, only to be ignored by the Virginia Beach City Council. When service officials asked the city to deny particular projects, the council overruled them 73 percent of the time.

"We've got to try to help the Navy figure out an answer to this, because we are ... going to have a major disaster at Oceana, sooner rather than later," said retired Army Gen. James T. Hill, one of the commissioners. Development around the base is endangering the safety of Navy pilots and residents, he argued.

Oceana is "the most perplexing and complex issue that we face," Hill added.

One independent analyst expressed doubt that Oceana will be on the commission's final closure list and argued that Tuesday's vote is simply an acknowledgment that the master jet base eventually needs to be replaced, not immediately closed .

"Everybody seems to recognize that Oceana's a problem, but it's not a problem BRAC is going to solve," said Chris Hellman, a military policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

Hellman said if the commission were serious about closing Oceana, it would have added Moody Air Force Base in Georgia to its list of bases to be realigned to help accommodate Oceana's closure.

In a July 1 letter to Rumsfeld, commission chairman Anthony Principi asked why the Pentagon didn't consider relocating Oceana's fighter squadrons to Moody, outside Valdosta, Ga., and moving Moody's rescue helicopters and other assets to a base in New Mexico.

"They weren't saying we want to close Oceana," Hellman said. "They feel they can provide to the Navy information that will help them shape the answer to the bigger question, which is 'Where do you put your next naval master jet base?'"

In a letter to the commission last week and in testimony Monday, defense officials said they want to replace Oceana with a new "from the ground up" base elsewhere on the Eastern Seaboard but have concluded the job can't be completed within six years, the time limit for actions by the base closure commission.

"This is a huge, huge challenge," said Commissioner Samuel Skinner, a former White House chief of staff. Because identifying a suitable alternative to Oceana is such a complex process, "I don't think we can get the answer we want" before the Sept. 8 deadline, Skinner initially suggested.

But after commission staffer Jim Hanna, who is overseeing the panel's review of Navy related issues, asserted that "there is an opportunity to at least come up with something useful" for the Navy's future examination of alternatives, Skinner supplied a critical seventh vote, the minimum needed to put Oceana on the list for consideration.

Commissioner James Bilbray, a former Nevada congressman, was the only member to oppose adding Oceana to the list. Commissioner Harold W. Gehman Jr., a retired admiral and local resident, did not vote and recused himself from discussion of all Virginia bases.

In Virginia Beach, Tuesday's vote seemed likely to set off a round of introspection and finger-pointing among local officials, who have battled among themselves for years over various development proposals around the base.

"This was almost predictable," said City Councilman Bob Dyer, who was elected on a pledge to protect the jet base. "What we've had over decades now was a culture of encroachment that led to reckless growth. Common sense should have prevailed, but didn't.

"I haven't given up hope, I'm just angry we got to this point," Dyer said.

Oberndorf, a councilwoman for more than two decades, took pains after the vote to defend her record, saying she's tried to protect the Navy's interests. Some of her colleagues were more concerned about the rights of property owners, she said, and "were not convinced that the federal government or Congress had made any attempt to make moneys available to buy up the land outside the fence to protect Oceana."

Hal Levenson, a spokesman for Citizens Concerned About Jet Noise, which has spearheaded efforts to limit operations at Oceana, said that "the city hasn't protected" the base.

The base closure commission "did the right thing," he said. "It will keep alive the process of trying to determine how best to address the very serious issues that face Oceana."

Retired Rear Adm. Fred Metz of Virginia Beach, a former aviator and prominent supporter of Oceana, said he is disappointed more support for the base hasn't been forthcoming from the city and community in recent months as the base closure hearings began. The Navy also has lost interest in defending the base, he complained.

"One of the things in the last six months or so that has been very obvious is that the Navy has been very negative toward Oceana, saying it was the most encroached base in the nation," Metz said. "Nobody has brought out the pluses."

Former U.S. Rep. Owen B. Pickett, a Virginia Beach lawyer who heads a commission working to defend bases across Virginia, stressed that "the effort is not over. If the purpose is to save money, there may not be a near-solution to achieve that objective. They can't just hang these aircraft on sky hooks."

Staff writers Jon W. Glass, Kate Wiltrout, Jack Dorsey and Christina Nuckols contributed to this story.

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Source: The Virginian-Pilot

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