Norfolk ships unlikely to follow jets south, analysts suggest
By DALE EISMAN, The Virginian-Pilot
© September 16, 2005
Last updated: 1:46 AM

An F/A-18 at Oceana.

WASHINGTON — The Navy is unlikely to relocate its Norfolk-based aircraft carriers to Florida should fighter jets now based at Oceana Naval Air Station be shifted to the Sunshine State, independent analysts suggested Thursday.

Despite warnings by Gov. Mark R. Warner that the flattops likely would follow their planes, the analysts said the Navy would gain little if any warfighting advantage in such a shift and would bear considerable expense.

In any case, there probably isn’t room at Naval Station Mayport, the Navy’s lone Florida port, for more than two carriers, they added.

One carrier, the John F. Kennedy, already is based in Mayport; the Navy hopes to retire it next year and has signaled its long-term desire to move in another, so far unidentified flattop.

At the Pentagon, a defense official said Thursday there is no current plan to reassign any carriers. And in Richmond, the governor’s press secretary said Warner’s predictions of future transfers were based on the governor’s own analysis, not any warning from the Navy or the Defense Department.

The federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission wants more than 200 Navy fighters shifted from Oceana to Cecil Field, a former Navy base near Jacksonville, unless Virginia and the city of Virginia Beach clear hundreds of homes and businesses from high-risk areas near Oceana.

Warner, trying to rally local residents and officials to a save-Oceana effort, has used the prospect of carrier transfers to argue that the entire region has a stake in Oceana’s future.

The loss of a carrier would drain 5,000 jobs and an estimated $188 million per year from the local economy.

“It seems perfectly self-evident that if you start moving air wings, that carrier groups would follow,” said Kevin Hall, Warner’s spokesman.

Navy officials, meanwhile, have cited Oceana’s proximity to the five Norfolk-based carriers as an important reason for retaining the Virginia Beach base.

But retired Vice Adm. Jack Shanahan, a former 2nd Fleet Commander now living in Florida, termed Warner’s argument a “red herring” and argued that it doesn’t make “a bit of difference” to carrier operations if the ships and their aircraft are based in different communities.

Retired Capt. J.R. Davis, a former Navy pilot who now directs the Tailhook Association, a naval aviators’ group, said he twice flew with an entire air wing from the West Coast to the Atlantic to deploy with Norfolk-based carriers. The moves were “seamless,” he said.

Shanahan noted that when carriers are at home, their aircraft operate from land bases such as Oceana or Cecil Field. For decades, planes routinely moved from Cecil Field to Norfolk-based carriers operating off the South Carolina or Georgia coasts, Shanahan said, and they could easily do so again.

Florida representatives made much the same argument last month in urging the BRAC Commission to reopen Cecil Field and shift more than 200 Navy fighters from Oceana.

The Navy bases its West Coast fighters more than 300 miles from its ships in San Diego, retired Adm. Robert J. Natter, now a consultant to Florida, told the commission. “During my entire time in the Navy … I never heard one complaint from the Pacific Fleet about the distance,” he said.

In the wake of such comments, Floridians will be hard pressed to use the arrival of Oceana’s fighters – should that occur – as a lever to get more carriers moved to Mayport, said Jeremiah Gertler, a former congressional staffer now tracking BRAC-related issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Gertler said there also are questions about the Mayport base’s ability to handle the 3,000 additional sailors and families that would come with the assignment of a second carrier to the base.

Moving a Norfolk-based flattop to Mayport also would require the Navy to spend up to $200 million on new equipment and facilities needed to service nuclear-powered ships. The Kennedy is the only Atlantic Fleet carrier that operates on oil-fired boilers.

The Navy is seeking to begin environmental studies on the possible location of a nuclear carrier in Mayport once the Kennedy is retired. But Congress has ordered the Kennedy kept in service until at least early 2006 and the service is expected to take several years to bring in any replacement ship.