By Emelie Rutherford
As lawmakers wait to hear if the Pentagon wants to move a nuclear aircraft carrier to be home stationed in Florida, a top Navy admiral said yesterday there is a “strategic imperative” to have a second East Coast homeport capable for such a vessel.
Adm. John Harvey, the commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, during a keynote address at the Surface Navy Association Symposium in Arlington, Va., said “the strategic imperative for having another homeport capable for a CVN (nuclear carrier) is not idle talk.”
Harvey said after he assumed command last year he eyed three aircraft carriers near his office in Norfolk, Va., and thought of how four additional carriers were being worked on at Northrop Grumman [NOC] Newport News across the James River. And he looked at the Bay Bridge tunnel.
“I’m thinking…30 bad minutes–from weather, from man-made accidents, from terrorism–30 bad minutes at that tunnel and we’ve got half the Navy’s carrier fleet, all of its East Coast repair and construction, bottled up for who knows how long,” he said.
Harvey acknowledged that he looks at the debate over whether to shift a nuclear carrier from being homeported Norfolk, Va., to Mayport, Fla., differently as commander of Fleet Forces Command than he would in another position.
He said he has told Virginia lawmakers and will tell “any audience” that “there is a strategic imperative to having on the East Coast (multiple) homeport-capable (locations for nuclear carriers) as we do on the West Coast.”
“We have a lot of options on the West Coast,” he added. “You have one option on the East Coast. So there is a strategic imperative.”
The Pentagon is expected to unveil next month, in its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) report, whether a nuclear carrier will be homeported in Mayport; Florida lawmakers have fought for such a move, which Virginia politicians adamantly oppose.
After the Navy decided in favor of homeporting a CVN in Mayport last year, Pentagon officials said the matter would be reviewed in the QDR.
Harvey told the symposium audience yesterday that he does not know what the QDR will say on this issue.
“Clearly once the Secretary of Defense (Robert Gates) makes his determination, that will go through the political process, as everything does,” Harvey said. “And we’ll see what comes from that.”