Just a few eggs - sure; put them in one impossible to defend basket real close together.
Local Congressmen have confirmed that a proposed plan to move an aircraft carrier to Mayport, Fla. is not detailed in the upcoming defense budget .Stupid local politics without vision or historical perspective - much less a military mindset.
Congressman J. Randy Forbes (VA-04) and Congressman Scott Rigell (VA-02) announced that the US Navy is canceling plans to move the carrier currently homeported at Norfolk Naval Station. Both Forbes and Rigell applaud the move to keep carriers in Hampton Roads .
"For more than four years, I have worked with my Hampton Roads colleagues to fight the Navy's attempt to move a nuclear aircraft carrier to Florida, a decision that was made without providing lawmakers any compelling national security rationale.
No "... compelling national security rationale.." ? Really? Well - I'm just a retired CDR; what the frack do I know. Wait ... who is that?
The admiral in charge of the Atlantic fleet said Tuesday that moving a carrier to Mayport Naval Station makes sense, although he didn't know what decision will be made later this year.Petty local politics in the worst traditions of our nation.
According to a report in the Navy Times, Adm. James Harvey Jr., the commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, said Norfolk being the only home port for carriers on the East Coast could lead to disaster.
"When you look at it from my perspective, the strategic imperative for having another home port capable of a [nuclear-powered aircraft carrier] is not idle talk," Harvey said at the Surface Navy Association's annual meeting outside Washington.
The four-star admiral had been asked about the possibility of a nuclear carrier coming to Mayport by a crew member from the Norfolk-based carrier Theodore Roosevelt.
Harvey said concerns about ships getting stuck either at the base at Norfolk or trying to get in were real. He recalled a waterfront tour last summer that included the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, which spans the mouth of the channel used by the Navy warships.
"Thirty bad minutes at that tunnel, and we've got half the Navy's carrier fleet, plus all of its East Coast repair and construction [facilities], bottled up for who knows how long," Navy Times reports him as saying.
8 comments:
If I were in the Pasadran Naval Arm or PLAN SEAL/Spetsnaz eqivalent I'd start the contingency plans on detonating some big IED in that tunnel... (If they dont have one already in place, to add possibly to mine warfare and sinking a ship to block the waterway...)
Those of us who aren't politicians and actuall work at Mayport will tell you to keep the carrier, just give us an ARG and escots before the "industrial base" i.e., people like me, disappear, since the same Navy is going to take all the FFGs and all our CGs and decom them, leaving us with four DDGs. Four tin cans and a carrier will not keep us alive down here, not us, not BAE, nor even the little topside outfits.
Is the Red Team the (D)s among us? Some days I'm beginning to think so....or just, as noted by James, all politicians anymore.....I used to hate the thought of term limits, now I see we need them, as the Congress has decided they can vote themselves lifetime bennies, all out of the pockets of the same people they bend over, and bend over, and bend over...I'll stop now for the sake of the family nature of this board, having merely stated the obvious....
It's not just the (D)s in this case. The two Congressmen making the biggest stink about VA "losing" a carrier are both solid (R)s. All politics is local, but this has been absurd in the Hampton Roads news lately.
<p><span>But </span><span>THIS</span><span> was a good idea!</span></p>
That movie ciip taken by a helo flying around, showed the Intraccoastal Waterway clearly.
It passes right next to those little floating booms stretching between the piers where all the CVN, SSN, CG, DDG, LPD, LHD are tied up at Naval Station Norfolk.
Those tiny floating booms will not stop even a small barge filled with fertiizer being pushed by a barge from taking a 120 second change of course where the heavy barge gets nudged up against the side of a 100,000 nuclear carrier. Sometimes, you see several barges in a row traveling by, heading North or South on the IntraCoastal Waterway. Some group could load up a barge or two or three, with Fertilzer in say, Little Rock Arkansas and then later in the week, deliver his barge (s) at the Norfolk Naval Station. Do you think a floating oil containment boom next to a CVN will stop a 750 ton barge ? What about 3 barges being pushed up from Georgia or Texas or down from Pennsylvania ?
Or some terrorist flys over 4 CVN and 3 LHD tied up together in Norva and crop dusts them with Anthrax ? Why present such a tempting tgt as all our Battleships tied up next to each other at Ford Island in Pearl Harbor ? Woops, I meant to say, tempting tgt such as a half dozen large deck amphibs and carriers all tied together, each with a small duty section onboard very early on a Sunday morning in Norfolk ?
kiss the CVN goodbye and get past it, lets get some DDGs and amphibs into Mayport sooner!
wait you haven't heard, the LCS will only be in SDGO and LCRK and overseas so not going to help other navy ports in CONUS~
CVN was a dumb political idea to begin with wrapped in some strategy which made it unaffordable.
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