Plan to lure
carrier here stalls

The Navy apparently will not make
a decision until the Pentagon completes
a full review of military strategy

The Navy has apparently postponed a decision to base a nuclear aircraft carrier at Pearl Harbor until next year, pending the outcome of a long-term, top-to-bottom Pentagon review of its military strategy.

The Navy estimates that it will cost anywhere from $2.6 billion to $3.1 billion to relocate a carrier strike group from the West Coast to Pearl Harbor, according to a study Friday by the U.S. Government Accounting Office.

Navy leadership in Hawaii, along with Hawaii's congressional delegation, led by Sen. Daniel Inouye, have been advocating Pearl Harbor as a home port for a carrier for several years.

The GAO reviewed the procedures and analysis used by the Pentagon to shape its recommendations to the independent Base Realignment and Closure panel to close or realign more than 63 installations.

The GAO said the Navy had postponed any decision until the ongoing Quadrennial Defense Review is completed. A Pacific Fleet spokesman said yesterday he did not know of such a change.

The review is a congressionally mandated study used to analyze the full range of Department of Defense activities. The Pentagon will present the review to Congress with its fiscal 2007 defense budget request on Feb. 6.

The last review was conducted in 2001, before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The review started as the "Bottom-Up Review," released by then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin in October 1993. It looked at the Pentagon's role in the aftermath of the Cold War.

This the first time the process is happening while the United States is at war, and it will involve a 20-year outlook.

Still pending is the release of a $1.8 million internal Pacific Fleet study that was started by Navy engineers in the fall of 2003 to determine whether piers, facilities and utilities can support a 1,092-foot carrier and the more than 6,000 sailors and aviators it would bring to Pearl Harbor. The Navy said yesterday that study has yet to be completed.

One proposal suggested that part of the air wing accompanying the carrier be based at Barbers Point.

The Hawaii Community Development Authority, which now has to oversee the development of 3,688 acres in Central Oahu that was once Barbers Point Naval Air Station, would like to get a copy of the Navy study.

The authority has begun a $900,000 study to determine if its development plan for the area needs updating.

Lack of defense for
shipyard criticized

A labor leader says Hawaii politicians and business leaders have failed to develop a detailed plan to prevent the Pentagon from shutting down the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard.

Ben Toyama, spokesman for the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, which has 400 members who work in the shipyard, said he watched TV coverage of politicians and retired military leaders from Maine and New Hampshire challenging the Pentagon's recommendation to shutter Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

In Boston, congressional leaders and experts arguing on behalf of three imperiled military bases in Maine told an independent base closing commission yesterday that the Pentagon had deviated from its own criteria and made errors in evaluating data.

Armed with charts, graphs and expert testimony, witnesses picked apart the Pentagon's rationale piece by piece as they argued against closing or scaling back Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Brunswick Naval Air Station and a Defense Finance Accounting Service center in northern Maine.

Congressional leaders from Maine and New Hampshire said closing the Navy's best-performing shipyard would not deliver promised savings, but instead reduce the Navy's capability to handle unexpected submarine repairs.

In Hawaii, Toyama, who was visiting with Portsmouth union leaders in Washington, D.C., on May 13 when the Pentagon recommended that the Base Realignment and Closure commission close the Navy's oldest shipyard, said, "Hawaii should be preparing for something like that."

Toyama's comments are more critical than those by other Pearl Harbor labor leaders, who are taking a wait-and-see approach at this point.

Last week, BRAC commissioners asked the Pentagon to defend its decision to close Portsmouth rather than Pearl Harbor. A vote on a proposal to include Pearl Harbor shipyard on the closure list will take place July 19 in Washington. If the Hawaii base is added, the two BRAC commissioners will fly here to take testimony.

Today, U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye will meet with some of the shipyard's 4,200 civilian workers at an informational meeting hosted by Capt. Frank Camelio, head of the shipyard.

Jason Holm, a shipyard spokesman, said participation at the half-hour meeting is voluntary.

It takes seven of the nine commissioners to amend the Pentagon's hit list. The BRAC commission will take another vote during the week of Aug. 22 before making its final recommendation on Sept. 8.

In May, Jim Tollefson, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii, said local business leaders had decided not to hire expensive Washington lobbyists, as was done by states like Texas, California and Massachusetts.

Instead, business leaders here decided to rely on signals sent by the Pentagon, such as the decision to convert a 25th Infantry Division unit into the Army's fifth Stryker Brigade Combat Team. Tollefson believes such decisions reinforce the "island's strategic location" in the Pacific.

Report explains
decision on shipyards

A General Accounting Office report outlines the Navy's rationale for placing Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on the chopping block for the third time over Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard.

The 273-page report released Friday said Portsmouth was targeted -- although Pearl Harbor had "a slightly lower military score" -- because it did not have any ships home-ported nearby, and the remaining shipyards could pick up its workload.

A vote on whether to include Pearl Harbor on the Base Realignment and Closure commission hit list will take place on July 19. It will take seven of the nine commissioners to add Pearl Harbor to the closure list.

The Navy had initially decided against closing any of its four ship-repair facilities. However, based on the Pentagon's 20-year force structure submitted to Congress in March, it was determined that the workloads from Pearl Harbor or Portsmouth could be absorbed by the remaining facilities.

"In selecting Portsmouth over Pearl Harbor for closure," the GAO report said, "the Navy noted that Pearl Harbor is in a fleet concentration area in the Pacific theater while Portsmouth is not in a fleet concentration area or home port for any ships."

There are currently more than 30 vessels, including 17 nuclear attack submarines, home-ported at Pearl Harbor.

"In addition, closing Pearl Harbor would require ships that are home-ported there to transit back to the East Coast, in some cases, for maintenance, which the Navy would essentially view as a redeployment and, for quality of life reasons, would want to avoid if possible."

Another strategic objective the Navy wanted to achieve, the report said, was "to maintain dry docks for aircraft carriers on both coasts and in the central Pacific. Pearl Harbor has aircraft carrier dry-docking capabilities, but Portsmouth does not."

The GAO report also discussed issues raised by some of Portsmouth's 4,200 civilian workers in June on the Navy's cost-saving analysis, which they believe did not reflect the "widely recognized efficiencies of their shipyard."

"The employees estimated that they perform submarine overhaul and depot maintenance work at about $54 million per year less than the average of the other three shipyards, an efficiency which was not recognized in the Navy's analysis."

The GAO report said that although the Navy acknowledged that Portsmouth is more efficient than Pearl Harbor or Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington state, Navy officials said "it is very difficult to quantify the impact of this efficiency."