Portland Press Herald April 17, 2005
BNAS may find role in homeland security
By Tom Bell
Brunswick Naval Air Station shares some of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard's problems - its narrow focus and its isolation from other military installations.
BNAS's mission also is a legacy of Cold War battle plans that relied heavily on the clandestine art of submarine warfare. It is a home base for the P-3 Orion, a fuel-efficient, four-engine turboprop aircraft that was designed 47 years ago to fly long distance over the ocean and hunt submarines.
The base, however, has several factors working in its favor, analysts say.
As a survivor of previous base-closure rounds, BNAS is now the last active-duty Department of Defense airfield in New England and the closest to the routes for ships and aircraft crossing the North Atlantic. The closest active-duty airfield is McGuire Air Force Base, in southern New Jersey.
Also, the Navy has invested heavily in the base, spending more than $100 million in the past three years on housing, runway repairs, a control tower and a six-bay hangar.
It is the Navy's only hangar designed to accommodate the Boeing 737-800 "Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft," a long-range jetliner scheduled to begin replacing the P-3 in 2011. Forty dual-fired boilers were installed six years ago to heat hangars and buildings.
While BNAS's location is a legacy of Cold War military strategy, supporters say P-3 squadrons in Maine are ideally suited for a "homeland defense" mission. From Brunswick, planes easily can patrol the North Atlantic shipping lanes and track cargo ships.
If BNAS closes, the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida would be the only P-3 base on the East Coast. That's too far away to protect large population centers in the Northeast, said Ralph Dean, a recently retired P-3 pilot who is working to keep the Brunswick base open. To protect the entire East Coast, he said, two bases are better than one.
"The ocean is a terrific moat," he said. "But you need alligators to make it work. One alligator doesn't make it."
The other P-3 bases in the United States are Jacksonville Naval Air Station; Naval Air Station Whidbey Island (Washing- ton); and Kaneohe Bay Marine Corps Base (Hawaii).
In military lingo, the ability to monitor a wide ocean and look for threats is called "maritime domain awareness." But over the past decade, new electronics and satellite communications technology installed in the P-3 have improved the aircraft's ability to provide reconnaissance over the ground as well as over the ocean.
In 1990, 80 percent of the P-3 missions worldwide were submarine related. Today, submarines are involved in fewer than 8 percent of the missions.
New technology may make the P-3 well suited for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's vision of "global projection," which puts a premium on the ability to dispatch American military power worldwide, supporters say.
In the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Defense Department relied heavily on the P-3 and its crews for their ability to fly low over the countryside, gather intelligence and communicate it instantly.
BNAS's competition with Jacksonville is tough. The Florida base is home to 17 operational, training and reserve squadrons. Its supporters describe it as "multi-mission, master air and industrial base at the forefront of the Global War on Terrorism."
Jacksonville is a hub of military activity. Other commands in Jacksonville include the Navy Aviation Depot, which overhauls Navy aircraft. Just south of Jacksonville is the Mayport Naval Station, the Navy's fourth-largest facility. It is the home port for 20 ships and the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy. Also in Jacksonville is the Blount Island Command, a staging area for the Marines.
All that activity creates a synergy that enhances military value, said Dan McCarthy, director of military affairs for the mayor's office in Jacksonville.
"The more concentrated your military presence," he said, "the more missions you can accomplish for the Department of Defense, and the more things you can do in a cost-effective way."
The Navy is expected to reduce the number of Navy planes only slightly in coming years. By 2020, the Navy plans to finish replacing its fleet of about 175 P-3s with 108 "Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft" plus 40 to 50 unmanned aircraft that are larger than the P-3.
John Pike, a military scholar at GlobalSecurity.org, said the Navy has yet to decide if the new aircraft will be deployed primarily overseas or in the United States for homeland defense duties. Until it decides how it will use them, he said, it's difficult for the Department of Defense to make a rational decision about closing BNAS or the other P-3 bases.
© Copyright 2005, Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
