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Riverine force still seeking a permanent home

Fleet Forces Command is looking to relocate the Navy’s riverine group and its three squadrons to one of seven locations around the country — or leave them where they are in Hampton Roads, Va.

“The environmental assessment is ongoing,” command spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Phil Rosi said. “No decision has been made regarding future homeporting of the riverine forces.”

The group headquarters and two squadrons are based at Little Creek, Va., with the third squadron at Naval Weapons Station Yorktown, Va. The assessment should be completed this fiscal year. Rosi said nine naval bases are being looked at: Little Creek; Yorktown: New London, Conn.; Kings Bay, Ga.; Mayport, Fla.; Gulfport, Miss.; San Diego; Ventura County, Calif.; and Kitsap, Wash.

He said the assessment began in April 2008 because the current force — which was created in 2006 — is operating out of temporary facilities in Little Creek and Yorktown.

While the East Coast hub for Seabees in Gulfport is on the list, a growing riverine training site already exists just 30 miles down the road. Naval Special Warfare Command’s small-boat unit, Special Boat Team 22, has its base and a foreign forces training facility on the brown waters of the Pearl River inside the 126,000-acre John C. Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi, near New Orleans.

Naval Special Warfare Group 4, which oversees SBT 22, deferred to Fleet Forces Command on questions about stationing conventional riverine units at Stennis. But the special warfare community has been quietly improving its bayou home.

In February, construction began on a $9.7 million Riverine Operations Facility near SBT 22’s facility at Stennis. Planned for completion in April 2010, the two buildings are meant as a new home for the team’s 400 members and staff and 30 boats, according to NSWG 4. The team also just added a 5,000-acre live-fire training range in the area.

Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., would like to see the conventional forces relocated to Stennis, according to his chief of staff, Steve Peranich.

“There’s a recently added 5,000-acre maneuver area. There are capabilities that don’t exist anywhere else. It seems logical that a place like that would be considered,” Peranich said. “The capabilities there could be leveraged by [the conventional riverine force].”

The riverine group, made up of three squadrons of about 225 sailors and 12 boats each, may grow to four squadrons in the near future, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead recently told Navy Times.

The Navy’s Meteorology and Oceanography Command is also located at Stennis.