Plan to move carrier from Va. to Fla. on hold - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Plan to move carrier from Va. to Fla. on hold

RICHMOND, Va. — The Navy's plans to move an aircraft carrier from Virginia to Florida are on hold for at least five years, but the two states will likely see a shuffling of some other military ships.

President Obama did not include money in his budget released Monday to retrofit the Mayport, Fla., port to accommodate a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Rear Adm. Joseph P. Mulloy, the Navy's deputy assistant secretary for the budget, said plans to move a carrier to Mayport are delayed because military construction funds were cut from the budget. Mulloy said the Navy has deferred the move until after the five-year defense plan laid out in the 2013 budget.

Although some Virginia congressmen said this signaled that the Navy had canceled plans to move the carrier from Norfolk, at least one Florida official insisted that it was only on hold.

Defense officials have said that having all five East Coast-based aircraft carriers based in one place, Norfolk, is a national security concern because of the possibility of a natural disaster or manmade calamity, but they have acknowledged the budget strains for relocating the carrier to Florida. Aircraft carriers on the West Coast are home-ported at three bases.

Sen. Mark R. Warner on Monday said the Navy will keep the carriers in Norfolk through 2020, but there will be some "modest shifts" in people and ships at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base in Virginia Beach. Overall, the Navy plans to keep 111,000 Navy and Marine Corps personnel in Hampton Roads during that time, which is only 3,000 less than the current level, Warner said in a statement.

Officials from Virginia have spent four years asking the Navy to review the planned move, saying it was unnecessary, too costly and would hurt the Hampton Roads economy. Florida officials meanwhile have pushed hard for the carrier move to Mayport, which previously served as home to the conventionally powered John F. Kennedy that was decommissioned in 2007.

The Government Accountability Office has estimated the cost of retrofitting the Florida port near Jacksonville to accommodate a nuclear carrier and moving it there to be $258.7 million to $356 million, which Virginia representatives contended is too expensive at a time when the Defense Department has other needs. Prior to the GAO report, the Navy had estimated it would cost more than $537 million to upgrade the Florida base.

"Historic fiscal challenges and the devastating prospect of a trillion dollars in defense cuts have only bolstered our argument that such a move would not just be strategically unnecessary, but also fiscally irresponsible," Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., said in a statement Monday.

However, Republican. Ander Crenshaw, whose district includes the Florida base, said delaying the carrier move "makes no sense" because it will only make the move more costly down the road.

"The Pentagon is making a short-sighted fiscal decision that is not in the best interest of national security," he said in a statement.

Crenshaw added that he's been assured that the Navy is still committed to ultimately moving a nuclear aircraft carrier to Mayport and that it plans to send additional vessels there, including an amphibious ship and support ships, as well as additional destroyers, patrol crafts and littoral combat ships.

Florida Lt. Governor Jennifer Carroll added that officials are disappointed about the carrier move being delayed, but applauded the Navy's plans to move nine ships to Mayport, along with 2,000 sailors and their family members.

The Navy did not immediately say where those ships would be relocated from.

Obama unveiled a $3.8 trillion spending plan on Monday for 2013 that seeks to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade. The Pentagon's overall spending will dip by about $31.8 billion in the fiscal year beginning Oct.1. The cuts come as the Pentagon seeks to save about $260 billion over the next five years.