Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s recommendations to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission are purported to have been leaked. NavySEALs.com has what it claims is the list of bases recommend for closure or realignment. The official list will be available Friday morning at the BRAC 2005 site.
Notable among the bases recommended for closure: Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. If that name is not familiar, you might remember it as Fightertown, USA, home of the Navy’s Top Gun school. As part of the last round of base realignments the Marine Corps took over Miramar Naval Air Station and the Top Gun school moved to NAS Fallon, outside Reno, Nevada.
List link via Jeff Quinton
Update: The official list is out, and it bears little resemblance to the leaked list. MCAS Miramar isn’t on the closure recommendations list. CNN lists the bases that the Pentagon proposes to close. The base closings are only a small part of the story, as the realignments and restructuring (Available at BRAC 2005) are much longer.
“Your committee’s writing checks your Congressman cant cash!”
It saddens me to see that Miramar may be on the hit list. I was stationed at Miramar back in 78. That was in its day of being a master jet air station capable of refueling 8 fighter aircraft simultaneously. We had the “octagon” you see. That, of course, was in addition to the other refueling capabilities at each squadron. It was one of the best duty stations I ever had. I can’t imagine the west coast being without it. Why would we close down such a strategic facility? Things must have really changed over the years that’s for sure.
I’m puzzled over this one.
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is in the town I grew up in, Kittery, Maine. The closure of PNS would hit the town hard. Not much else there besides outlet malls. Very sad.
How do you get a NAVAL air station in land-locked desert Nevada?
This is an old list. It’s been passed around Washington for months. I’m not sure what the official list will look like, but I’m almost certain this isn’t it.
I’m about 4 miles from Mayport Naval Station in Florida and we’ve been on pins and needles about this. As soon as they started talk about decomissioning the Kennedy we got nervous. We’ve heard whispers though that there’s a possibility they’ll be sending a nuclear sub in it’s place. Of course no one is supposed to know…
Barry, you end up with a Naval Air Station in Nevada when you need a lot of open sapces to train in; much the same reason the USAF has Nellis AFB in Nevada. Though at opposite ends of the state, the two are also close enough to do joint combat exercises on the ranges there.
The bas closing that surpised me was Cannon AFB in New Mexico. I’d heard of enough going onthere that it seemed an unlikely candidate.