EVERETT – The U.S. military’s road map for the future puts West Coast military bases – including those in the Puget Sound area – in a good position to increase their roles in the nation’s defense, U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., said.
This look-ahead bodes well for Naval Station Everett, which could get a new generation of warships, and Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, the Everett congressman said last week in an interview.
Called the Quadrennial Defense Review Report, the plan is the Defense Department’s review of its current status, what it ought to be doing and where it should be in the future.
The report talks about the need for development of littoral combat ships, smaller warships that can operate closer to shore.
The X-Craft Sea Fighter, an aluminum hull catamaran built by Nichols Brothers Boat Builders on Whidbey Island and launched in 2005, is now being tested as an example of such a nimble, close-to-shore warship, said Larsen, a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
The naval force also is expected to increase from about 280 warships and submarines to 313 when the smaller near-shore craft come on line in the near future.
When those types of ships are developed, there’s no reason why Naval Station Everett couldn’t be the home port for some of them, Larsen said.
Everett “could be on the cutting edge of that wave of a new generation of Navy ships,” Larsen said. “We’re in a great position for it.”
According to the 92-page document, there is a definite shift of forces envisioned from the Cold War containment strategy in the Atlantic to protecting trade routes and offsetting threats in the Pacific.
The report envisions six of the Navy’s 11 aircraft carrier strike groups operating in the Pacific, and the shift of other naval assets to West Coast home ports.
Moreover, it portrays a more mobile military, able to quickly respond to trouble spots around the globe.
“The military bases in the Pacific Northwest are exceptionally positioned to support the goals” of the report, Larsen said.
Last year’s federal base-closing process left Washington’s major military installations untouched, another signal that the area’s geographic and strategic relationship with Asian trading partners has been recognized, Larsen said
The shift to the West Coast was in the works even before the report was released in early February.
The Navy announced in December that the USS George Washington, a Nimitz-class, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, would be permanently deployed to Japan. The move came after Japanese officials agreed to set aside long-standing opposition to nuclear ships in its waters.
The nuclear-powered USS George Washington, now based in Norfolk, Va., will move from the Atlantic Fleet to the Pacific Fleet and replace a conventionally-powered carrier.
In late February, the Navy announced it will move two fast-attack submarines from New London, Conn., to the submarine base at Bangor in summer 2007.
U. S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., also said he had been briefed by Navy officials about three other submarines that will move to San Diego and Hawaii over the next three years.
The report calls for 60 percent of the nation’s submarines to be assigned to the West Coast and Hawaii.
Whidbey Island Naval Air Station got a boost in the fall when the Navy moved a squadron of intelligence reconnaissance planes there from Spain. Whidbey is the host of another reconnaissance squadron, as well as four squadrons of P-3C Orion patrol planes.
In July, the Navy said Whidbey would be the home base for the service’s new countermeasures warplane, the EA-18G. The new plane will eventually replace the EA-6B, and will be phased in starting in 2008.
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