Admiral Ready to Fight for Carrier Site

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Admiral Ready to Fight for Carrier Site
January 31, 2009
The Virginian-Pilot

The Navy's top admiral signaled Friday that he's prepared for a fight over plans to relocate a Norfolk-based aircraft carrier to Florida and insisted that the shift is "in the best interest of the nation."

Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations, said that while the Navy and other military branches face increasingly tight budgets, "making sure that the fleet is best postured, positioned and prepared to respond has to be a priority."

"That is what I get paid to do and that was the basis for my recommendation" to assign a carrier to Mayport Naval Station, he said.

Norfolk is the Navy's only East Coast base equipped to maintain a nuclear-powered carrier. Roughead and outgoing Navy Secretary Donald Winter have proposed spending about $600 million to build and upgrade facilities at Mayport to provide a home for one of the five flattops assigned to the Atlantic Fleet.

The planned move is predicated on concerns that the fleet is vulnerable to a terrorist attack or natural disaster if all the Atlantic carriers are housed in one port. The Navy has three nuclear-capable carrier ports in the Pacific, Roughead noted.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/admiral-ready-to-fight-for-carrier-site.html?col=1186032310810