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Naval Station Mayport,
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The Senate has called for the Navy to study whether
to move more destroyers to Mayport ,
Fla.
The study was included as part of the $662 billion
defense authorization bill, which passed the Senate on Dec. 1 and now heads
into conference committee with the House. The specific Mayport amendment was
introduced by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.
The Navy plans to decommission four ships in 2012. Three
of those, all frigates, are homeported in Mayport: the Boone, Stephen W. Groves
and John L. Hall. Their decommissioning would leave Mayport with 16 ships.
In the amendment, Nelson asked the Navy to consider
extending the service lives of frigates “in light of continued delays in
deliveries of the littoral combat ship[s].” He also asked the Navy to weigh
stationing more ships in Mayport or sending them to Mayport for maintenance.
There are no littoral combat ships based in Mayport;
those ships won’t start to arrive until 2016, according to a congressional aide.
All 11 frigates homeported in Mayport are slated to be scrapped by then.
This gap could force the Mayport ship repair
industry into cutbacks and layoffs, a possibility that concerns Nelson.
“Senator Nelson has been pressing the Navy for some
time for a plan,” said his spokesman, Bryan Gulley. “How are you going to
address the possibility that the repair industry there could be harmed?”
He said the senator’s amendment aims to “simply
require the Navy to take a look at whether there are any options and what are
the feasibility of these options.”
Mayport has been steadily losing ships and sailors
over the past decade. Five years ago, 22 ships and 13,272 sailors were
stationed there, including the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy, which was
decommissioned in 2007. The Navy plans to move a carrier to Mayport in the
future, but has not said which one.
About 9,000 sailors are stationed in Mayport, according
to Naval Station Mayport spokesman Bill Austin.
Navy officials have said in the past that Mayport
was a likely East Coast LCS base.
“No final homeporting decision has been made, pending
the completion of the environmental assessment” in mid-2012, Navy spokeswoman
Lt. Cmdr. Alana Garas said. She said no decision had been made about the number
of LCS ships to be homeported in Mayport and was unable to provide an estimate.
Source: The Navy Times. By Sam Fellman. 4 December 2011
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