This is About Pork, Nothing Else

Well, it looks like the US Navy is looking at moving a carried from Hampton Roads, Virginia to Mayport, Florida, near Jacksonville, and the Virginia Congressional delegation is throwing a fit over this.

This is not surprising, the presence of that carrier pumps something like ½ a billion dollars into the local economy.

The Navy is arguing that, "The five East Coast carriers should be dispersed as a hedge against a natural disaster or attack that could shut or cripple the sprawling Norfolk base."

So, in order to hedge against natural disaster, you want to move the ships into hurricane alley, otherwise known as Florida.

Of course the idea that foreign power will launch a sneak attack on the base is ludicrous.

SecNav John Lehman did this in the 1980s, on the argument that it would make more difficult for Soviet subs to shadow fleet movements, but it was a crap argument then.

Of course, these days the USSR is no more, and the Russians can't deploy a significant portion of their fleet and the Chinese are a decade from a meaningful submarine fleet, so there is no risk of attack.

The reality was that Lehman wanted to do this because it created more constituencies for his vision of a 600 ship navy, because a large number of small bases gets you the support of many congresscritters, where as one large base just gets you 1 or 2 districts support.

With the Navy claiming that their ships and aircraft are wearing out and need to be replaced, they still want to drop a billion dollars on the move, not because of military need, but because of political need.