Shipyard’s Future Uncertain as BRAC Nears
By Dennis Mayer
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 – Retired Navy Capt. William McDonough has been involved with the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for more than 30 years, but with another round of base closures scheduled for next year he does not know how long the facility has left.
“We’re not cautiously optimistic, but we’re not pessimistic, either,” said McDonough, president of the Save our Shipyard association. “We should be in good shape, but the risk is there. It’s a frustrating experience because we go through this periodically.”
McDonough, who commanded the facility from 1974 to 1979 and has lived in the area since retiring from the Navy, has witnessed rounds of base closures – known as Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC – in 1988, 1991, 1993, and 1995. The program, designed to trim military excess that was unnecessary in a post-Cold War world, closed 97 bases throughout those four rounds. In at least one of those rounds, in 1995, Portsmouth was considered seriously for closure.
For the military, closing unnecessary bases saves money, though not right away, since closing a base usually means spending a large amount of money on cleaning up the facility. Nevertheless, the base-closing process had saved the government $17 billion by 2001, and would save $7 billion annually after that, according to a March 2003 report by the Department of Defense.
That same report estimated that the military currently has about 24 percent excess capacity that should be eliminated, a central motivating factor behind the cuts scheduled to take place next year (see timeline). But what are Portsmouth’s chances of being in the 76 percent of bases that remain?
Owen Cote, associate director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program, said he wasn’t sure Portsmouth, or the Navy’s other shipyards, would be considered part of that excess capacity.
“In theory, it’s possible Portsmouth is vulnerable, . but once such a facility closes, you’ll never get one like it again,” Cote said.
The Navy currently has four shipyards – Portsmouth, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Wash., Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii – that perform upkeep and maintenance on the Navy’s surface and submarine fleet. Most construction projects are now contracted out to two private shipyards, in Groton, Conn. and Newport News, Va.
Portsmouth specializes in servicing Los-Angeles class submarines, a mid-sized attack submarine first deployed in 1976 that now forms the backbone of the Navy’s attack submarine fleet – out of 55 attack subs currently deployed, 53 are Los Angeles-class.
According to Cote, with its license to service nuclear subs and its expertise in the Los Angeles-class submarines, the Portsmouth shipyard is a “niche” facility that should be relatively safe so long as there are nuclear subs to service.
He admitted that the base was probably not receiving a full workload, but discounted the importance of that, saying, “If there’s some kind of surge requirement, it’s good to have a bit of leeway.”
Cote said he expected Air Force facilities, and especially Air National Guard units that share facilities with local civilian airports, to bear the brunt of this round of base closures.
Jack Spencer, a base realignment expert at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think tank, wasn’t so sure a facility like Portsmouth would be completely safe, since there are four shipyards and a shrinking fleet.
“Instead of having two places that can do the same thing, you have one base to do one thing,” he said.
Spencer cautioned against relying entirely on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s “do more with less” mantra to understand the process, but agreed it played a role in realignment’s ultimate goal, especially where construction is concerned.
He said this round of cuts was different from previous rounds because this round, while designed to save money, is also aimed at streamlining the military from a Cold War-era industrial machine to “a more agile and flexible force” better suited to fighting terrorism around the world.
He also said that unlike previous years, this round would be less susceptible to political pressure to save individual bases. He said communities who believed their bases were in danger should focus more on what they could do to survive if their base was closed.
“The bases people fight to take off the table . are probably those that would be eliminated anyway,” he said.
Portsmouth’s survival in past rounds indicates it may again be able to dodge closure because of the nature of work performed there.
According to the Defense Department’s 1995 base-closing report, Portsmouth was seriously considered for closure but was spared because naval officials were unsure how successful their new Seawolf submarine program would be. Seawolf-class submarines were designed to be quieter, faster and better armed than the Los Angeles-class ships, and were poised to supplant them as the standard U.S. naval attack submarines. However, the Navy wanted to keep its options open, realizing that the Los Angeles-class subs would become important if the Navy’s need for submarines increased, or if the Seawolf program was discontinued.
That decision was prescient, since the Seawolf program was cut dramatically: The U.S.S. Seawolf was deployed in 1997, but since then only one has been commissioned, with a third scheduled for 2007. Los Angeles-class submarines have remained the Navy’s submarine of choice.
The main danger Portsmouth faces is its diminishing workload. According to McDonough, the shipyard association president, the shipyard will soon run out of Los Angeles-class submarine refueling jobs, because the second half of submarines produced in that class were made with “lifetime” reactors that would last however long the boat was in service.
Once the refueling jobs are gone, the shipyard will still have routine maintenance and overhauls to perform, but its workload would be diminished.
“The workload is going down, we become increasingly vulnerable,” he said.
The shipyard also has to compete with the private sector. New construction jobs have gone down in recent years, and as a result contractors have started to get the maintenance jobs that used to be the public shipyards’ domain, a trend that troubles McDonough.
“Our administration has an obsession with turning over work to the private sector,” he said. “I have trouble understanding the feeling behind that.”
“It’s the same money,” he said, but the government loses both control over the process and the benefit of naval expertise.
One way the base could increase its future workload and buttress its chances of staying open would be outfitting its facilities to service the next generation of submarines.
For example the Virginia-class submarine is another improvement on the Los Angeles-class design. The first ship in this class, the USS Virginia, was commissioned this October, and at least five more are planned (two are under construction and scheduled to be delivered to the Navy by 2006). Those submarines will need maintenance. Portsmouth is already scheduled to perform the first scheduled maintenance session on theVirginia in 2010.
But first, the shipyard will have to survive this latest round of cuts. In the end, its chances of doing that are anyone’s guess.
BRAC TIMELINE:
The Department of Defense is collecting and analyzing data for the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure process. Here’s how that process will work:
February 2005: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will submit to Congress any changes in base-closing standards.
March 15, 2005: President Bush will send to the Senate a list of nine nominees to the Base Closure and Realignment Commission, which will analyze Secretary Rumsfeld’s base closure recommendations.
May 16, 2005: Rumsfeld will submit his closure and realignment recommendations to the commission and congressional defense committees. The information also will be published in the Federal Register.
July 1, 2005: The Comptroller General will report to the congressional defense committees on the economic impact of Rumsfeld’s recommendations.
Sept. 8, 2005: The base-closure commission will report to the President on its analysis of Rumsfeld’s closure and realignment recommendations.
Sept. 25, 2005: Bush will announce whether he approves or disapproves of the commission’s recommendations. If he approves, Congress has 45 legislative days to issue a joint resolution of disapproval or the recommendations become law. (Congress can only accept or reject the recommendations together; it cannot change the recommendation on separate closures.)
Oct. 20, 2005: The base-closure commission must submit a revised report to Bush if he disapproves of the first.
Nov. 7, 2005: Bush must approve the revised list of base closures, or the process ends. If he approves a revised list, Congress has 45 legislative days to issue a joint resolution of disapproval or the recommendations become law.
Source: Department of Defense BRAC website (http://www.dod.gov/BRAC)
