alert5: blog 
alert5's blog
camden county official urges opposition to navy field
Published Jul. 21, 2008
Residents of a northeastern North Carolina county should step up efforts to counter a proposed Navy landing field, according to the county manager.
Our Navy pilots risks their lives everytime they launch off an aircraft carrier. Their primary training requires that they learn to land on an aircraft carier by training on these land-based fields that simulate to a degree the space and lighting on an aircraft carrier's landing area.
I am very disappointed in the residents. Our military fights for us to keep us free and out of harms way and we repay them by making it more diffcult for them to find a place for them to train.
I personally lived in the Norfolk/Va Beach areas where both Navy and Air Force jets flew overhead every day. I felt safer knowing that they were there and ready to protect us if the need arose.
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I think you missed my point but let me put this in a historical context. Suppose this same "Not in my backyard" attitude occurred just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor - do you think we could have faired as well. Don't think so.
Another piece of information. During WWII we actually had many auxiliary scattered all over the NC coast.
This business of people complaining about the noise - the're full of it! I have lived within a mile or closer to military airstrips. The car and truck traffic is louder than the jets!
GOLO member since April 15, 2008
July 22, 2008 11:11 a.m.
"Then came the recommendation to divide the squadrons between Virginia and North Carolina (eight in Virginia, two here). E-mails show that recommendation may have been made because of noise complaints in the Hampton Roads, Va., area, or because the Navy wanted to put squadrons in North Carolina to get the state's members of Congress to support the new landing field.
In any case, some on the Navy team involved with the environmental study were uncomfortable: Wrote Alan Zusman, one of them, in an e-mail in September 2002: "Don't know about you, but I have a very uneasy feeling about our criteria and the process." In a reply, another team member, Cmdr. John A. Robusto, wrote, "Up until the preferred OLF (landing field) site was chosen everything made sense and all decisions could be logically explained. Now we have to reverse engineer the whole process to justify the outcome."
GOLO member since August 16, 2007
July 21, 2008 4:06 p.m.
It has been obvious from the start that the Outlying Landing Field, as the project is called, was wrong for the spot the Navy chose. The presence of dozens of jets circling the area day and night, making landings and take-offs, would disrupt the peace and quiet of the area and certainly cause ecological harm. Also, with as many as 100,000 migratory birds in the area at this time of the year, the site is extremely dangerous for jet pilots. "
For the rest of the actual court decisions, I'll let you pay for westlaw.com or findlaw.com searches on your own.
GOLO member since August 16, 2007
July 21, 2008 4:01 p.m.
"The Navy can try to continue to mislead the public about its choice of the Pocosin Lakes site, but it should 'fess up. It is clear from the documents released by the plaintiffs in the U.S. District Court lawsuit that the site was chosen for political purposes and the Navy then rigged a study to justify that site as the best available.
The politics are easy to understand. The Navy currently conducts training operations out of its Oceana facility in Virginia´s Tidewater. Local residents are complaining about jet noise. The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John Warner, represents that area. The Navy wants to make him happy, so North Carolina got the bu*t end of the gesture."
GOLO member since August 16, 2007
July 21, 2008 4:00 p.m.
Apparently, you have not been following the court cases closely:
Winston-Salem Journal, Friday Novermber 26, 2004, "Smoking E-Mail":
"The Navy has been caught red-handed producing bogus studies that purported to justify the choice of a 30,000-acre site just outside the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Washington and Beaufort counties. In response to a court order, the Navy had surrendered 200,000 documents to lawyers for the counties surrounding the proposed site and environmentalists. Included in that cache was e-mail demonstrating the Navy's deception."
GOLO member since August 16, 2007
July 21, 2008 3:59 p.m.
I never said anything indicating perception of size. What I said was that the Navy relocated a whole lot of planes to Oceana in 2003, and that relocation apparently rendered the existing facilities insufficient to handle the number of planes now situated there.
My question is:
1) where did these planes come from, and where did they do their night training priot to moving? Why aren't those facilities usable for this purpose? What other facilities already exist that could be used, but aren't being considered?
2) Why does the Navy HAVE to have all of those planes in one spot? What benefit or efficiency is being realized that makes it impossible to have the planes situated anywhere BUT Oceana?
GOLO member since July 4, 2008
July 21, 2008 3:54 p.m.
Can you provide a credible reference to your statement "The same ones that they were found to have falsified in a court of law?".
GOLO member since April 15, 2008
July 21, 2008 3:51 p.m.
The same ones that they were found to have falsified in a court of law?
As far as locating the jets, I would think that locating near MCAS Cherry Point and Camp Lejeune makes the most sense given that the land is already owned by the military.
GOLO member since August 16, 2007
July 21, 2008 3:49 p.m.
You are absolutely ALL WET!!!!!!
The OLF, as tmedlin stated is a very small area that is used for training only. No large facility. The aircraft would not be based here. It's only used to practice carrier landings.....
GOLO member since April 15, 2008
July 21, 2008 3:45 p.m.
1) Wherever they can find landowners willing or stupid enough to say yes to the deal the Navy is offering.
2) Redistribute the additional planes, that should never have been relocated to Oceana in the first place until the infrastructure needs and planning had been addressed beforehand, to other facilities in order to more sanely distribute the load.
I mean, where did all these pilots do all this training that's now no longer available to the point that the Navy HAS to have this new facility? There's absolutely nothing already existing that would work, at all?
GOLO member since July 4, 2008
July 21, 2008 3:41 p.m.
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