Study Advises Closing Point Mugu Base : Military: Pentagon report recommends moving most operations and cutting jobs by one-fifth, but Navy officials dispute findings.

A Pentagon report kept hidden from the public for the past five months recommends shutting down most of the Point Mugu Navy base, eliminating about one-fifth of its jobs and transferring the rest to other installations, The Times has learned.

In the 57-page report, the Defense Department’s inspector general concludes that taxpayers could save $1.7 billion over the next 20 years if Point Mugu moves most of its missile-testing operations to its sister base at China Lake in the upper Mojave Desert.

Although the report’s accuracy and influence are disputed by Navy officials, it comes at a time when the Pentagon is weighing which bases across the nation to offer as sacrifices in next year’s round of base closures.

“We’re very upset about it,” said Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), who has joined a special task force of government and business leaders formed to protect Ventura County’s Navy bases.

Gallegly said he has seen only “bits and pieces” of an early draft, but worries what it could mean for the county’s largest employer.

The final report, obtained by The Times, has never been officially released. And Gallegly and other members of the lobbying task force said they believe the report’s conclusions cannot be used legally by other Pentagon officials in preparing a hit list of bases to close.

Meanwhile, congressional staff and the Washington, D.C., lobbyist hired by the local task force are researching the law to make sure the report is excluded from consideration. They say the decision-making process on what bases to close should not allow an activist role by the inspector general’s office.

“We have to be prepared to fight that,” said Supervisor John K. Flynn, one of the leaders of the local BRAC ’95 Task Force that has raised $200,000 so far for the lobbying campaign. “We are going into this battle to keep Mugu and everything else open.”

The final report, issued to a small group of Pentagon officials on June 8 over the strong objections of the Navy, recommends moving most of Point Mugu’s operations and almost 2,000 jobs to the China Lake Navy base, about 150 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

The consolidation, the report said, would “eliminate redundant or duplicative functions” at Point Mugu and China Lake, which both test high-tech weaponry as members of the Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division.

About 100 employees would remain behind to operate Point Mugu’s airfield. But the report recommends eliminating 1,049 jobs at Point Mugu.

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Another 1,083 workers would move to a nearby Navy facility at Port Hueneme, so they could continue to operate Point Mugu’s missile test range, which spreads across 36,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean. The report does not address the 3,000 people who work on base as employees of defense contractors.

Moving costs would run about $518 million, so the inspector general’s auditors do not figure any net savings for the first six years.

The inspector general’s report has been sharply criticized by Navy officials, who said its conclusions and analysis are based on inaccurate data and incorrect assumptions.

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In a memo to the inspector general Aug. 31, Assistant Navy Secretary Nora Slatkin also criticized the inspector general’s office for unfairly singling out a Navy base for closure without considering all military installations as required by the nation’s base closure and realignment law.

For that reason, she recommended that the inspector general’s office delete its recommendations to merge Point Mugu into China Lake from the report.

In addition, Slatkin took issue with the feasibility of moving Point Mugu’s sea test range operations to buildings soon to be vacated by the Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory at Port Hueneme.

Slatkin said the location at the mouth of the Port of Hueneme would interfere with transmitters, antennas and other equipment needed for safe operation of the test range.

Other Navy officials also told The Times that the Port Hueneme location is far too small for the Navy’s sea range operation, which has three times as many personnel as the engineering lab. The lab is being moved to a new building in the center of the Port Hueneme Seabee base.

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Robert J. Lieberman, the Defense Department’s assistant inspector general for auditing, was the official overseeing the audit recommending Point Mugu’s closure.

In an interview, Lieberman at one point agreed with Navy critics that the report was prepared “completely out of context” of the Pentagon’s current review of bases across the nation. By itself, he said, it should not be decisive.

“Unless you know what is being considered at other installations around the country, that report in itself is pretty meaningless,” Lieberman said.

But Lieberman also said he stands by the report’s conclusions that the Point Mugu and China Lake bases have programs with too much overlap.

And, given the Navy’s hostile reaction to his auditors and the report, he said his office has forwarded the recommendations to a higher level: those officials in the Defense Secretary’s office who are now considering which bases across the country to consolidate.

“The Navy wasn’t going to use it, that was clear,” Lieberman said.

He added that the inspector general’s staff has a legitimate role in the base closure process because it has been assigned the responsibility of verifying all data submitted by the Navy and other military branches.

In this fourth and final round of base closures, the Defense Department will consider combining bases from different branches of the service. Overall, the secretary of defense has mandated a 15% reduction of the nation’s military bases.

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So, it’s possible that Point Mugu could be merged with Edwards Air Force Base or Vandenberg Air Force Base, or another military installation that tests missiles or other high-tech weaponry.

Some Point Mugu supporters have accused the inspector general’s office of targeting Point Mugu at the behest of a competing Air Force base.

“None of that is true,” Lieberman said. “We initiated it based on our professional judgment. There wasn’t any outside meddling.”

Lieberman said his auditors focused on Point Mugu after the Navy did its own reorganization in 1991, which changed the name from the Pacific Missile Test Center to the Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division.

The inspector general report said much of that reshuffle was a “paper reorganization” that did not combine all of the duplicate weapons-testing programs at the two bases.

Furthermore, the report contends that Navy officials used “a very lenient interpretation” of rules that allowed them to exclude Point Mugu and China Lake from being seriously considered for consolidation in 1993 because of “unique” military features.

Navy officials dispute these assertions.

But they say that Point Mugu has a unique function in the nation’s military: It is the launching pad to the world’s biggest sea test range, used daily by naval aircraft, ships and submarines in firing missiles and testing weapons.

China Lake is the Navy’s largest base, stretching over 1,700 square miles of desert land--nearly the size of Delaware. China Lake also has 17,000 square miles of airspace restricted to military aircraft and weapons testing.

All three branches of the military are now scrutinizing which bases should close. And the secretary of defense is scheduled to release a recommended hit list in March.

At that point, a federally appointed base-closure commission will evaluate the list, hold public hearings and make its decision in July.