Task Force Responds to New Threat to Navy Base : Point Mugu: Air Force proposal to move local facility’s operations to Florida prompts group’s resolve to ‘prepare a defense in earnest.’

A Ventura County task force of Navy boosters on Tuesday vowed to redouble its efforts to raise money and defend the Point Mugu Navy base, now that the Air Force has suggested adding the base to the list of military installations being considered for closure.

The BRAC ’95 Task Force, which had slowed its pace in recent weeks, has lurched into higher gear after learning that the Air Force is quietly lobbying to move Point Mugu’s missile-testing operations and its 9,000 jobs to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.

“We would be wise to prepare for the worst-case scenario,” defense industry executive Cal Carrera told fellow members of the task force at a strategy meeting Tuesday. “We have to prepare a defense in earnest.”

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But Adm. Dana B. McKinney, commander of Point Mugu and its sister base in China Lake, said he did not believe the two bases face a serious threat of closure because of the last-minute pitch by the Air Force to the base closing commission.

“It is kind of a wild card that someone threw in at the last moment,” McKinney said. “I doubt seriously that it is going to have a significant influence on the process.”

From the beginning, McKinney has said that neither Point Mugu nor China Lake was in jeopardy during this round of base closures because of their military importance. Among its centers that test air-launched weapons, the Navy ranked China Lake and Point Mugu No. 1 and No. 2 in military value.

The Pentagon confirmed McKinney’s assessment in February when Defense Secretary William Perry did not include either base on his recommended hit list to the independent Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission.

Yet in its official recommendations, the Defense Department also did not propose combining Navy, Air Force and Army bases that perform similar work--despite a lengthy review of such inter-service consolidations.

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The Defense Department has since been criticized by congressional auditors for failing to recommend inter-service mergers, including those Navy and Air Force bases that test weapons and aircraft.

These mergers, an audit concluded, offered many opportunities to combine overlapping programs and close bases that are no longer affordable in the post-Cold War era.

The base closing commission, which has been weighing the Pentagon’s recommendations, has set a May 10 internal deadline for tacking additional bases to the list for possible closure or consolidation. The eight commissioners have until July 1 to submit a final list to President Clinton.

Earlier this month, Air Force officials led by Eglin Air Force Base Technical Director Dan Stewart met with commission staff and argued that Eglin should take over the weapons testing from Point Mugu and China Lake.

Stewart did not return phone calls Tuesday. And an Air Force spokesman said no one was immediately available for comment.

McKinney said he was surprised that the Air Force contingent would stray from the Defense Department’s official recommendations and that it was granted audience with commission staff.

“The Department of Defense, I assume, is going to have an issue with what the Air Force did,” the admiral said. “Typically, if you step outside the bounds of normal procedure, you stand a pretty good risk of getting chastised by the office of the secretary of defense.”

McKinney stressed that he could not speculate on what the commissioners would do with the Air Force proposal.

But given legal challenges to decisions by past commissions, he said he expected that the commissioners would ultimately tie their conclusions to information certified as valid by the Defense Department, not data supplied independently by the Air Force without the Navy’s input.

Carrera said the local BRAC ’95 Task Force cannot determine if the Air Force proposal constitutes a serious threat to Point Mugu because commission staff members have voiced differing opinions. “Right now,” he said, “I think it’s really a coin toss.”

But at a strategy session Tuesday, task force members treated the Air Force proposal as a call to arms.

The task force has raised all but $40,000 of its proposed $280,000 budget to pay lobbyists in Washington, D.C., develop defensive strategies and rally community support for local Navy bases.

“It appears that we are going to need that extra $40,000,” Carrera said.

The task force plans to return to some local governments for money and approach those industries that would be hardest hit should Point Mugu be forced to shut its gates.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” said Ventura County Supervisor John K. Flynn, pledging to help the task force raise money.