Base Supporters to Present Their Case Today : Point Mugu: Boosters hope their testimony before a panel in San Francisco will help keep the weapons-testing facility operating.

In its helpful hints to military base supporters, the nation’s base-closing commission suggests that communities defending their local installations focus on three things: military value, military value and military value.

Taking that advice to heart, a delegation of Point Mugu supporters today will unveil an hourlong, multimedia presentation that concentrates on Point Mugu’s importance to the Navy as one of its premier weapons-testing facilities.

A local task force has managed to recruit Point Mugu’s commanding officer, Adm. Dana B. McKinney, as its main speaker. His testimony, local boosters hope, will underscore the Navy’s strong desire to keep Point Mugu as the launching pad to its missile-testing range that stretches far across the Pacific Ocean.

“I think we have some worthwhile testimony,” said Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley). The congressman will lead off the panel of speakers representing Ventura County at today’s public hearing before the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission in San Francisco.

In another sign of strong Navy support, Sen. Dianne Feinstein released a letter Wednesday from the Navy’s highest ranking officer that praises Point Mugu as “not only a critical asset for the Department of the Navy, but a national asset as well.”

In a letter to the senator, Adm. J. M Boorda wrote, “Our internal base closure analysis demonstrates that national security is best served by preserving the full range of operational and technical capabilities at . . . Point Mugu.”

Feinstein said the letter from the chief of naval operations makes it clear that military leaders want Point Mugu to remain as it is. “The Pentagon wants this base open for a very good reason: It is an important military installation to our nation’s defense,” Feinstein said.

The senator or one of her aides is set to deliver another statement to the base-closing commissioners at today’s hearing at the Treasure Island naval base near San Francisco.

To be sure, the Point Mugu supporters’ choreographed presentation will bring up the potential economic devastation to the community should commissioners decide to shut the facility. The task force estimates that full closure would cost the county 18,000 in military and spinoff jobs, $600 million in annual income and $1.3 billion in yearly sales.

But task force members say their testimony will go far beyond parochial concerns. Instead, they intend to persuade the commissioners that it makes neither economic nor military sense to shut down Point Mugu and move its missile-testing operations to its sister base at China Lake in the Mojave Desert--as was proposed in a much-disputed Pentagon audit.

Among the major points in the panel’s testimony:

* The Navy ranks Point Mugu as No. 2 in military value among the service’s 64 technical centers. China Lake is No. 1.

* The Navy eliminated overlapping programs at Point Mugu and China Lake during a consolidation that began in 1991. The bases now operate under one command as the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Weapons Division.

* As a test center, Point Mugu’s work force shrinks or grows as needed to handle the workload. Given such self-correcting employment levels, there are few, if any, excess jobs that can be eliminated.

The Navy and the group of local supporters, calling themselves the BRAC ’95 Task Force, have each conducted an economic analysis of the proposed consolidation of the Point Mugu and China Lake naval bases. Neither has found that such a merger would save tax dollars, as suggested by auditors on the staff of the Defense Department’s inspector general.

“The whole point of this process is to have a leaner, meaner machine,” Gallegly said. Yet moving jobs from Point Mugu to China Lake does not save any money, he said. “These jobs don’t disappear.”

Furthermore, both the Navy and the task force contend it would cost taxpayers extra money to operate Point Mugu’s 36,000-square-mile test range from a site 160 miles away in the upper Mojave Desert. The commission is not considering closing the sea test range, because it is widely regarded as a unique patch of heavily controlled airspace needed by the Navy to test-fire weapons over water.

Although such remote control is technically feasible, the Navy would have extra fuel costs to fly aircraft and missile targets the added distance during every mission.

And from a practical standpoint, some employees would have to shuttle back and forth so they could be on-site at Point Mugu for safety reasons, said Ted Rains, a task force adviser. Rains is scheduled to be one of the panel’s half a dozen speakers. Their comments are to be broken up by a 7 1/2-minute video of the base.

Bob Conroy, a defense industry executive, will take 10 minutes to rebut the 57-page inspector general report that tantalized base-closing commissioners with the promise of saving $1.7 billion over 20 years by closing Point Mugu. The report was one of the main reasons the commissioners decided to add Point Mugu to the Pentagon list of recommended closures.

But since then, the auditor who authored the report acknowledged to congressional staff members that some of the figures may be outdated. And the Navy’s analysis shows--given initial moving costs--that any savings from consolidation would not begin for more than two decades, if ever.

The panel’s speakers have been furiously polishing their testimony in recent days under the guidance of their attorney-lobbyist Lynn Jacquez. Working late into the evening and then resuming before regular work hours in the morning, the sleepy-eyed crew continued to tinker with the script until they had to dash for airline flights to San Francisco.

At one of the strategy sessions this week, Conroy lamented at the various passages he had to cut from his speech to make it fit the allotted time.

“Ten minutes really isn’t very long,” Conroy told fellow task force members.

“Lincoln did Gettysburg in less than five minutes,” quipped Ed Barrineau, a retired admiral and task force adviser. “So we should have a good shot.”