Bases’ Boosters to Campaign for Ship, Research : Navy: Instead of getting jobs from other facilities, partnership hopes to attract a test vessel to Port of Hueneme and missile study program to Point Mugu.

Returning with information from a lobbying trip to Washington, boosters of local Navy bases plan to focus on bringing a Navy ship to the deep water Port of Hueneme and the hottest new missile research to Point Mugu.

“We have to put our energy on the future, not the past, not digging after the crumbs,” Supervisor John K. Flynn told members of the Community-Navy Action Partnership on Tuesday.

Until now, the group has concentrated on ensuring that the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Port Hueneme acquires jobs promised from other bases slated for closure.

But Flynn said that effort could bring perhaps 100 new jobs to the area, rather than the 300 or 400 as earlier hoped. Instead, the group will go after new programs that could reap bigger benefits for the local bases as they continue to shrink along with the rest of the Department of Defense.

Specifically, the group plans to work with Point Mugu officials to develop a role for the base on a new program to create a ship-fired missile that can shoot down incoming ballistic missiles.

The Navy is pouring money into the Theater Ballistic Missile Defense, which would work like a floating Patriot missile, the Army’s defensive weapon that successfully knocked down Iraqi Scud missiles during the Persian Gulf War.

Most of the dollars for ballistic missile testing are headed to a naval facility at Barking Sands Beach in Hawaii. But Navy leaders have not ruled out directing some of the work to the Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division, at Point Mugu.

Some Navy officials wanted to see more specifics on how Point Mugu, which tests other missiles, could help with the ballistic missile testing, said Ted Rains, a defense industry expert and member of the group.

“They had trouble seeing how Mugu would have a role in it because the Navy is being driven very hard by a powerful senator who is taking all of the assets to Barking Sands,” Rains said.

Sen. Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii is the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on defense.

In addition to lobbying for Point Mugu, the partnership group plans to press for money to upgrade the Port of Hueneme so the Navy could station a large Navy vessel there as a weapons test ship.

Urged by the local delegation, Adm. Jeremy M. Boorda, the Navy’s top military official, agreed last week to consider the idea of dedicating one of the fleet’s older Aegis cruisers as a weapons-testing ship.

During last week’s meeting with the delegation, local politicians and business leaders, Boorda ordered one of his staff members to look into the idea.

The admiral seemed intrigued, Rains said, because he had recently made a similar decision to dedicate a ship on the East Coast that will explore ways to reduce the number of shipboard personnel by relying on automation.

But Rains said lower-ranking Navy officials on the delegation’s tour seemed less enthusiastic about giving up a ship for testing by the Naval Surface Warfare Center, a 2,500-employee outfit at Port Hueneme that works out glitches on shipboard weapons.

The 10-member delegation also met with Federal Aviation Administration officials to show support for the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s proposal to fly jets at a low level toward a Navy building on Silver Strand Beach.

The flights are designed to simulate attack runs on a ship that would be part of various weapons tests. Neighbors object to the proposed flights, raising safety and noise concerns that have slowed the FAA’s approval of the operation.

Bill Jeffers, director of the FAA’s Air Traffic Service, was surprised to receive a group favoring a proposal, rather than opposing the plan, Flynn said. The supervisor said Jeffers seemed impressed by the breadth of community support represented in the delegation, which included mayors Manny Lopez and Tony Young of the adjacent cities of Oxnard and Port Hueneme.

“He more or less directed [a staff member] to move the project along,” Flynn said.

The Community-Navy Action Partnership was formed out of a group of business and political leaders that helped defend local bases and their 17,900 jobs during the latest round of base closures.

The group became more active recently upon learning of three new studies to consolidate weapons test centers.

During the delegation’s trip, the group learned that both Point Mugu and Port Hueneme appear to have a future with the Navy.

But Pentagon officials told them that Point Mugu can expect a 40% reduction in jobs from 1991 levels, along with other military bases. The job losses, they said, are just part of the ongoing squeeze of the Defense Department budget in the post-Cold War era.