Point Mugu Hopes to Get Hawkeye Squadrons

In an effort to bring more jobs to Point Mugu, local Navy leaders are actively recruiting four squadrons of Navy planes and about 1,100 related personnel that must move from a San Diego Navy base sometime next year.

Leaders of the four squadrons of E2-C Hawkeye aircraft met with Point Mugu officials earlier this month to explore the idea of bringing the 16 planes, the jobs and extensive payroll to Ventura County.

“It was a very positive meeting and I think they were very impressed with the area,” said Capt. Stephen D. Beal, commanding officer of the Naval Air Weapons Station at Point Mugu. “We’ve invited them back. We will be meeting with some of our community leaders to try to put our best foot forward.”

Although a decision may take a year or more, if Point Mugu were chosen, the squadrons would bring hundreds of uniformed personnel to the base and hundreds more civilians and employees of defense contractors.

It would also change the historic focus of the base from a missile-testing center to one with active-duty squadrons that fly with the Pacific Fleet.

The E2-C Hawkeyes travel with aircraft-carrier battle groups as their flying air traffic controllers.

“They are our eyes in the sky,” said Doug Sayers, a spokesman at Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego where the squadrons are now based. “Their role is to go out in front and pretty much track everything in the air.”

Initially, the Miramar-based squadrons were simply to move across San Diego Bay to the Naval Air Station, North Island. But neighboring residents of Coronado have raised a ruckus over the extra traffic that adding another 1,000 workers to the base would bring to their affluent community.

Before the move can be approved, the Navy must conduct an environmental study that addresses traffic concerns in Coronado. Any environmental impact statement must include an alternative site for the transfer of the airplanes, commonly known as Hawkeyes.

So Navy leaders at Miramar have begun to look for other options, including the naval air stations at Point Mugu, El Centro, Lemoore and possibly Whidbey Island in Washington state.

In a meeting two weeks ago, Navy officials asked Point Mugu for an array of information to determine if the base could suit the Hawkeye squadrons.

“The base has a lot to meet their needs,” Beal said, including available hangars for the aircraft that are not deployed with the fleet. The base would need to build some additional housing for uniformed personnel, he said.

“We are providing a lot of data,” he said. “I would suspect that all of that data will go to their higher chain of command to weigh all of the pros and cons.”

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Meanwhile, Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) has weighed in with letters to Navy brass in charge of the Pacific Fleet and the fleet’s aircraft.

“It is my belief that not only can Point Mugu accommodate the E-2s, but the community at large would be behind the move 100%,” Gallegly wrote to Adm. Ronald J. Zlatoper last week.

Gallegly pointed out that the base has lost several aircraft squadrons to transfers and consolidations over the years, thus freeing up ample hangar and ramp space.

Furthermore, he wrote, Point Mugu has the maintenance facilities on base to help with the upkeep of the turboprop engines.

The four Hawkeye squadrons must move from Miramar by spring of 1997 under orders from the 1995 Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission.

Miramar is not closing, but converting to a Marine Corps base. And the Navy’s activities, including the romanticized Top Gun fighter pilot school that spawned the movie of the same name, must relocate to make room for helicopter and fighter jet squadrons from the soon-to-be-closed Marine Corps air stations at El Toro and Tustin.

Some Navy brass want to keep the Hawkeye squadrons in the San Diego area to be closer to the home port of many ships in the Pacific Fleet.