Feinstein opposes move of SpecWar HQ

[cec]

Feinstein opposes move of SpecWar HQ




By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
Posted : Friday May 25, 2007 18:36:53 EDT

SAN DIEGO — California’s senior senator raised is asking the Defense Department to rethink the planned move to the East Coast of the headquarters of the Navy’s commando force.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and copied to Navy Secretary Donald Winter, said she was “troubled” by the Navy’s proposal to shift the Naval Special Warfare Command’s headquarters from its current location in Coronado, Calif., to the Naval Amphibious Base in Little Creek, Va.
Feinstein, a California Democrat and a member of the defense appropriations subcommittee, noted that the shift of the command was not included in the last round of base closures and realignments in 2005.
“I question whether this move and the $51 million the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) proposes to spend will significantly improve the USSOCOM’s ability to train and deploy Navy SEALs and other highly skilled special forces to perform special warfare activities around the world,” Feinstein wrote in a letter released Friday by spokesman Scott Gerber.
Feinstein also raised concerns about putting the headquarters “away from the largest concentration of Navy SEALs in the country.”
“It makes sense that the Naval Special Warfare Command Headquarters should be co-located with their primary training activities like all other special warfare commands,” she wrote.
Coronado Naval Base is home to two Naval Special Warfare groups and four SEAL teams, as well as the Naval Special Warfare Center, which offers the six-month-long Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL course, and the newer Naval Special Warfare Advanced Training Command in nearby Imperial Beach. The Little Creek base houses four SEAL teams as well as two naval special warfare groups.
Each base also supports a special boat team and has a training detachment and a logistics and support unit. Plans are underway to expand the live-fire and training offerings at both locations.
Naval Special Warfare Command officials have said the existing headquarters is too small for the growing force, and a relocation of the headquarters would give it larger, more modern spaces than the existing buildings at the oceanfront complex in Coronado. Moving to the East Coast, they have noted, would also put the top command closer to their counterparts with U.S. Special Operations Command’s subordinate commands and enable more joint interaction.
The move, if approved and funded, would place the Naval Special Warfare Command in the same time zone as Army Special Operations Command, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., Marine Corps Special Operations Command at Camp Lejeune, N.C., and U.S. Special Operations Command, headquartered in Tampa, Fla. Air Force Special Operations Command is based at Hurlburt Field, Fla., on Florida’s panhandle.



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