Sub Base Saved

There was traf­fic on the high­way, on my way to New London, Connecticut last Thursday. And as I sat on I-​​95, I couldn’t help but think that there wouldn’t be many cars there for long.
The Pentagon had decided to close the area’s big employer, the Naval Sumbarine Base New London. And what the Pentagon wants, the Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC) usu­ally deliv­ers.
But not this time.
“In what, in my view, is a land­slide vic­tory for main­tain­ing American sea power, the BRAC Commission voted 7 to 1 (with 1 recusal) in favor of pre­serv­ing Naval Submarine Base New London,” notes Joe Buff, the author and under­sea com­men­ta­tor, who’s been a vocal oppo­nent of the pro­posed clos­ing.
Click here to read Joe’s take on the decision.

Naval Submarine Base New London can real­is­ti­cally claim to be the Submarine Capital of the World. The train­ing facil­i­ties there are state of the art, cov­er­ing almost every con­ceiv­able skill a sub­mariner needs to sur­vive at sea and do his job. The nuclear-​​qualified water­frontage at the Base, if closed, could never be regained else­where. Groton is the East Coast base near­est to the short­est and most covert route to the Pacific, which goes under the Arctic ice cap — a faster route to North Korea than the subs based in San Diego, in fact. And though details are highly clas­si­fied, sub­marines are def­i­nitely “bring­ing home the bacon” in the Global War on Terror. So this is a ter­ri­ble time to be cut­ting back on their facil­i­ties or dis­rupt­ing their oper­a­tional flow.
The vote wrapped up a hard-​​fought bat­tle that lasted all sum­mer, becom­ing at times sur­pris­ingly bit­ter and per­sonal. The out­come was no fore­gone con­clu­sion, either. Despite strong counter-​​arguments from a group of retired admi­rals includ­ing three for­mer CNOs, plus almost every New England politi­cian from either party, not to men­tion com­mu­nity lead­ers and thou­sands of pri­vate cit­i­zens, the Pentagon remained insis­tent that both facil­i­ties be shut­tered… The debate raged on until the final moments before the vote tally was taken live on C-​​SPAN 2, with a Department of Defense spokesman say­ing that New London met all the for­mal cri­te­ria for clo­sure, while some­one from the Government Accountability Office firmly stated quite the oppo­site — and some Commissioners had pointed words of their own.
While many BRACtivists can now breath a sigh of relief that cru­cial national secu­rity assets, and related jobs, will be pre­served, trou­bling ques­tions do remain. The biggest one, in my mind, is what to make of senior DOD and Navy lead­ers who, despite admon­ish­ments to the con­trary from many quar­ters of the nation, remained so fix­ated on a nar­row view of the Global War on Terror in iso­la­tion, and so blind to the vital impor­tance of robust under­sea war­fare to safe­guard our country’s future. Mr. Rumsfeld, in par­tic­u­lar, must be fum­ing — he had a lot of cred­i­bil­ity invested in push­ing through the clo­sure list unchanged. The fight over an adequately-​​sized sub­ma­rine force, espe­cially given the ris­ing threat of China, will undoubt­edly con­tinue, and given the ways of the Beltway will almost cer­tainly now escalate.

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