U.S. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus assured Jacksonville leaders Tuesday that moving a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to Naval Station Mayport has only been deferred and in the meantime the Navy will send an amphibious ready group.
“We remain absolutely committed to strategic dispersal of our forces along the East Coast. This was a deferral and not an end, but in order to show our commitment to strategic dispersal we are moving an amphibious ready group to Mayport,” Mabus said during a visit to City Hall and EverBank Field.
The top military issue that has had the attention of most local, state and federal legislators is the homeporting of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier at Naval Station Mayport, which would help the Navy with its plan of strategically dispersing it fleet, instead of leaving most of its East Coast nuclear fleet in Norfolk, Va.
“This is the first place I visited since the president’s budget was put in and that’s not by accident. I want to take a moment and talk about what that budget means for Mayport and for Jacksonville even though we had to defer moving a carrier to Mayport because of purely budgetary considerations,” said Mabus.
The president’s fiscal 2013 budget did not include money for infrastructure improvements to make Naval Station Mayport nuclear-ready.
“You have shown your commitment to the Navy and we hope the Navy is showing our commitment to Mayport and to Jacksonville in the same way,” said Mabus.
Instead of the carrier, the Navy plans to send an amphibious ready group to Mayport, which includes a “big deck” aircraft carrier and two support ships.
The ships will come with 2,000 sailors and their families, and are scheduled to arrive in 2015, but Mabus said the Navy is working to bring them earlier.
“When a carrier is here, because it’s nuclear, a lot of the work on it has to be done by people that are flown in to work on it. For an amphibious ready group, all the work is done locally,” he said.
“We are talking about $75 million in maintenance a year for an amphibious ready group, which is about two-and-a-half times the maintenance that is done on a carrier during a comparable time,” said Mabus.
Mabus identified Jacksonville as one of the most requested duty ports in the Navy. He also said the area is one of the biggest retirement communities for those serving in the Navy and Marines and Mayor Alvin Brown pledged his support to have jobs waiting for service men and women when they retire.
“Our focus is to make sure we continue to strengthen our military bases here and support our veterans by making sure that when they retire out of the service they have a job and make Jacksonville their home,” said Brown.
Heavy fog caused Mabus’ plane to reroute from Mayport to NAS Jacksonville before starting his visit to Jacksonville.
Before speaking with media Monday, Mabus met at City Hall with Junior Navy ROTC members from Mandarin High School. He took time to shake the hand of each of the 40 students present and offered some advice.
“Study hard. There are no jobs in the military for people who aren’t incredibly educated and incredibly skilled. We trust our sailors and Marines to operate multibillion dollar ships. We also entrust them to be diplomats around the world,” said Mabus.
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