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• Mr. HORN. Mr. Speaker, on March 12, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin released his list of military bases recommended for closure. I was pleased to see that the Long Beach Naval Shipyard was not Secretary Aspin's list--nor was it on the original Navy list.

• I salute the Navy and the Secretary for their wisdom and sense of judgment. Yet I also know that this process is not complete. The Base Closure and Realignment Commission has the authority to add any base it may choose to its own list in the months ahead. In fact, this ability to consider additional bases resulted in the Commission's consideration, to the protest of the Defense Department, of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard in the 1991 base closure round. The Commission subsequently voted to retain the shipyard. What I want to lay out today is why the Long Beach Naval Shipyard was not on the 1993 recommended closure list and why it should not be on the Base Closure Commission's list either.

• The Base Closure Commission is required by law to consider bases primarily on the basis of military value. Congress explicitly mandated this requirement so that we do not conclude the process with a base infrastructure which is of little use to our military. Second, the Commission is to consider the return on investment stemming from the closure of individual bases. Not only do we mean to draw down our base infrastructure in the most militarily rational manner, but we mean to save money as we do so. Last in priority, Congress stipulated that the Base Closure Commission would consider the economic impact of a particular base's closure.

• There are efforts in Congress to place greater emphasis on this last priority of economic impact. As a Member from southern California, from Los Angeles County, I am particularly sensitive to these efforts. While the rest of the Nation is slowly emerging from the recession, southern California is not. My district has been economically devastated by defense cuts, even as traditional economic engines such as the construction industry remain dormant and manufacturing industries flee the State in search of a lower cost climate. Unfortunately, because we face ever deeper cuts in our military forces, the economic pain on my community associated with these cuts will continue for several years to come. Long Beach and the surrounding communities are staggering under an unemployment rate of more than 10 percent, with not a great deal of hope for the immediate future.

• Though Los Angeles County could ill-afford the loss of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard and its 4,200 jobs, coming as the

• closure might on top of the 1991 mandated closure of the Long Beach Naval Station, I do not believe that we should change the closure priority criteria at this time. I will certainly point out to the Commission the special pain that southern California is experiencing, but I will base my presentation to the Commission for the retention of the shipyard first and foremost on its strong military value. We cannot on one hand argue for deep defense cuts, and an associated peace dividend, and then, on the other hand, become supplicants for protection when the budget knife strikes too close to home.

• In this 1993 base closure round, the Navy has finally been forthcoming with deep cuts in its shore infrastructure. The dream of a dispersed homeport structure has disappeared. On the Pacific coast, California has been hit particularly hard. The Long Beach Naval Station is already slated for closure in 1996 and it is clearly the Navy's intention to remove itself from the San Francisco Bay area. What will remain is one Pacific megaport in San Diego, one homeport at Everett, Washington--supported by the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard with its ability to do all types of nuclear work--and a homeport and naval shipyard at Pearl Harbor.

• In 1991, San Diego and Long Beach were home to 31 percent of the entire Navy's surface fleet. While I do not have comparable percentages for 1993 or for years into the future, I think that this 31 percent will very likely remain constant. With realignment, the number of ships homeported at San Diego may even remain constant, though overall Navy ship numbers will fall. Certainly, San Diego will remain the center of Pacific surface fleet activity.

• Because San Diego has neither a dedicated naval shipyard to support this fleet, nor the drydock infrastructure to repair its largest ships, the Long Beach Naval Shipyard is in a unique position to serve the Navy's most pressing needs well into the future.

• As the Navy will shrink to well below 400 ships and submarines, two critical points need to be understood. First, it is clearly the Navy's intent to cut back the nuclear navy to a greater degree than the rest of its fleet. Fast attack submarines will likely fall from over 80 to around 40. That cutback will result in a massive reduction in the workload for shipyards that primarily do nuclear work. While the Navy had been anticipating a spike in nuclear refuelings of submarines late in this decade, those refuelings clearly will no longer be done.

• It is also the Navy's intention to increasingly move away from nuclear propulsion systems in its surface fleet and toward gas turbine systems that are easier, cheaper, and faster to maintain. This trend also means the loss of nuclear shipyard

• work. Second, the Navy means to become a force less focused on a sea control mission and one aimed more at force projection. This is why the Navy has stated its intention to cut its attack submarine force by 50 percent while maintaining a fleet of 12 aircraft carriers. The Navy of the future will be more surface-oriented, more nonnuclear propelled, and made up of larger ships--primarily carriers and amphibious platforms, which can project power, as opposed to smaller ships tasked to an anti-submarine mission.

• The trends outlined above will create an environment which logically argues for the retention of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard.

• Long Beach is strategically located near the major concentration of the Navy's surface fleet. The shipyard specializes in work--complex and otherwise--on surface ships. In fact, while Long Beach is certified to do nuclear work, it does not do work on nuclear systems.

• Long Beach is home to drydock No. 1, the only drydock south of Washington State able to drydock aircraft carriers, large amphibious ships, and the largest class of fleet oilers. Navy policy dictates the availability of two carrier-capable drydocks on the west coast. While the number of ships in the Navy will decline, the Navy anticipated in 1991 that large drydock utilization will fall very little. Without Long Beach, the Navy would be left with a megaport in San Diego, but without the necessary infrastructure to repair and overhaul those ships in the most efficient and timely manner.

• Long Beach has a highly qualified and dedicated, strike-free work force. The shipyard embodies a mix of skills and an industrial overhead that private shipyards simply cannot duplicate. As Admiral Horne stated in testimony before the Department of Defense's 1988 Base Closure Commission, `There is no comparable skill base in the private sector on the Pacific coast to support ships with complex combat systems.' Long Beach carries the capacity to do emergent repair work which yards in San Diego cannot do. When it comes to shore infrastructure, the Navy and the Commission are compelled to think in the very long term. If the Long Beach Naval Shipyard closes, this piece of land will never be available again to the Navy for reuse.

• Long Beach is also the most efficient, cost-effective shipyard in the Navy. While some may claim otherwise, the most obvious indicator of shipyard performance, accumulated operating results, clearly shows Long Beach is the only shipyard which has returned shipwork savings to the Navy over any stretch of time.

• Long Beach serves as an important yardstick by which to measure the cost of ship repair work in both private and public yards. The Long Beach Naval Shipyard is an honest broker by which the documented overruns at other Pacific coast yards can be

• kept in check and millions of taxpayer/Navy dollars can be saved. My colleague Dana Rohrabacher has passed on to me a letter he received from a constituent in Seal Beach, who recalls that it was routine practice in the Navy to get estimates from Long Beach on ship repair work that was being bid out exclusively to private shipyards in San Diego--all in an effort to keep the San Diego yards from inflating their bids.

• If the aim of the Navy is to reduce its shore infrastructure in the most militarily logical manner while generating the possible greatest cost savings, closure of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard does not make sense. The Navy needs two carrier-capable drydocks on the west coast. The construction of another large drydock the size of No. 1 at Long Beach would cost at least $250 million--the same amount associated with the entire closing costs at Mare Island. In 1991, the Navy's Base Evaluation Committee found the cost to close Long Beach, less drydock replacement, was $750 million. Annual cost avoidance was a mere $9.4 million, while payback of closure would be 79 years. In comparison, the longest payback on the entire 1993 base closure list is 12 years. Clearly, the closure of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard is not a good return on investment.

• Ironically, the anticipated closure of the Long Beach Naval Station has strengthened the case for the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. The 1991 base structure committee gave Long Beach Naval Shipyard a lower yellow ranking--as opposed to green--in the land/facilities category because of supposed encroachment from the city. The closure of the Long Beach Naval Station will free up both land and housing for use by the shipyard. Importantly, the city of Long Beach is absolutely committed to a land reuse strategy of shipyard first.

• Unfortunately, the base closure process can degenerate into a fight among various communities trying to preserve military facilities. I do not want to enter this fray. The Navy's analysis, the Commission's analysis, and the analysis of those who fervently hope to save their facility should remain objective.

• I do feel compelled to make several observations in an effort to deter any finger pointing. First, the Long Beach Naval Shipyard was ranked third among all naval shipyards in terms of military value in 1991. Again in 1993, it ranks behind only Puget Sound and Norfolk in the list of best shipyards. Thus its retention is clearly warranted under this important criterion.

• The base closing list is a reflection of the Navy's belated recognition that it cannot refuse to look at eliminating nuclear shipyards in the face of a declining nuclear fleet. In my discussion with Mr. Charles Nemfakos, the civilian head of the Navy's base structure analysis team, he admitted that the nuclear yards had gotten a King's X solely on the basis of their nuclear status. In fact, the 1991 Base Structure Committee [BSC] within the Navy

• stated that `all nuclear yards provided a unique ability and strategic asset to the Nation. They were then excused under Step 5 of the BSC procedure.' The Navy was severely reprimanded for its unsystematic evaluation system in 1991. In this year's round, the Navy has acknowledged that Long Beach plays an invaluable strategic and operational role in the Navy ship repair of the future.

• I also argue that the Long Beach Naval Shipyard is an important yardstick by which to keep the good shipyards in San Diego from engaging in a General Accounting Office-documented practice of low balling, with the attendant cost overruns, which makes the cost of repairs to the Navy more expensive. The naval shipyard in Long Beach and the private shipyards in San Diego can coexist. I will point out to the Commission that neither is a good substitute for the other and that their capabilities are different. These yards should not be seen as mutually exclusive. Rather, they are mutually reinforcing. Healthy competition will always benefit the customer, in this case the Navy, in the long run.

• I believe that the Base Closure Commission should also take a look at overseas bases. As the Commission is precluded from doing so under current law, I have introduced legislation to include our overseas base structure in the regular order of the closure process. My particular concern results from the amount of workload which is diverted from our naval repair facilities on the west coast to Yokosuka, Japan. The General Accounting Office has documented that repairs worth approximately $1.5 billion have been done in Yokosuka. A large percentage of these repairs could very well have been done in the United States by U.S. workers.

• While I do not believe we should completely abandon our forward deployed military presence, the long-term trends of U.S. budget constraints and foreign political realities mean we will increasingly need to rely on U.S.-based facilities. In the case of Yokosuka, it is very likely that the long-term will eventually bring the Socialists to power in Japan. With their ascendancy will come a reduced willingness to house foreign bases on their territory. The Navy may save money in the short term by having repairs done at Japanese-subsidized Yokosuka, but if the long term brings our loss of the Yokosuka facility while the Navy has meanwhile allowed its United States-based shopyard infrastructure to whither, then these short-term savings will have placed our strategic capability and overall security posture in jeopardy.

• I would point out that being asked to vacate long-held bases in other countries is not as unlikely as many might think. By the end of this decade, we will have left Panama. Spain essentially ordered the closure of the United States airbase in Torrejon. We might remember that we once had a major United States air base in Libya and key facilities in Iran. And most recently, the Philippines renounced our long-held security arrangement by expelling us from Clark Air Force Base and the Subic Bay naval facilities.

• Finally, I would remind the Commission and other interested observers of the last minute pleas made in 1991 by the Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Atwood and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell. Both men stated,

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• Closure of the [Long Beach Naval] Shipyard would seriously degrade drydock capability for all large ships in the Southern California area. Alternatives in Hawaii and Washington simply could not provide the services found at Long Beach.

• We have a long road before us. The Secretary of Defense testified before the Commission that his list of base closures was frankly a conservative one, based primarily on a force structure plan issued by the previous Republican administration. It is my firm belief that when all is said and done, the overall weight of the evidence on Long Beach's side will convince the Commission to find the Navy's decision not to recommend closure a justified one. The strong argument of General Powell 2 years ago on behalf of the shipyard's high military value, and in particular, its essential large drydock, is no less compelling today.

END