Navy Tells San Diego it Won't Abandon Area Airfields

Navy Secretary Donald Winter isn't giving an inch in his high-stakes standoff with San Diego business leaders over a future airport site.

Winter told nearly 300 military, business and political leaders yesterday that San Diego ought to forget about sharing or taking over military airfields as it looks for a way to supplement or replace Lindbergh Field.

"We need our facilities here. We need to be able to support our sailors and Marines," Winter said. "I would hope that in this process we don't tilt at windmills."

Meanwhile, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, was delivering a similar message to any would-be Don Quixotes at the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority.

Hunter introduced a provision in a $513 billion defense authorization bill to prohibit, by federal law, civilian air operations at the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, Camp Pendleton or North Island Naval Air Station.

Those bases are included in a consulting team's technical analysis of regional options for an airport. The analysis is expected to be completed within days.

Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he added the provision because of the military's firm opposition to the Airport Authority's review of the military sites and because the bases play a crucial role in national security.

Joint use of Miramar already is prohibited under legislation signed in 1996.

The airport authority has been pursing a long-term plan to accommodate 30 to 35 million passengers annually.

The capacity of single-runway Lindbergh Field is estimated at 24 million passengers, a figure the airport says it could reach between 2015 and 2021.

The authority also is reviewing locations in Boulevard in East County and in southwestern Imperial County. The authority hopes to pick a site June 7 and submit it to voters as an advisory measure Nov. 7.

One member of the authority's board, William D. Lynch, was unswayed after hearing of Winter's remarks.

"We have no place else to go for this region except to Miramar," Lynch said. Staying at Lindbergh, he said, will result in "a huge economic hit."

Lynch and others on the airport authority have said that if Miramar is put on the ballot, a strong vote of support would encourage political leaders to engage the military in further dialogue.

The goal, they have said, is to find a way to modify operations to make joint use more feasible 20 years from now than it seems today.

Earlier this year, Winter replied with a polite but resounding "no" when the board asked him about the possibility of sharing or taking over one of the military fields.

That the airport authority is still studying such options has upset the Navy.

Winter's comments yesterday to the San Diego Military Advisory Council, a military support group of mostly defense-industry businessmen and businesswomen, came during his first visit to San Diego since assuming his post in January.

Winter said sharing an airfield such as Miramar is not a "tenable situation" because it would be unsafe to have inexperienced military pilots flying out of the same airstrip as commercial flights.

He also said it's unlikely the military will abandon any of the airfields that already have survived four rounds of base closing, especially given the emphasis on strengthening Pacific forces in the latest Quadrennial Defense Review. The Pentagon's strategic blueprint was completed in February.

"I would hope that at some point the Airport Authority is going to start looking at other options," Winter said. "It's unproductive to insist on an option that's really not going to go anywhere."

Winter's comments drew praise from the advisory council, which supports the Navy's stance against sharing an airport.

"We thought he nailed it," said Larry Blumberg, the council's executive director. "If we would have had a chance to write the script, we couldn't have scripted it better."

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