DEFENSE DAILY
Inhofe: Europe Offers No Substitues For Vieques Range
by Hunter Keeter
March 2, 2000
Copyright © 2000 PHILLIPS BUSINESS INFORMATION, INC. All
Rights Reserved.
Alternative naval live-fire training sites in Scotland and
the Italian island Sardinia cannot make up for the loss of the
Vieques range in Puerto Rico, according to Sen. James Inhofe
(R-Okla.)
In testimony yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee
(SASC), Inhofe recounted his visit late last year to Europe where
he found inadequacies in the sites selected by the Navy as stop-gap
measures following the closure of Vieques .
"Vieques remains the one place in the Atlantic where
our carrier battle groups and amphibious ready groups...can get
the kind of training that is necessary to be prepared for their
arrival in the Persian Gulf," he told the SASC.
Vieques was closed to the Navy and Marine Corps live-fire
exercises last year after a Puerto Rican guard at the range was
killed. Protestors now occupy the land used for live-fire training.
Early this year, the president and the government of Puerto
Rico reached a tentative agreement on measures to reopen the
range. That agreement calls for a referendum on the fate of Vieques
before the suspension of live-fire training would be lifted.
The Navy has pursued two possible alternatives to Vieques,
Cape Wrath in northern Scotland and Capo Teulada in southern
Sardinia. But Inhofe raised several objections to these sites
based on his visits there.
One objection he raised was that the training would have to
take place on the way to the Persian Gulf, as opposed to before
the battle groups left home.
Poor weather has a significant place on the list of limitations
to Cape Wrath, he added.
"It is ironic that today as we have this hearing, we
have the USS Eisenhower [CVN-69] group is up there right now
and is supposed to have that training on the third and fourth
of this month," Inhofe said. "Right now the weather
has moved in and they are anticipating that they will not be
able to do it."
He noted that during his visit, the cloud cover and rain were
so extensive that he "had a hard time finding a small enough
airplane to get down below the weather to see what it looked
like. There is no way they could have had spotters there and
carried out the exercise."
The Eisenhower battle group now faces a choice: either continue
with the mission--perhaps facing combat without complete training--or
"stay there and wait it out," he said.
Cape Wrath is also closed to live-fire four months out of
the year, limiting U.S. Navy access to between November and February,
"during which only 25 percent of the time is the weather
suitable," he said.
Another issue with Cape Wrath is that getting there takes
four to five days. With adequate training time factored in, it
takes another four or five days to return.
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DEFENSE WATCH
What's Your Problem?
by Hunter Keeter
March 6, 2000
Copyright © 2000 PHILLIPS BUSINESS INFORMATION, INC. All
Rights Reserved.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) takes issue with some of the complaints
of the Puerto Rican protestors on the Vieques island training
range.
Historically, the number of available annual training days
at Vieques has been 180 days, Inhofe says. But at the Army's
artillery training school at Ft. Sill, Okla., training is conducted
320 days per year. The population of the city of Lawton, Okla.,
about 100,000 people, is 1.2 miles from the artillery range at
Ft. Sill. The population of Vieques is 9,300 people and located
9.7 miles from the training range there.
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