http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20060316-9999-1n16airport.html
Joint airport on a base will not fly, military says By Jeff Ristine UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER March 16, 2006 Tasked with serving and protecting the same public, local military brass and the countywide airport authority are growing more polarized than ever over the answer to the region's future air transportation needs. Remarks from both sides reflect an increasing exasperation, and even mistrust, developing as the five-year airport site-selection effort enters its home stretch with only five or six options on the table. Top military figures accused the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority yesterday of disregarding national security and passenger safety by continuing to study Miramar, North Island and Camp Pendleton as joint military-civilian sites. Sailors and Marines train for war at the three bases, and a civilian presence never will be compatible with that mission, Rear Adm. Len Hering Sr. and Maj. Gen. Michael R. Lehnert said. "Aviators have a term for the condition that we're seeing right now," Lehnert said. "It's called target fixation. It's when you ignore all other issues going on." Authority officials, meanwhile, say they seek nothing less than to settle the perennial airport issue, and that the military ought to let the process play out. "This may be the last opportunity this region is going to have for a long, long time to be able to study these sites in total," said Joseph Craver, chairman of the authority board. "To stop before we do that is, I think, an injustice to the citizens that we represent.">> <Lehnert said he believes the "target fixation" for the airport agency is the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, where he said carrier landing practice and other combat-aircraft operations should rule out a civilian airport.> <In public and private discussions with the agency's staff and its technical consultants, Lehnert said efforts to identify insurmountable problems with airport operations at the military site have "gone on deaf ears." Those issues include the prospect of shifting carrier training flights at Miramar to airspace over Tierrasanta, the neighborhood southeast of Miramar, and the presence of explosives at North Island Naval Air Station in Coronado.> <"The data that has been shared with us by the military is loud and clear," Craver said. All three military sites face "huge challenges" for joint use, but Craver said the process of collecting facts and comparing the sites against one another needs to be finished. As for "target fixation," Craver - a decorated combat pilot in the Vietnam War - said, "My mind is completely wide open."> <Craver said he is "a little disappointed" with the military's position. "It would be comforting for them to be able to sit at the table with us and go through these issues," he said. To some people, he said "they're coming across as not being good neighbors." > <Hering said the military has been unwilling to answer "what-if" scenarios with the authority, such as moving operations out of Miramar. Doing so, he said, might allow the authority to claim any joint-use proposal was developed with the military's assistance. > --------------------------- Hmmm. Again the issue of similarities and differences with civil aviation at Dabolim/Mopa in Goa. Cheers.
