[CPEO-MEF] Navy War Games to Go Virtual

[cpeo <cpeo@cpeo.org>]

Navy War Games to Go Virtual
By Jane Sutton
Reuters
Tuesday, October 22, 2002; 1:35 PM


MIAMI - With a bombing range in Puerto Rico set to close, the U.S. Navy
will shift its war games into the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean
using new simulators that can make targets far out at sea look like
downtown Baghdad, according to a top U.S. Navy official.

Training exercises conducted for decades off the Puerto Rican island of
Vieques will be staged instead from military bases on the southeastern
U.S. coast, especially Florida, Adm. Robert Natter, commander in chief
of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, said late Monday.

"It's doing training in a different way," Natter said in a telephone
interview while visiting Florida. "Some of what we could do there we
quite frankly could do better here."

For 50 years, the Navy's aircraft carrier battle groups have conducted
war games off Vieques, shelling part of the island from ships and planes
before deploying overseas.

Calls to leave Puerto Rico, a Caribbean U.S. territory, erupted after a
civilian security guard was killed in a botched bombing run in 1999.
Protesters repeatedly have sneaked onto the range to disrupt the
training, alleging the bombing damages the environment and endangers the
health of the island's 9,000 residents ? charges that the Navy denies.

President Bush has said the Navy will leave Vieques by May but first it
must certify to Congress that it has found somewhere else as good or
better to train.

Natter said his training plan generally would involve two battle group
exercises a year with six to eight cruisers and destroyers, a couple of
submarines and support ships, and about 2,000 sailors and Marines
participating in each.

Drills would last six to eight weeks and would take place in the Gulf of
Mexico from November to June, outside the hurricane season, he said.

"We could have as high as three in any given year but chances are the
third one would be restricted to the Atlantic because of the hurricane
issue," Natter said.

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64581-2002Oct22.html

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