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Defense Chief of naval operations predicts quick results from all-service review

The Navy’s senior officer told a San Diego crowd it will not see results from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon spending review until perhaps May.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark said Rumsfeld has “spoken of having something as quickly as possible.” He called the review “full of goodness” and “the right thing to do.”

But he kept specifics to himself, and could not give concerned business people a timeline for the review’s completion.

“It’s not my product,” Clark said, answering the first of several questions from business and military people gathered last week at the Adm. Kidd Club at Point Loma’s Fleet Anti-Submarine Warfare Training Center.

Published reports have speculated the Rumsfeld review may determine the future of programs such as the Navy’s next-generation DD-21 destroyer and the joint strike fighter, as well as the Marines’ controversial V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.

Some accounts speculate the Bush administration may skip one generation of weapons systems to put its energies into an evolving next generation of the system.

Clark, who is eight months into his job, offered no details of what system may be in or out. Yet he did criticize what he called “throwing money at the bulkhead.”

He spent much of his speaking time at the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce event concentrating on the “war for people” , about the need to recruit and retain personnel and reduce attrition.

Yet Clark’s assertion that mission comes first , above people , stuck with Dick Shearer, senior vice president with San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp. Shearer said he saw the admiral’s comments as a sign that business will not be getting everything it desires.

Monty Dickinson, president of San Diego-based Southwest Marine Inc., was another executive who heard Clark’s presentation.

He said he met with the admiral privately last week about a different monetary concern , a $100 million backlog for Navy ship repair in San Diego Harbor.

“Ships’ readiness is independent of the bottom-up evaluation,” Dickinson said, referring to Rumsfeld’s review.

The federal government needs to come through with $100 million in supplemental funding now to get the job done, said Southwest Marine officials. Without supplemental repair funds, they said, they will lay off some of their shipyard workers this spring and wait until October (the start of the new federal fiscal year) to rehire them.

“Retention of skills” at local shipyards is critical, Dickinson said.

Dickinson said Clark assured him he was doing what he could about the situation, but the supplemental issue requires congressional action.

Asked about the ideal size of the fleet, Clark reiterated testimony he gave at his confirmation hearing , that a 315-ship Navy is not large enough. While he said a force suited for a “low-risk” world environment may be 360 ships, Clark said he did not want to name his ideal number that day.

Dickinson agreed with the admiral’s assessment. The Navy is working with fewer assets but being called into more crises, he said.

Patti Roscoe, principal in PRA Destination Management, asked Clark whether San Diego will lose an installation in the promised new round of base closures.

Clark said he would reserve comment on that. Yet he added the bulk of the fleet is in “very few ports,” and that every military branch has its own needs. The Navy needs “waterfront property and air space,” he said, adding San Diego provides those.

Following the presentation, Roscoe said a new base closure is a concern.

“We want to make sure this doesn’t happen,” she said.

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