Listening to the BRAC hearing

Have CSPAN-2 on in the other room, and suffice to say that John Markowicz is the CT delegation's secret weapon. He is meticulously deconstructing the rationale for closing New London, and exposing all the areas where the inherent military advantages of the subase were undervalued--deliberately, it seems--to justify the recommendation for closure.

If the commissioners are indeed reasonable, believe that military value is paramount, and are not beholden to the bean-counters, Markowicz's arguments alone should be enough to pull New London off the list.

At lunchtime, I'll watch more, but the short version goes like this:

Markowicz is excellent.

Update: Before I had to turn off BRAC coverage in favor of this, Markowicz was highlighting the berthing facilities at New London and comparing them to what the SSN facilities at Norfolk and Kings Bay would look like. Suffice to say that I didn't know what "nesting" was before I saw this part of the presentation, but from a common sense standpoint, the arrangement that would be forced upon boats at those two facilities is ridiculous. Norfolk would require large expenditures on pier construction and still that would not be enough to eliminate the need for nesting. New London, as a port facility for submarines, strikes me as being state of the art compared to the "solutions" provided by redistributing assets to Norfolk and Kings Bay.

Update II: I had hoped to watch my TiVOed BRAC coverage this evening and weigh in, but I had to go to my parents' house for my dad's birthday, and when I got home I saw something that is going to take up the rest of my blogging time tonight. Hopefully, I'll be able to watch some BRAC tomorrow night and post then.

posted by Alex Nunez @ 7:22 AM