Magua
04-29-2004, 08:20 AM
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=69630&ran=198646
VIRGINIA BEACH — Where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Chesapeake Bay, the SEALs want a home away from home.
The Navy plans to build a pair of multi million-dollar training facilities for its elite commados based at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base deep inside Fort Story over the next decade.
New training sites in Virginia Beach could ease two chronic problems for locally based SEALs: time wasted by traveling great distances to find adequate training bases and not being able to use the ranges whenever they want.
Plans are still on the drawing board but officials expect to award a construction bid this spring for the first phase, a $5.2 million, three-story structure.
Here, SEALs will be trained on how to storm buildings using real explosives and hunt down the enemy hidden inside 6,000 square feet of individual rooms.
Lined with bulletproof steel walls and outfitted with removable walls, the Close Quarters Combat Trainer could be ready for SEAL training as early as August 2005 , said Lt. Cmdr. William W. Anderson Jr. , chief engineer for Naval Special Warfare Group Two at Little Creek.
A separate mock town with houses, shops and a church is planned for another 20 acres. Construction, estimated at $20.5 million, is not expected to begin on the SEAL’s Military Operations in Urban Terrain training village until 2011 .
When complete, Navy officials said, the ranges at Fort Story will offer the region’s most comprehensive training facilities for half of the nation’s Sea Air Land commandos known as SEALs.
The Navy has eight SEAL teams and 2,450 individual SEALs, about half of them based at Little Creek. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has increasingly called on SEALs and other special operations forces to man the front lines of conflicts around the world, including in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But training facilities have been tough to secure.
Today, Virginia Beach-based SEALs regularly travel hundreds of miles to Army forts in Arkansas, Tennessee and remote parts of Virginia to find appropriate facilities to practice everything from urban combat to prisoner of war rescues.
The distance is only exacerbated by the SEALs’ intense training schedule – often more than 250 days a year, said Chief Warrant Officer John Shellnutt , the acting officer-in-charge for training local SEALs.
“More than any other service, we rely on more training time as a team,” Shellnutt said. He expects about 350 SEALs to train at the Close Quarters Combat trainer once it’s up and running.
“We’d turn it into SEAL-world if we could,” he said of Fort Story.
The Navy’s special operations forces have long struggled because there are few facilities solely dedicated to SEAL training.
“The buzz words around here are 'assured access,’” he said. “At Fort Story, we’d have it.”
Last-minute changes in how SEALs have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan has sometimes made it more difficult for Navy training officials to plan ahead, according to Shellnutt.
At Fort Story, the training facilities would be at the end of Shore Drive, a 6-mile ride from the SEAL headquarters at Little Creek.
The SEALs also will have first priority to use the training facilities tucked inside the base’s 1,451 acres, according to Lt. Col. Wesley L. Rehorn , Fort Story’s garrison commander.
“It saves money and time and reduces their operational tempo away from home,” said Rehorn, who formerly served as the operations officer for special operations at Joint Forces Command in Norfolk.
Rehorn added that the base also plans to build 248 new housing units within the next two years. The spate of new construction could help protect Fort Story during next year’s round of base closures.
The movement to secure additional training ranges is not only an East Coast phenomenon. By the end of the year, the Navy hopes to expand a 1,100-acre mountainous SEAL training range in southern California by 3,000 acres.
VIRGINIA BEACH — Where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Chesapeake Bay, the SEALs want a home away from home.
The Navy plans to build a pair of multi million-dollar training facilities for its elite commados based at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base deep inside Fort Story over the next decade.
New training sites in Virginia Beach could ease two chronic problems for locally based SEALs: time wasted by traveling great distances to find adequate training bases and not being able to use the ranges whenever they want.
Plans are still on the drawing board but officials expect to award a construction bid this spring for the first phase, a $5.2 million, three-story structure.
Here, SEALs will be trained on how to storm buildings using real explosives and hunt down the enemy hidden inside 6,000 square feet of individual rooms.
Lined with bulletproof steel walls and outfitted with removable walls, the Close Quarters Combat Trainer could be ready for SEAL training as early as August 2005 , said Lt. Cmdr. William W. Anderson Jr. , chief engineer for Naval Special Warfare Group Two at Little Creek.
A separate mock town with houses, shops and a church is planned for another 20 acres. Construction, estimated at $20.5 million, is not expected to begin on the SEAL’s Military Operations in Urban Terrain training village until 2011 .
When complete, Navy officials said, the ranges at Fort Story will offer the region’s most comprehensive training facilities for half of the nation’s Sea Air Land commandos known as SEALs.
The Navy has eight SEAL teams and 2,450 individual SEALs, about half of them based at Little Creek. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has increasingly called on SEALs and other special operations forces to man the front lines of conflicts around the world, including in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But training facilities have been tough to secure.
Today, Virginia Beach-based SEALs regularly travel hundreds of miles to Army forts in Arkansas, Tennessee and remote parts of Virginia to find appropriate facilities to practice everything from urban combat to prisoner of war rescues.
The distance is only exacerbated by the SEALs’ intense training schedule – often more than 250 days a year, said Chief Warrant Officer John Shellnutt , the acting officer-in-charge for training local SEALs.
“More than any other service, we rely on more training time as a team,” Shellnutt said. He expects about 350 SEALs to train at the Close Quarters Combat trainer once it’s up and running.
“We’d turn it into SEAL-world if we could,” he said of Fort Story.
The Navy’s special operations forces have long struggled because there are few facilities solely dedicated to SEAL training.
“The buzz words around here are 'assured access,’” he said. “At Fort Story, we’d have it.”
Last-minute changes in how SEALs have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan has sometimes made it more difficult for Navy training officials to plan ahead, according to Shellnutt.
At Fort Story, the training facilities would be at the end of Shore Drive, a 6-mile ride from the SEAL headquarters at Little Creek.
The SEALs also will have first priority to use the training facilities tucked inside the base’s 1,451 acres, according to Lt. Col. Wesley L. Rehorn , Fort Story’s garrison commander.
“It saves money and time and reduces their operational tempo away from home,” said Rehorn, who formerly served as the operations officer for special operations at Joint Forces Command in Norfolk.
Rehorn added that the base also plans to build 248 new housing units within the next two years. The spate of new construction could help protect Fort Story during next year’s round of base closures.
The movement to secure additional training ranges is not only an East Coast phenomenon. By the end of the year, the Navy hopes to expand a 1,100-acre mountainous SEAL training range in southern California by 3,000 acres.