Military sites in eastern North Carolina will be seeing plenty of action later this month as members of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps prepare for predeployment training.
Portions of the Joint Task Force Exercise will be conducted at and around both Camp LeJeune Marine Corps Base and Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station, where the Navy's 2nd Fleet and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit will rehearse air-to-ground bombings, special operations and other maneuvers.
Part of the training, in which Navy aircraft drop bombs on ground targets, has typically been conducted on the island of Vieques, a part of Puerto Rico. Vieques has been a center of controversy since a 1999 accident killed a civilian guard, and political activists have demanded an end to bombing practice there.
President George W. Bush has promised to remove the Navy from Vieques by May 2003. For this round of predeployment, the USS John F. Kennedy battle group will instead train at bombing ranges northeast of Cherry Point, as well as on Florida's Pinecastle Range.
However, Comdr. John Kirby, spokesperson for the 2nd Fleet, stressed that North Carolina is not necessarily a permanent alternative to the island--that decision will not be made until a Navy study of training alternatives is completed later this spring.
"[The study] is examining the breadth of training alternatives to Vieques. Not every alternative is a physical place--the Navy is considering innovative technologies to replicate things you could do in the physical world," Kirby said. "What matters is getting our sailors and Marines properly trained before we can deploy."
Kirby continued, saying after Sept. 11 there is a possibility that the John F. Kennedy battle group would be deployed early. "We need to move [the training] up north."
Although Florida's exercises will include the use of live fire, Kirby said the Navy would drop only inert concrete bombs in the North Carolina ranges, and therefore there would be no risks to public safety.
"During the exercise, there may be a little more noise than [usual], but safety is our number one concern in everything we do," he said. "I do not think the local populace has anything to worry about."
Thomas Phillips, city manager of Havelock, where Cherry Point is located, agreed, noting that collaborative projects like the Eastern North Carolina Joint Land Use Study are crucial.
The study, which is conducted by Havelock and its neighboring towns and counties, is examining "things the civilian community is doing that could be incompatible with the activities of the base," Phillips said. He added the city employs zoning and land-use ordinances to control the population density of high-impact areas.
"We rely on the Marine base to do what's necessary to protect us and they do a good job," Phillips said. "Quite frankly, living here is probably less dangerous than living around infantry or tank artillery--we don't have a likelihood of having [weaponry] falling in downtown Havelock."
Eastern North Carolina is already home to frequent military training, such as special operations training for Marine Expeditionary Units.
Three MEUs on the East Coast are based at Camp LeJeune, and rotate on a six-month cycle of overseas deployment and predeployment training. If North Carolina is selected as a permanent replacement site for the Navy's Vieques training, Marine officials are not concerned about spreading state resources too thin or being in each other's way.
"They're two completely separate exercises," said 1st Lt. Mike Armistead, public affairs officer for the 22nd MEU. He noted the special operations training is typically conducted last, immediately before overseas deployment.
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