Portsmouth Naval Shipyard union officials hailed the Navy's decision announced Friday to have the USS Virginia call the shipyard its homeport as a key move that could stave off future threats to close the facility...Overlooking the problem where they say the Virginia is the "newest" (as opposed to the oldest) Virginia-class submarine, I'm pretty sure that the union official talking in the last quoted paragraph either doesn't really know what's going on, or is being intentionally misleading. He seems to be saying that the submarine would stay homeported at PNSY after the overhaul ends in 2012. Since there's no training infrastructure there, that makes no sense at all, and I really hope the Navy isn't seriously considering such an idiotic move. Since the press release of one of the Senators involved doesn't mention anything about a continuing homeport shift, I'm assuming there's nothing to this at all.
... O'Connor said the shipyard will now be the homeport of the Navy's newest Virgina-class submarine, which "could level the playing field for us."...
... New Hampshire Sens. Judd Gregg and Jeanne Shaheen, and Maine's Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins jointly announced Friday the U.S. Department of Navy directed that the USS Virginia (SSN 774) will have its homeport changed to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard effective Oct. 1, 2010. The USS Virginia will undergo a planned maintenance period at the shipyard through April 2012...
... O'Connor said the Navy's announcement could also usher in a new long-term relationship with the shipyard that will not be as tenuous as it has been in the past.
He said the submarine's crew members and their families will be permanently stationed in the Seacoast region instead of just during scheduled overhaul maintenance periods.
This Doesn't Pass The Smell Test
A standard article about a submarine switching homeports to Portsmouth for an overhaul has one sentence that stands out like a sore thumb:
