Originally Posted by
Profane Kahuna
Wow….. total A-hole comment.
Screw those military people…… the civilians need a new golf course and McMansions in suburbia!
Facts:
-George AFB is a superfund toxic cleanup site….. I guess “screw ‘em” is your mindset regarding the Marines and their families?
-“Closer to their training ranges and areas” is a flat out lie. Marines need to be near the beach. That is literally what they do, amphibious assaults. Hence the bases at Miramar and Camp Pendleton.
-El Toro was in fact closed and given back to the public. Instead of using it as a civilian airport they decided to make it into a park and suburban neighborhoods.
.
Miramar would have made a damn good airport for San Diego. Politics plays a bigger role than needs of the service with BRAC. There hasn't been a big round of it in a long time, but when it happens, hold your nose and close your eyes. Marines could have expanded Pendleton's airfield and been ok, but that's now how it went down for good reason. I am glad Miramar got to stay within big Navy, but it would have made a lot of sense to return it to the community. It's a tough sell to let it go, though, since it also acts as a training base for 2 services and several airframes.
Lindbergh could have been the corporate airfield. I love where that airfield is in relation to the city, but we have just begun to see what happens when you try to put too much stuff in the single runway sock. SWA and Alaska are both making big moves there and it is starting to unravel where it used to be a fairly easy in and out type of place.
As for George AFB, yeah....it had issues. Same with El Toro. Turns out pouring fuel and PBEs into the ground for decades isn't good.
San Diego is a Navy town and will be for a long time. It's nice to see since the NorCal Navy got destroyed by BRAC and only a shadow of where it used to dominate the landscape remains.