Virginia Beach misses the boat again!

It’s amazing that a city like Virginia Beach is unaware of the military oriented capabilities available locally that they can allow jobs to slip through their fingers.

Follow up:

A case in point; as the U.S. Navy begins installing advanced capability 08 (ACB 08) on its cruisers, those ships are also sending fire control officers and technicians to school to train on the latest Aegis combat systems. Currently, sailors are going through the Aegis Computer Network Training (ACNT) course not at the Naval Warfare Training Facility at Dam Neck but at Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren, VA.

The ACNT course is approximately eight months and sailors go through 28 different system modules. The ACNT course has 18 civilian and military instructors. Specifically, there are only four instructors - military and civilian. Because sailors are being trained for ACB 08 on the latest equipment, the Navy needs to rely on contractor support from a Morristown, NJ facility, as well as software folks at NSWC Dahlgren.

The test beds and mock-ups at Dam Neck could have been readily accommodated to provide training for the sailors locally stationed here to preclude them being shipped off out of the area for extended periods. Additionally, local expertise both military and civilian is resident to the area.

As long as we have an economic development authority that chases man of La Mancha windmills rather attuned to military needs which stabilize our local economy our future looks pretty dim. Coordination between military, Congressional, and local development are non-existent. You will hear the rhetoric every election cycle, but when it comes to action, it is failing, over costing, and miscalculated projects that burden taxpayers and yield ever increasing debt.