Navy Secretary Ray Mabus didn't exactly delight a Virginia Beach audience Wednesday when he told them in no uncertain terms that Jacksonville would homeport an aircraft carrier.

Responding to a request for a specific answer on whether the Navy would abandon plans to move a carrier, Mabus said it would not.

"I knew that question was coming, and I'm not going to be defensive about it," he went on, according to a report in The Virginian-Pilot.

Virginia's Congressional delegation has been pushing back hard on the decision, made earlier this year, to homeport a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier at Mayport Naval Station.

Mabus told the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce it simply wasn't wise to homeport the East Coast's entire carrier fleet in one port.

"From a strategic standpoint, that's not sustainable," he told the crowd. "We have to disperse our carrier fleet."

Read more here.

http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/403455/abel-harding/2010-12-09...