Find it here. I have heard grumblings of this the past few weeks.

 

October 06, 2006

 

Mine commands merge

 

By Christopher P. Cavas

Times staff

 

 

The Navy’s new Naval Mine and Anti-Submarine Warfare Command (NMAWC) was created Oct. 1, merging the former Mine Warfare Command (MINEWARCOM) in Corpus Christi, Texas, with the San Diego-based Fleet Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Command.

 

The move — controversial among many mine warfare professionals — merges the mine community’s staff and research elements with similar work being done in the ASW area. Along with the staff, the ships at the Corpus Christi base — slated for closure in 2009 — will move to San Diego, while mine warfare helicopter squadrons will move to the East Coast.

 

 

Improving capabilities in three primary areas — platforms, conceptual and research work, and operational abilities — are key to the moves, said a senior Navy official overseeing the merger.

 

“We think we can leverage off the traditional investment in ASW to help with the investment in mine warfare,” Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, deputy commander of Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., which directed the merger, said Oct. 4.

 

With the merger, the one-star rear admiral formerly commanding MINEWARCOM is now deputy to the two-star head of NMAWC. But Cosgriff insisted that retaining the mine community’s flag-level officer and the command’s ability to deploy and carry out mine warfare “is the one part that doesn’t get changed at all. We want to advance it.”

At first glance this sounds bad to me, ASW is glamorous, Mine Warfare is not. Knee jerk reaction says that ASW will steal what little money mine warfare has and run with it.

 

Perfect world scenario is that the two feed from the talents and knowledge of the other, the two fields are certainly more complementary than distinct once you get past politics and funding...