Little Creek Amphibious Base

Bill, my dock neighbor, took me to the commissary and for a quick tour of Little Creek.  He told me that in the last couple of days the Little Creek base and Fort Story, and Army base about 15 miles from here had been combined into a single base.  Little Creek has a new name; we just don’t know what it is.

 

I was struck by two things during the tour. 

 

First, almost all of my Navy time was (fortunately) between conflicts.  My experience in military bases was significant and obvious decline and decay.  There was not enough funding to keep the bases going at a maintenance level, much less any funding to make them actually livable.  That has all changed, at least here at Little Creek.  There are still remnants of prior decay, for example the beach area is shut down and the buildings falling down.  But the core housing and services buildings have been renovated and many new buildings constructed.

 

Second, the shift from my “Old” Navy to the “New” Navy is quite obvious.  When I was assigned to the J6 at the Pentagon we didn’t have a broadly accepted name for information systems warfare.  The section of the base near the marina is littered with both information assurance (the white hats, they keep us from getting cyber attacked) and information operations (the black hats, they are the cyber war fighters) commands.  A good percentage of the buildings are construction trailers that have been hooked together to form larger spaces.  It makes me wish I was 20 years younger so I could get involved again.  I am sure that much has changed and techniques advanced since my day.  In addition, SEAL team and Riverine Warfare units and commands are much in evidence.  The shift of emphasis from “big ships blue water” to littoral warfare is well underway here at Little Creek.

 

Bill promised me a longer tour tomorrow.  I will let you know how it goes.