New Missile Test Commander for Point Mugu Will Work at China Lake : Military: Installment of Dana B. McKinney, 46, at the Mojave Desert site is the last step in a cost-cutting consolidation of Naval facilities.

Rear Adm. Select Dana B. McKinney will assume command of the Navy’s missile testing program at Point Mugu in December, but will be stationed at a sister Naval facility in the Mojave Desert, the county’s top Naval officer announced Monday.

Rear Adm. William E. Newman said McKinney, 46, a longtime Navy aviator and expert in electronic warfare, will replace him as commander of Point Mugu’s testing operations from the new weapons testing command center at China Lake Naval Weapons Center.

McKinney’s installment at China Lake will be the last step in an on-going consolidation of four of the Navy’s missile testing facilities in the southwestern United States.

The Point Mugu and China Lake facilities, and two small missile testing sites at Albuquerque and White Sands Missile Range, N.M., and more than 11,000 personnel, will all fall under McKinney’s command. The consolidation, which was begun under Newman’s command, is expected to save the Navy $115 million by 1995, officials said.

Newman said the savings are being accomplished in large part without significant reductions in personnel. Instead, they result from eliminating duplication in overlapping programs.

Before the consolidation began last year, the missile testing facilities at Point Mugu and China Lake often found themselves testing the same equipment, Navy officials said. Now the missiles will be developed and built at China Lake, then shipped to Point Mugu for testing.

Newman said McKinney will be stationed at China Lake mostly because it is the larger of the two facilities.

Newman, who will be going to the Naval Air Systems Command in Washington, D.C., said the Navy is still looking for ways to streamline its operations. He said McKinney will probably continue to look for ways to cut costs at the facilities.

“We’ve been rooting out redundancies and pockets of inefficiency,” Newman said, “and that’s ongoing.”

Newman said the commander’s staff of six officers will follow McKinney to the China Lake base. He added that McKinney will have to rely heavily on teleconferencing and video conferencing to cut down the amount of travel between the far-flung facilities.

McKinney was vacationing when the announcement was made and could not be reached for comment. He is now stationed at Fort Belvior, Va., and has worked on a program to equip the Navy’s Vietnam-era A-6 Intruder attack bomber with sophisticated radar jamming electronics. The program has helped the Navy hold off buying new planes to replace the Intruder until 1997.

In 1981, while McKinney was stationed on the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy, he was named Tailhook Pilot of the year, by the association of carrier-based Naval aviators. He has since served as a flight instructor and electronic warfare instructor at the Navy’s post-graduate school, and worked in the Navy’s Air Systems Command in Washington, D.C.

When McKinney takes over command of the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at Point Mugu, he will also oversee the ongoing reduction of personnel there and at other sites under his authority.

Last year the Navy predicted that Point Mugu would reduce personnel by 20% in the next two years through retirement and attrition.

The official change of command ceremony is scheduled for Dec. 14.