Navy SWEF Expansion

* Re “Navy Will Move Ahead on Facility Expansion,” May 25.

The Navy should be required to move its Surface Warfare Engineering Facility to a remote area at its Point Mugu base. The cost of the building is negligible compared to recent housing replacements at the Naval Construction Battalion Center and the expensive equipment inside, which could be moved as an exercise by the Seabees.

The SWEF radar-test facility is a deterrent to increasing business for our commercial Port of Hueneme. The Times recently ran pictures of the first cruise ship to dock there in a number of years. When word gets around that passengers and crew are being exposed to beams of unsafe levels of experimental military-strength microwave radiation right down the range beacon lights for the harbor entrance, they and other ship operators will probably go back to Los Angeles or Long Beach where such hazards no longer exist.

The Navy was smart enough to locate the firing range near the Highway 1 cut and rock at Point Mugu, where passing boats and ships can give it a wide berth. We are dealing with the same kind of problem, except that radar “bullets,” although invisible, can be even more deadly.

This is a chance for the Navy to take the initiative for a real command decision rather than to drag its heels until the bad judgment of the original decision to locate such a risky test facility at a commercial harbor entrance is exposed to public view.

CHARLES I. SWEET

Port Hueneme