By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

BRUNSWICK – After searching the world’s oceans for decades, flyers from Brunswick Naval Air Station may save their base by bringing their skills home.

Or they could give the base its last gasp of drama.

The reason is homeland defense. As the Pentagon creates its list of military bases to close, each facility’s contribution to homeland defense is supposed to be a factor.

Supporters of the Brunswick base – the last Pentagon airfield in the Northeast – believe its location and its evolving planes make a compelling homeland defense argument to keep the base open.

And even Brunswick’s officers – barred from talking about closure – believe the local base and its planes can play a more important role in securing the homeland.

“I think it’s perfect,” said Capt. Daniel Lynch. He commands Patrol and Reconnaissance Wing 5, which includes all five of the P-3 Orion squadrons at BNAS.

For decades, Brunswick’s fliers have searched oceans for foreign submarines and drug dealers’ boats. The same technology and skills can be used to find someone bringing a weapon of mass destruction into the United States.

“It’s the same skill set, whether you’re searching for a periscope or a ship with a WMD,” Lynch said. The same weapons used to fight a surfaced sub could be used against a terrorist’s ship.

It appears that the Navy agrees.

In the hours after 9/11 attacks, P-3 Orions from Brunswick were sent to the waters off New York and Washington. Since then, the planes have been routinely going back.

According to a March 14 briefing at the base to Paul McHale, assistant secretary of defense for homeland security, Brunswick P-3s have been routinely training in a wide section of the Atlantic south of Boston and west of New York City.

In 2004, planes from Brunswick flew 41 missions in the region, an average of one every nine days, BNAS spokesman John James said Monday.

Yet, Lynch says his fliers stop short of training specifically for homeland security. Much of their work is still spent staying proficient in finding and tracking submarines.

“It’s the hardest thing we do,” Lynch said, “and it’s still our primary mission.”

Training is what the squadrons do most. On average, a squadron will spend six months at an overseas deployment site – such as Iceland, Sicily or Japan – then 18 months of training back home in Brunswick.

However, during the last six months before a deployment, a squadron is expected to be ready for duty at any time. And when something happens off the U.S. coast, every flier knows they can get a call.

“We still have an operational mission,” said Lynch, who commands the squadrons while they are in Brunswick.

One possible use of Brunswick’s planes could be increased protection of the North Atlantic sea lanes, particularly those entering Northeast ports such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia, he said.

Planes from Brunswick could reach well into the ocean, intercepting ships long before they get close to the U.S. shore.

“We can take the hunt farther out to sea,” Lynch said.

After all, a normal overseas mission would send Brunswick’s planes 600 miles from their starting point, patrol the area for six hours and then fly back, Lynch said.

The work would dovetail with a recent Navy trend called “maritime domain awareness,” said Capt. Ralph Dean, a P-3 Orion pilot who retired after 9/11.

Dean described the Navy’s goal, like Big Brother over the ocean, as “knowing everything that’s going on everywhere at all times.”

With all of the P-3’s technology, including state-of-the-art radar and sensors, shipping can be tracked for hundreds of miles.

Meanwhile, a threat such as a terrorist ship with a bomb might be detected before it becomes a danger.

It’s something terrorists might try anytime, Lynch said.

“That’s something real,” Lynch said. “It can happen right now.”

Dean agrees.

Telling the story

However, the former Navy captain worries that the Pentagon might figure it out too late.

Currently, planners within the Defense Department are working on their 20-year plan, mapping out its likely needs in weapons, personnel and infrastructure.

Homeland defense, which currently draws little money from the Pentagon budget, is expected to play a larger role in the new Pentagon plan.

Dean believes those planners won’t want to get rid of Brunswick, the region’s last fully operational military airfield.

However, he worries that the base closure process might shut Brunswick down before the planners finish their report, due out in early 2006.

“If they close Brunswick, they’re making a stupid mistake,” said Dean, who has joined the local effort to keep the base open.

Brunswick’s role in homeland security is “the best argument we have,” he said.

His challenge is making sure that the Pentagon, which is scheduled to submit a closure list to the Base Realignment and Closure Commission on May 15, understands the role BNAS can play.

Dean and the local task force are not alone, though.

Gov. John Baldacci was responsible for the visit by Assistant Secretary McHale, a former colleague in Congress. Meanwhile, the congressional delegation has been wooing officials, including via recent correspondence with Adm. Timothy J. Keating, who leads the U.S. Northern Command.

“We’re trying to tell the story,” Dean said. However, supporters of every other military base are doing the same.

“It’s a noisy process,” he said.