By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

BRUNSWICK – Before Pentagon leaders send away Brunswick Naval Air Station’s planes and crews, they have some explaining to do.

The group that will decide the fate of the county’s military bases wants to know if the Pentagon’s numbers really add up. Maybe the Defense Department missed something.

Greeted by more than 300 people, members of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission visited Brunswick on Thursday, touring the hangars and listening to briefings inside and outside the base.

“We want to go back to Washington and ask some questions,” Chairman Anthony Principi said when it was over.

“No decisions have been made,” Principi said. “This is not a rubber stamp.”

The Pentagon has targeted Brunswick for “realignment,” sending all its planes and most of its active-duty personnel to Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida.

It’s a decision that locals argue was built on bad assumptions and poor math.

The Pentagon says it can save almost $239 million over 20 years at Brunswick by relocating the planes and maintaining them together in Jacksonville. The maintenance group in Brunswick, 403 positions, would no longer be needed.

Those numbers are wrong, locals told the commissioners.

By 2011, a new generation of maritime patrol aircraft is to be introduced. The replacement for Brunswick’s P-3, a version of the Boeing 737, will not even be maintained by the military anymore. The maintenance group – and the forecast savings – would be gone.

Their argument was outlined in a 40-minute meeting Thursday with Principi and three other commissioners: retired Gen. Lloyd Newton, Philip Coyle and James Bilbray. The meeting was also attended by Maine’s congressional delegation and Gov. John Baldacci.

When it was over, Baldacci described the meeting as “sunlight on the facts.”

In total, the commission members spent more than two hours at the base, arriving at 7:30 a.m. They were greeted by local leaders, military family members and retirees carrying pleas to spare Brunswick from proposed cuts.

“Secure our future,” people chanted as the vans slowly entered the main gate. Some applauded and cheered at the arrival of the commissioners, who waved back through tinted windows and moved on.

“It seems unreal,” said Erenn Kiriaell of Lisbon after the convoy moved past. She held a handmade sign, created by writing a message on a towel and hanging it from a two-by-four. It read, “Please Save NAS Brunswick.”

“How can you close the last full-operation air base in the Northeast?” asked Kiriaell, a 22-year veteran of the Navy.

The hundreds at Brunswick were a contrast to the thousands who greeted the commissioners at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on Wednesday, during a similar visit. However, most of the people who work at the Brunswick base are military personnel and therefore are prevented from demonstrating.

Inside the base, commissioners met with Capt. Robert Winneg, Brunswick’s commanding officer. After a briefing, he led them on a tour of the base, paying particular attention to new housing and Hangar Six, completed last year at a cost of $34 million.

The hangar was custom-designed to handle the wider wingspan of the new planes, the first to be built at any maritime patrol base.

That, too, makes moving the planes expensive.

“It’s the only place in the country that is ready today to accept the planes,” said 1st District Rep. Tom Allen.

After the tour, the commissioners were brought to the nearby Atrium Inn & Convention Center, where they met with the locals, led by Richard Tetrev, a retired Navy commander and former second-in-command at the Brunswick base.

They repeated their long-standing message of the base’s importance to the security of the Northeast. They also debunked another Pentagon forecast, that the loss of an estimated 4,000-plus jobs would trigger a 1 percent rise in unemployment.

Not true, Brunswick Town Manager Donald Gerrish told the group. The Pentagon forecast diffuses the impact across the Portland and Biddeford areas.

“This is not the Portland area,” Gerrish said before the meeting. “If that many jobs are lost, unemployment in the Brunswick area could reach 10 percent,” he said.

When it was over, each member of the Maine delegation praised the commissioners and said they were heartened by the visit.

“I feel much better today than I did yesterday about the future of this base,” Allen said.