DATE: Saturday, March 22, 1997              TAG: 9703220313

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   70 lines

CARRIER AVIATION MAY BE ON A FINANCIAL COLLISION COURSE

Carrier-based aviation will require more money or a lighter workload if it is to remain the Navy's ``911'' response force, its Atlantic Fleet air boss says.

It's no longer true to say the fleet's squadrons of fighters, attack jets and electronics planes can do more with less, said Vice Adm. John J. Mazach, commander of Naval Air Forces Atlantic.

``We can't do more with less,'' he said, in an interview marking his first full year at his Norfolk headquarters. ``I can understand doing things differently and smarter. But we are doing that.''

Mazach, an F/A-18 Hornet pilot, said he has had to take some extraordinary steps to keep some squadrons up and running because of a lack of money for spare parts and maintenance.

``We are transferring airplanes and parts, and cross-decking stuff,'' he said, referring to a growing number of exchanges between arriving and departing aircraft carriers in forward-deployed areas like the Mediterranean. ``There's not enough to put on two carriers.''

Mazach, who is responsible for all six East Coast-based aircraft carriers, plus nearly 1,400 aircraft and 50,000 sailors, said there is no question that deployed air wings are fit and ready.

When higher authority looks at the readiness of those units, they are happy, he said. ``They say, `You don't need any more money.' ''

That has prompted him to look deeper at what that stage of readiness has cost his command, because it is robbing other squadrons of parts and maintenance.

``We are parking airplanes because we don't have the money to get them back into the fleet,'' he said.

In the summer of 1994, Fighter Squadron 103 at Oceana was forced to close its doors for a month because it lacked the money to keep flying. Money was needed instead for front-line units enforcing the stepped-up trade embargo in Haiti and monitoring the threat of nuclear proliferation in Korea.

``We shut the whole air wing down in the last quarter'' (of fiscal 1994), he said. ``I see us going in that direction again.''

The money crunch amounts to a shortfall of $280 million to $320 million within AIRLANT that is needed for aviation fuel and maintenance, he said.

``We went into this year underpriced, and told the comptroller that. We are digging ourselves into a hole right now that we need relief from.''

``I don't know if we will stay the 911 force or not,'' he said. ``It is one or the other. You either have to cut back on the commitment or fund the ones we got because we can't keep doing this or we will wind up where we were in the '70s.''

In other areas, said Mazach, his command is beginning to see upcoming challenges in pilot retention. In an attempt to keep veteran aviators, the Navy authorized retention bonuses that amounted to $60,000 over a five-year period.

``We didn't get many takers,'' he said. ``Less than 50 percent.''

Navy pilots and flight officers have good reasons to stay for a full career - love of flying being the chief one - but some leave because they are dissatisfied with erosion of benefits and a dwindling quality of life in the military, he said.

``I had one kid tell me down at Cecil Field that he'd give up his bonus if I would apply it to Tricare for his wife and kid so they could get better medical care,'' Mazach said.

``He said that if he thought taking $12,000 a year for the next five years could make it better, he'd do it in a heartbeat.'' ILLUSTRATION: MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot

Vice Adm. John Mazach, commander of Naval Air Forces Atlantic, said:

``We went into this year underpriced, and told the comptroller that.

We are digging ourselves into a hole right now that we need relief

from.'' KEYWORDS: INTERVIEW

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