DATE: Thursday, May 1, 1997                 TAG: 9705010543

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   59 lines

KVAERNER ASA, BOEING MAY STUDY FEASIBILITY OF OFFSHORE BASE BUT NORWEGIAN FIRM "JUMPED THE GUN" IN ANNOUNCING A DEAL TO DEVELOP THE NAVY PROJECT.

Kvaerner ASA, an English and Norwegian engineering and shipbuilding group, and Boeing Co. are negotiating a contract with the Office of Naval Research to conduct a feasibility study of a massive floating air base.

The Financial Times of London reported Monday that Kvaerner announced it had won a project worth up to $5 billion to develop the mobile offshore base for the Navy.

``We don't have a contract,'' Milt Furness, a Boeing spokesman, said Wednesday. ``We certainly don't have a contract worth $5 billion. . . . Kvaerner appears to have jumped the gun.''

Furness did say that Boeing is in talks with Kvaerner and the Office of Naval Research to conduct an engineering feasibility study for several million dollars.

The floating air base is one of several options the Navy is considering as it decides how to build the next generation of aircraft carriers.The Navy's decision on the CV(X), as the future carrier is known, is important to Newport News Shipbuilding.

Newport News Shipbuilding has been the Navy's sole supplier of carriers for decades. Flattop construction has generated thousands of jobs and billions of dollars for the local economy.

The floating offshore base would be a mobile platform with a 1,600-meter runway, capable of landing even a C-17, the military's newest large cargo plane. It would also house up to 10,000 troops.

While far-fetched, it's possible that the Navy could choose to use such a mobile offshore base in conjunction with aircraft carriers that are smaller than the current Nimitz-class, said Ronald O'Rourke, a defense analyst with the Congressional Budget Office.

If so, the next generation of carriers wouldn't necessarily be nuclear-powered and could be built at shipyards other than Newport News, O'Rourke said.

Kvaerner has said it would build part of the offshore base at one of its yards in Norway. That would take Navy shipbuilding away from domestic yards, a prospect which may prove unthinkable in Congress.

``We're keeping an eye on the developments as they could impact the carrier,'' said Mike Shawcross, Newport News Shipbuilding's director of naval marketing.

Shawcross said he doesn't expect the Navy will decide to build a mobile offshore base instead of the first CV(X) because the technology and engineering is still too speculative.

The Navy has already ordered some studies on the floating base from Brown & Root and Babcock & Wilcox, two big U.S. engineering firms, Shacross said. ``Kvaerner just wants to catch up,'' he said.

Newport News Shipbuilding has been very much involved in working with the Navy on the next generation of carriers, spokeswoman Jerri Fuller Dickseski said.

It expects to build CVN-77, the last Nimitz-class carrier, which the Navy is scheduled to order in 2002. CVN-77's technologies that will be transitional to the next generation of carriers, which is scheduled to begin being built in 2006.

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