New sites for Navy's OLF?

It’s no secret that the Navy has a new attitude about alternative sites for an outlying landing field for its FA/18 SuperHornet jets so they can practice aircraft carrier landings. And it's a welcome change.
It surprised a lot of folks a few years ago when the Navy announced before a NC task force on the OLF that it wouldn’t consider any new sites. The Navy preferred a site near the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, where hundreds of thousands of large waterfowl spend their winter and threaten the costly jets and their pilots with the prospect for collisions.
Earlier this year a host of Republican and Democratic officials – From U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr to members of the congressional delegation such as Rep. David Price and the General Assembly – made it clear that the state’s political leadership was largely against the choice of Site C, as it’s called, near the wildlife refuge. Since then, the Navy has sent pretty clear signals that it’s willing to listen to both Virginia and North Carolina about other spots.
Since then the state has quietly gone about the job of finding suitable sites the Navy might consider. Among the criteria: a “dark” spot away from development so that pilots can practice night landings, no significant impact on the environment such as bird-plane collisions, concentrated ownership of the land so it would be easier to assemble enough for the needed 8,000-foot strip and no particular obstructions for pilots. They thought large tracts of forest land might suit the Navy.
Word is that the state identified six tracts – two not far from Jacksonville and four closer to the Virginia-North Carolina border – that it thought the Navy might find more suitable to its needs, although it’s not clear yet what the Navy’s reaction to the six sites is. The governor’s Outlying Landing Field Study Group meets this morning at 11 a.m. to pursue the matter.
Meanwhile, the Commonwealth of Virginia has given the Navy 11 sites to consider as an alternative, according to reports from the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk. Those sites reportedly have gone up the line to the Secretary of the Navy, who may decide in November to formally add additional sites to the list under consideration.