Anyone who has taken a boat ride up the James River in Newport News, Va., has likely

encountered the James River Reserve Fleet.

Known locally as the "Ghost Fleet," the fleet

consists of dozens of decommissioned merchant and war

vessels that are part of the larger National Defense

Reserve Fleet. While many of the ships have been towed away for scrap metal and for use as artificial reefs, many still remain.

With the exception of the likely occasional

maintenance crew, the ships sit abandoned and bound to the river's floor by mammoth anchors and rusting chains.

To some, the Ghost Fleet is an eyesore, and to others it's an environmental threat. Others fear that it's a matter of time before one of the ships breaks free of its mooring during a bad hurricane and goes careening down the river, wreaking havoc to other boats and property along the way.

We were reminded last week of the Ghost Fleet when Sen. Marc Basnight, D-Dare, announced that he has ordered a study detailing the cost to build an offshore jet pilot training platform for the U.S. Navy. The platform is Basnight's offshore alternative to the Navy's more preferred land-based

outlying landing field. The Navy already has an OLF in Chesapeake, Va., where F-18 fighter pilots out of Naval Air Station Oceana practice landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier. However, the Navy is looking to build a new OLF elsewhere.

In its search, the Navy has identified sites in Camden and Gates counties, as well as three more in

Virginia, that it will study for further consideration for its new OLF. Residents in both counties, and in Camden's neighboring Currituck County, have openly and enthusiastically expressed their opposition to the Navy's considerations. It's their contention that since the new OLF would be used by Virginia-based pilots, the OLF should be built in Virginia and not in North Carolina.

We understand residents' concerns and certainly agree that the new OLF is a Virginia problem that needs to stay in Virginia. What we don't understand is Basnight's hesitation to come forward with the same opinion.

Rather than taking the stance that a new OLF

belongs in Virginia and not in northeastern North Carolina, Basnight has sought the safer political solution — an OLF that is located in neither state but offshore.

While this may sound like a good idea, the Navy insists that an offshore OLF is just not practical for training pilots inexperienced in carrier-based landings.

Rear Adm. David Anderson, the Navy's point man for the search for a new land-based OLF, told reporters last week that an offshore OLF might be "doable" if it were built with 10,000 feet of runway and be able to rotate 360 degrees to compensate for the sea's changing wind directions. An offshore OLF also would cost billions of dollars and have a significant effect on the environment, Anderson said.

It doesn't take an admiral to convince us that an

offshore OLF is a bad idea.

We are thankful that Basnight is making an effort to keep the practice landing field out of our backyards. But we think a more effective measure would be if he simply told the Navy that the new OLF needs to be built in

Virginia, where it can keep the Ghost Fleet company.