BASE IN DRIVE FOR DESTROYERS.

Byline: David Greenberg Daily News Staff Writer

The Naval Surface Warfare Center is vying to be a testing base for a series of DD-21 destroyers the Navy plans to build to combat what defense experts call the Cold War of the 21st century - international terrorism.

Although the ships are still in the concept stages, the warfare center hopes to be the West Coast testing site for up to half of the planned 32 ships beginning in 2010.

``It represents a revolution in the surface Navy,'' said Capt. Stretch Phillips, commander of the warfare center. ``We're going down a path we haven't traveled before. This would be a natural place for them to be tested.''

Preliminary plans call for the ships to be approximately 560 feet long and weigh roughly 10,000 tons each. The ships would be capable of firing 110-pound missile-shaped ``bullets'' as far as 65 miles. Current destroyers can fire 72-pound ``bullets'' 12 miles. The ships might be equipped with other weapons.

The new ships also would be operated by a crew of 90 or less, as opposed to an average of 350 on other Navy ships of similar size.

``It goes with everything involved in cutting back (defense) costs,'' said Jeanne Schick, a warfare center spokeswoman. ``It would optimize the new technology on the ship. The newer technology uses more computers. You don't need as many people to operate it.''

It is uncertain when the Department of Defense will decide whether to use the warfare center as a testing base.

Destroyers serve as support ships for groups of battleships and cruisers, some of which weigh more and are slower than destroyers.

The Navy's existing 51 destroyers - it has 300 ships total - are equipped for air, submarine or surface attacks.

Each ship would spend about a month having their combat systems tested by the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at Point Mugu, Phillips said.

The range encompasses 36,000 square miles of ocean off the Ventura County and Malibu coastlines, as well as San Nicolas Island, said Teri Reid, spokeswoman for the weapons division, which oversees the range.

The island, about 60 miles off the coast of Point Mugu, has been under the control of the Navy since 1933 and already is the site of communication and missile tracking equipment similar to components on a ship.

Unlike the existing destroyers, the DD-21s are designed to assist the Army and Marine Corps in coastal rather than deep-sea attacks.

With the Cold War over, defense experts no longer see Russian deep-water submarines far out to sea as a primary military threat. The focus has shifted to protecting American and allied interests against terrorist organizations and smaller nations along coastlines.

``Once we had this big threat with the Soviet Union,'' Phillips said. ``Now we have hundreds of smaller threats. They can pose a tremendous threat to the people of the United States. (Terrorist threats) are as big as they want to be.''

He said the Port Hueneme Surface Warfare Center is an ideal testing location because it works closely with Point Mugu operations and is in close proximity to surrounding bases, such as the National Test Center at Hunter Liggett in the Mojave Desert, the nation's only training facility that can handle an entire U.S. Army division - up to 10,000 soldiers.

The DD-21s, which will each take three years to build, will have one year of design trials before coming into Port Hueneme or another testing range for weapons testing.