BEACH DWELLERS TRY TO STYMIE NAVY TESTS.

Byline: Marni McEntee Daily News Staff Writer

Just steps from her Silver Strand beach home in western Ventura County, Marilyn Bryant can see some of the U.S. Navy's top technology: a radar-studded building designed to simulate a defense against mock airborne attacks.

Under a plan now under review, Navy-owned Lear jets would streak over the Pacific toward the $100 million Surface Weapons Engineering Facility at Port Hueneme - sweeping in at low altitude in a game of cat-and-mouse with crews aboard a simulated warship.

For Bryant and other property owners, however, the fact that these mock attacks will be conducted by very real Lear jets is a frightening prospect. The jets will swoop within 1-1/2 miles of the shore at speeds over 325 mph.

``They will be flying directly at our beach and at our homes,'' said Bryant, who has formed the Silver Strand Legal Defense Trust Fund to protect property owners' rights. ``Some disaster is going to happen for sure, notwithstanding the effect on marine mammals.''

Bryant and her neighbors have been fighting the Navy's plan to conduct the test flights since it first was announced in 1992. Their next step is to pack an April 9 California Coastal Commission hearing in Carmel on the issue.

The commission is being asked to decide whether the flights would pose potential safety and noise concerns for recreational boaters.

And the panel will be asked to reconsider an earlier staff decision that the test flights won't affect coastal resources or users, said Mark Delaplaine, federal consistency supervisor for the commission.

Commission officials agreed to revisit the issue after the Navy released a supplemental environmental report stating that some flights may come as close as 500 feet to boats offshore.

``I wouldn't want to be in one of the boats out there,'' Delaplaine said. ``Five hundred feet is not enough distance.''

The test facility at the Navy's Port Hueneme Construction Battalion Center is designed to test shipboard offensive and defensive weapon systems.

Built at a cost of $9 million and packed with $89 million in electronic gear, the facility allows engineers to test and fine-tune gear during simulated battles as well as to train equipment operators.

The Navy says taxpayers save $13 million a year by testing equipment at the facility rather than at sea. The latter requires extensive support from Navy fleets, which is expensive, and requires an extensive lead-time schedule, the assessment states.

The Port Hueneme Division Naval Surface Warfare Center is asking the Federal Aviation Administration for a ``special use airspace'' to allow military-operated jets to penetrate the normal three-mile coastal airspace barrier.

The Navy hopes to begin the flights by the end of the summer, project manager Peter Becker said.

The Navy originally had told the commission that boats would be warned to clear the area before planes begin their test runs, a commission report states.

But the revised environmental report says that boats could remain in the test area, and that planes will stay at least 500 feet above them.

Navy warfare center spokesman Craig Strawser said the Navy has not changed its plans regarding how close it can approach vessels, but rather specified in the latest report the Federal Aviation Regulations regarding such distances.

``That 500-foot bubble has always been there,'' Strawser said.

Becker said the Navy will work with the commission to come to an agreement.

``Even though it's a federal regulation, if they determine that they're not comfortable with it, it's up to the Navy to be a good steward and say `this is what the Navy could do and still perform their mission,' '' Becker said.

If the commission decides that the flights could affect recreational boaters, the staff is asking that the panel postpone a final decision until the Navy can provide more information, Delaplaine said.

The Navy flights would end 1.5 nautical miles from the Strategic Weapons Engineering Facility, at times flying as low as 100 feet above the ocean surface.

The jets then would reduce power through a 2,800-foot turn, and ascend to 3,000 feet and head seaward at 250 knots, or nearly 290 mph. Jets will reach a maximum speed of 325 knots or nearly 375 mph, commission documents state.

The Navy will conduct about 24 approaches to the Strategic Weapons Facility every three months, Becker said.

Some flights will extend as far south as Point Dume, prompting concern from Malibu residents and the Malibu City Council, Bryant said.

Dodd Darin of Point Dume, who lives about 200 yards from the beach, called the plan ``preposterous on its face.''

``The potential noise problems and the potential safety problems, I think, are very real. You just need to follow the news to think of the mishaps with Navy jets,'' Darin said.

Among the opponents to the Navy plan is former California Assembly Speaker Doris Allen, architect of a 1990 ban on the use of gill nets, which can be harmful to dolphins.

``I think it's just an absolutely atrocious idea. The coast is just so sensitive,'' said Allen, who represented the Huntington Beach area before she was recalled last year.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos, Map

Photo: (1--color) Vickie Finan, from left, Lee Quai ntance, Gordon Birr, David Berglund, Bill Higgins, Jean Rountree and Marilyn Bryant are opposed to planned naval exercises.

(2--color) A surface weapons engineering structure abuts Silver Strand beach.

Phil McCarten/Daily News

Map: (color) PROPOSED AIR SPACE