During the 2005 round of BRAC base closures, it was decided that NAS Oceana could remain open only if certain conditions were met. The most contentious of these requirements was that the city of Virginia Beach buy and condemn approximately 3,400 residences and an unknown number of businesses in crash zones surrounding the base. The BRAC commission proposed moving the fighters to Cecil Field, a recently deactivated naval air station located near Jacksonville, Florida if NAS Oceana was not able to meet that and several other conditions. The plan was initially met with optimism by Jacksonville Mayor John Peyton, even though Cecil Field had already been converted into a joint civil-military airport with helicopter operations by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Florida Army National Guard and an associated commerce park dominated by major aerospace firms such as Northrop Grumman and Boeing performing major maintenance and overhaul work on a variety of military jet aircraft. The senior Navy leadership ultimately expressed disinterest in moving the Master Jet Base back to the Jacksonville area, having only deactivated Cecil Field less than six years earlier and moving all its Atlantic Fleet F/A-18 squadrons from the former NAS Cecil Field to NAS Oceana. In October 2005, the city of Jacksonville removed itself from the process.
