North Carolina's work to squelch a Navy landing strip in the state's rural northeast has hit a snag on Capitol Hill, with the state's two senators unable to push through language to block the development.

U.S. Sens. Kay Hagan and Richard Burr say they will try again this week on the Senate floor after being rebuffed in an earlier Armed Services Committee vote.

The Navy has tried for years to build a landing strip, called an outlying landing field, or OLF, in an undeveloped area close to its Oceana Naval Air Station near Norfolk, Va., Barb Barrett reports.

After pursuing several sites that were rejected because of local opposition, the Navy is considering three locations in Virginia and two in North Carolina.

The sites would be used for nighttime touch-and-go landings of F/A-18 E/F aircraft, known as Super Hornets. Pilots need the practice before deploying aboard aircraft carriers.

Local communities have been overwhelmingly opposed to the two sites in North Carolina, in Gates and Camden counties. Critics say that taking local farmland would be unfair and that nighttime noise would disrupt the community, with almost no economic benefit.

"We're saying, 'Look, this would be very disruptive to these communities and totally change the quality of life and the culture in these communities'," Hagan said in an interview this week.