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SPAWAR’s new facility will help enhance war communications
By Shelia Watson
Contributing Writer
A $10 million expansion is underway at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, following the recent groundbreaking ceremony at the center’s facilities at the Charleston Naval Weapons Station.
The expansion will allow approximately 200 of SPAWAR’s engineers and technicians to work under one roof. The employees currently work out of 10 temporary buildings. SPAWAR spokeswoman Marsha Hassell said the temporary facilities have housed the work groups since 1997.
“The temporary facilities are getting to the end of their lifespan, so the timing is good for this expansion,” she said.
The construction contract was awarded to Florida-based Sauer Inc. The new 57,625-square-foot building, which will be located near SPAWAR’s current
$27 million main complex at the south end of the weapons station, is expected to be finished by spring 2007.
The new building will consolidate many SPAWAR-Charleston operations, including laboratories, equipment and workspace for employees. The facility will be modern, state-of-the-art and completed wired, Hassell said.
“It will be able to handle our equipment needs for testing and evaluating the systems we work on,” she said.
Congress funded the expansion in 2004, five years after the center identified what it referred to as “a need for adequate and efficient facilities” to house its growing operations in Charleston.
SPAWAR is a division of the Navy that develops communications systems for all the armed services and other federal agencies. The center employs about
1,400 workers in Charleston and about 900 in other locations. The center has already hired about 64 new engineers this year and is always looking for scientists and engineering professionals, Hassell said.
“The nature of the business we have now has to do primarily with the war,” Hassell said. “With war going on, there is a great demand for communications systems. We have people in Afghanistan and Iraq now who are supporting those systems we’re developing. So the war fighter has lighter and more efficient equipment that allows them to better send and receive information.”
The end result, she said, is the benefit of situational awareness. “As a result of developing these systems, there’s not a lot of guesswork. The fighter can access databases and can communicate with fellow soldiers with more security and more enhanced capabilities. And we continue to look for more ways to enhance those capabilities.”
In addition to the war-zone utility of SPAWAR’s processes, the center has also produced systems that enhance what Hassell called quality-of-life issues.
“War today is not like it was back in World War II. Things have gotten more sophisticated. We no longer have to wait weeks and weeks for a letter. The troops are able to communicate with their families through the Internet cafes we set up through an Army project.”
About 200 such Internet cafes have been established throughout the Middle East for troops to use. Telephones are also available in the cafes.
“Now parents, spouses and children can e-mail their loved ones today. And the fighters are able to phone home too. There is a sense of security knowing you have the ability to connect that quickly,” she said.
SPAWAR’s work, in terms of the communications capabilities with the war effort, is a complex version of the systems set up in homes and businesses, Hassell said.
“In your home, you have a few televisions and computers, and you have things connected. We’re working with those same kinds of everyday items but with more enhanced operations and for the primary purpose of communicating during war,” she said.
However, in peacetime, the center is no less busy, Hassell continued.
“Even when we’re not at war, we have to be vigilant.”
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