Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific

On June 1, 1940, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox established the Navy's first laboratory on the West Coast, the U.S. Navy Radio and Sound Laboratory. Its mission was to perform research and development in communications and radio propagation. In 1943, a second West Coast laboratory was established in the high desert at Inyokern, Calif., the Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS), charged with improving naval weapons systems, particularly those dropped from aircraft.[2]

Over the next several decades, those two organizations changed names several times: the U.S. Navy Radio and Sound Lab became the U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory, the Naval Command Control and Communications Laboratory Center, and the Naval Electronics Laboratory Center (NELC); while NOTS became the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, the Naval Undersea Research and Development Center, and the Naval Undersea Center (NUC). On March 1, 1977, NELC and NUC were consolidated to form the Naval Ocean Systems Center (NOSC).[2]

These Navy research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) organizations specialized in command, control and communications (C3); Arctic submarine warfare; undersea weapons systems; intelligence and undersea surveillance technology, as well as a number of other important areas including lasers, underwater vehicles, environmental science, high performance computing, robotics and marine mammal research.[2]

During the 1990s, NOSC was renamed following several Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC) actions starting with the Naval Command, Control and Ocean Surveillance Center (NCCOSC) RDT&E Division, then the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center San Diego; also added were a number of other Navy commands, including the NCCOSC In-Service Engineering (NISE) West Coast Division; and some substantive changes in business areas, including the loss of leadership roles in anti-submarine warfare weapons systems and Arctic submarine warfare, and the gain of in-service engineering functions and navigation technology. In late 2008, the organization was assigned the name Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific (SSC Pacific).[2] In early 2019, the organization was assigned its current name, Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific (NIWC Pacific).

SPAWAR Headquarters

In 1997, San Diego became the headquarters of the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), formerly located in the Washington, DC area[3] and is now located in the Old Town neighborhood. SPAWAR and its subordinate Echelon III Activities provide much of the tactical and non-tactical information management technology required by the Navy to complete its operational missions. These include NIWC Pacific, its counterpart, NIWC Atlantic, located in Charleston, South Carolina, along with the SPAWAR Space Field Activity, located in Chantilly, Virginia.[4]

SPAWAR headquarters in San Diego, CA is registered as an active superfund clean-up site by the EPA. In September 2014, more than 150 employees in the public affairs and engineering departments of SPAWAR's facility in the Old Town neighborhood had to be moved to other spaces within Old Town Campus to avoid toxic trichloroethylene (TCE) vapors. Soil and groundwater beneath the Naval site is contaminated with byproducts from World War II era missile and aircraft production. TCE is a volatile metal-cleaning agent. Since 2011, the Navy has been removing toxic waste, which has reduced TCE levels beneath the building. The Navy plans to complete its cleanup by 2018.[5]

In October 2018, the Navy said it is planning to renovate or redevelop the Old Town site, and issued a Request for Interest to recruit possible private-sector partners in the endeavor.[6]

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• SPAWAR Systems Center San Diego