Jacksonville, Fla. — A new Navy facility, part of a future undersea warfare training range that will provide realistic and challenging littoral training in a simulated environment for ships, submarines and aircraft, has finished construction on the East Coast.
The completion of the Cable Termination Facility (CTF) for the Navy’s East Coast Undersea Warfare Training Range (USWTR) was commemorated with a ribbon cutting ceremony April 26 at Naval Station Mayport, Florida.
The CTF is designed to house the electronics and infrastructure needed to link shore processing equipment to the USWTR’s future offshore undersea equipment, said Bruce Macomber, deputy program manager of the Ocean Systems Integrated Product Team in the Naval Aviation Training Systems program office (PMA-205).
“The CTF is the facility for system components and the information hub for raw acoustical data/communications from the offshore undersea range,” he said. “It provides shelter and climate control for electronic systems, houses the power control and system health checks, as well as provides lightning protection for the range and building.”
As a modular building, the CTF’s concrete walls were formed off base, trucked in, lifted by two cranes and then ultimately assembled onsite. Inside, a 6-inch pipe, placed 100 feet underground and extending 4,000 feet seaward off the beach, holds undersea cables. Eventually, these cables will connect to multiple clusters of CTF equipment that will process the optical signals and data flowing from the USWTR’s acoustic receptors located several miles offshore in shallow water.
Funded by PMA-205, Macomber said his team worked to streamline the USWTR’s acquisition process and as a result, the range achieved Milestone C in September 2012, and is scheduled to reach full operational capability in 2023.
“This is a giant step forward for the USWTR program and the future for the Navy’s premiere ‘Center of Excellence’ for littoral anti-submarine warfare training,” Macomber said. “The PMA-205 USWTR team is a phenomenally successful group of civil servants and they should be very proud.”
The USWTR is being designed and built by a team from PMA-205, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) in Newport, Rhode Island, and L-3 MariPro, along with several Navy specialty activities.