Aberdeen Proving Ground will never be the same. The base is going to look very different as federally mandated military shifts bring new facilities and jobs to the state.
New facilities will be built on both sides of Aberdeen Proving Ground for new military organizations consolidating at the base, transforming the northern peninsula into a center for creating, testing and maintaining high-tech computer and communications systems and the lower peninsula into a research center for defense against chemical and biological weapons.
Judith Wettig, spokeswoman for the base?s transformation office, was one of several base representatives addressing plans for the Base Realignment and Closure process at a conference Wednesday in Baltimore. She said new antennas and towers would be brought in ? requiring studies to be certain that signals coming from APG won?t interfere with nearby civilians.
“We don?t want garage doors to go up and down, and we don?t want any pacemakers to stop,” Wettig said.
Jared Olson with the Army Corps of Engineers said $750 million would go toward planning changes on the base, which will be concentrated at a new horseshoe-shaped “campus” for the Army?s command and control reconnaissance center on the north end of the base.
Several new military research institutions will be moved to Aberdeen by 2011, including a $5 million facility for the Army Research Institute and a $35 million facility for the Army Research Lab and the Army?s Test and Evaluation Command, he said.
The end result will be a more high-tech, civilian-staffed base steeped deeply in research and testing, said Wyatt Colclasure, president of the Army Alliance, a group that lobbies for preserving and supporting activities at APG.
“It means Aberdeen Proving Ground and this region is even more important to national defense than it has been in the past, and the technology stature at APG is magnified,” Colclasure said.
