Sugar Grove Station is a

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...

(NSA) communications site located near Sugar Grove in Pendleton County,

West Virginia West Virginia is a mountainous U.S. state, state in the Southern United States, Southern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States.The United States Census Bureau, Census Bureau and the Association of American ...

. According to a 2005 article in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', the site intercepts all international communications entering the

Eastern United States The Eastern United States, often abbreviated as simply the East, is a macroregion of the United States located to the east of the Mississippi River. It includes 17–26 states and Washington, D.C., the national capital. As of 2011, the Eastern ...

. Activities at the site previously involved the

Navy Information Operations Command The U.S. Tenth Fleet is a functional formation and a numbered fleet in the United States Navy. It was first created as a global anti-submarine warfare coordinating organization under the singular authority of the Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet ...

(NAVIOCOM). In April 2013, the

Chief of Naval Operations The chief of naval operations (CNO) is the highest-ranking officer of the United States Navy. The position is a statutory office () held by an Admiral (United States), admiral who is a military adviser and deputy to the United States Secretary ...

ordered that the NAVIOCOM support base be closed by September 30, 2015, as "a result of the determination by the resource sponsor

to relocate the command's mission." The naval base is being repurposed as a privately owned healthcare facility for veterans, while the NSA listening station, to the south, continues to operate.

History

330-ps-9681-428-gx-usn-710538 15232163957 o

The station was built by the

Naval Research Laboratory The United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is the corporate research laboratory for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. Located in Washington, DC, it was founded in 1923 and conducts basic scientific research, appl ...

in the early 1960s for a fully-steerable

radio telescope A radio telescope is a specialized antenna (radio), antenna and radio receiver used to detect radio waves from astronomical radio sources in the sky. Radio telescopes are the main observing instrument used in radio astronomy, which studies the r ...

intended to gather

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...

on Soviet radar and radio signals reflected from the Moon and radioastronomical data from outer space, but the project was halted in 1962 before the telescope was completed. The site was then developed as a radio receiving station. Naval Radio Station Sugar Grove was activated on May 10, 1969, and two Wullenweber AN/FRD-10 Circulary Disposed Antenna Arrays (CDAAs) were completed on November 8, 1969. Numerous other antennas, dishes, domes, and other facilities were constructed in the following years. Some of the more significant

radio telescopes A radio telescope is a specialized antenna (radio), antenna and radio receiver used to detect radio waves from astronomical radio sources in the sky. Radio telescopes are the main observing instrument used in radio astronomy, which studies the r ...

on site are a dish (oldest telescope on site), a dish featuring a special

waveguide A waveguide is a structure that guides waves by restricting the transmission of energy to one direction. Common types of waveguides include acoustic waveguides which direct sound, optical waveguides which direct light, and radio-frequency w ...

receiver and a dish (largest telescope on site). The site was part of the

ECHELON Echelon may refer to: * A level formation ** A level or rank in an organization, profession, or society ** A military sub-subunit smaller than a company but larger than a platoon ** Echelon formation, a step-like arrangement of units * ECHELO ...

communications network operated by the United States and its

allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not an explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are calle ...

to intercept and process electronic telecommunications. The network operates many sites around the world including Waihopai Valley in

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

, Menwith Hill in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and

Yakima, Washington Yakima ( or ) is a city in and the county seat of Yakima County, Washington, United States, and the state's 11th most populous city. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 96,968 and a metropolitan population of 256,728. The ...

. Sugar Grove is located in the

National Radio Quiet Zone The National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ) is a large area of land in the United States designated as a radio quiet zone, in which radio transmissions are restricted by law to facilitate scientific research and the gathering of military intelligence. ...

covering in

and

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

. The zone was established by

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...

in 1958 to facilitate its mission and that of the

National Radio Astronomy Observatory The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a federally funded research and development center of the United States National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. for the purpose of radi ...

located away at Green Bank in Pocahontas County,

. Since 1984, a Quiet Zone administrator in Green Bank has overseen the NRQZ on behalf of both sites for all unclassified assignments. On July 26, 2016, it was reported that the online auction for Sugar Grove Naval Station concluded on July 25 with a winning bid of $11.2million. The transaction later failed and bidding was reopened that September. In 2017, the second auction resulted in a $4million purchase by an Alabama-based investment group with plans to convert the base into a healthcare facility for active-duty military, veterans, and their families.

Notes

References

External links

Eyeballing Sugar Grove Echelon Station
��Many maps, diagrams and large, high-quality satellite and aerial photographs of the site

at the GWU'sbr>National Security Archive

Satellite Photograph of Sugar Grove at Google Maps

Navy Information Operations Command Sugar Grove Official Site

History

Notes

References

External links

Further reading