АҚШ Әскери-теңіз күштерінің Су асты соғыс орталығы

Warfare Center of the U. S. Navy

The Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) is the United States Navy's full spectrum research, development, test and evaluation, engineering and fleet support center for submarines, autonomous underwater systems, and offensive and defensive weapons systems associated with undersea warfare. It is one of the corporate laboratories of the Naval Sea Systems Command. NUWC is headquartered in Newport, Rhode Island and has two major subordinate activities: Division Newport and Division Keyport in Keyport, Washington. NUWC also controls the Fox Island facility and Gould Island. It employs more than 4,400 civilian and military personnel, with budgets over $1 billion. The current entity is composed of many elements of Navy undersea research, particularly acoustics and acoustic systems with weapons research and development history dating to the 19th century. Two major laboratories, in Newport and New London composed the largest elements of what is now Division Newport. Those laboratories were themselves made up of consolidated older laboratories and facilities dating from World War I.

In 1869, the U. S. Naval Torpedo Station was founded in Newport, Rhode Island on Goat Island, the site of Fort Wolcott which was built in 1702 and served as an Army fort from 1794 to 1835. During the 1890s, Charles Munroe and John Bernadou worked at Newport, patenting a formulation of nitrocellulose colloided with ether and alcohol which was used as smokeless powder for naval artillery through the two World Wars. The Army adopted the Navy formulation in 1908 and began manufacture at Picatinny Arsenal. A factory was built in 1907 to manufacture steam torpedoes for the Navy. The torpedo factory became a major employer in the Newport area, as Rhode Island congressmen protected it from competition. The Torpedo Station designed the Mark VI magnetic influence fuze for torpedoes during the 1920s. The Naval Torpedo Station researched and tested underwater weaponry through World Wars I and II, creating additional facilities on Rose Island, Fox Island, and Gould Island. In 1951, the station on Goat Island was reorganized:

For the next 15 years, it was the Underwater Ordnance Station, and then the Underwater Weapons Research and Engineering Station until 1970. That year, the Underwater Sound Laboratory from New London, Conn. was combined with the Newport facility to form the Naval Underwater Systems Center or NUSC. In 1992, the command was reorganized as the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Division Newport.

New London, Connecticut had been the site of World War I sound research since the establishment of the Naval Experimental Station there as a result of meetings between Navy and the Submarine Signal Company, manufacturer of submarine signals as navigation aids and active in underwater acoustics since establishment in 1901, the Western Electric Company and the General Electric Company. The companies, under naval supervision had established an acoustical research station at East Point, Nahant, Massachusetts. The Navy, under one of its officers involved in the corporate effort, established the Naval Experimental Station at Fort Trumbull where physicists and engineers, including scientists from nearby universities, worked under the direction of the Special Board on Antisubmarine Devices. Though that laboratory had closed with the end of that war the same criteria and some of the same people advising made New London the logical place to site the East Coast laboratory in response to the Chief, Bureau of Ships, now Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), April 10, 1941 request to the National Defense Research Committee to establish both an East and West coast antisubmarine warfare research laboratory. On July 1, 1941 the New London laboratory's establishment got approval with management by Columbia University for a wide range of antisubmarine warfare work including, passive sonar, ocean acoustics and recording of underwater sounds for that work.

In July 1945 the Harvard facility's equipment and many of its personnel were moved to the new Navy Underwater Sound Laboratory, New London. NRL oversaw NUSL until turning over direction to the Bureau of Ships. Navy laboratories were reorganized in 1966 under Director of Naval Laboratories, Naval Material Command, to consolidate expertise and decrease competition among laboratories. The laboratory was unique in that it was the only one in the Atlantic to be located adjacent to and have access to an operational Naval Facility of the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS). Keyport focused on torpedoes and other undersea weapons and in later decades undersea vehicles. Aside from the ranges at Keyport the station operated ranges in California and Hawthorne, Nevada and Hawaii.

In the early 1940s a need for calibration and testing of sonar transducers was met by establishing the Underwater Sound Reference Laboratory (USRL). It was headquartered in New York with two field stations. One was at Orlando, Florida and the other was at Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. All activities were transferred to Orlando after the war under the Office of Naval Research. In 1966 the organization was renamed the Underwater Sound Reference Detachment (USRD) until its closure in 1997. The functions were transferred to Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport, Underwater Sound Reference Division. The Orlando lab was built on the archeological site of Fort Gatlin on the shore of Lake Gem Mary because the sinkhole formed lake is very deep. The Orlando lab closed in 1997 due to the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) with all its functions moving to Newport. The Leesburg, Florida deep water facility at Bugg Spring, established in 1965, remained open. The Orlando building was turned over to civil administration thereafter.