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Sunday, December 14, 2008

A Giant Leap for Kirtland

By Charles D. Brunt
Journal Staff Writer
       More of the nation's space warfare operations are moving to Kirtland Air Force Base next year.
    The Battlespace Environment Division — with 175 jobs and an $89 million annual budget — is transferring from Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts to Kirtland next year as part of the recommendations of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission.
    The Air Force plans to break ground in January on the 145,000-square-foot, $53.5 million Battlespace Environment Laboratory, with a completion date of July 2010.
    The division's missions include developing advanced surveillance technologies and studying conditions in space that can affect military operations.
    "The U.S. military relies heavily on space systems, and those systems are affected by the harsh space environment — an environment that can damage satellite hardware and degrade satellite system performance," said Col. Bradley J. Smith.
    "The division has (Department of Defense)-wide responsibility to perform basic and applied research and development to provide technologies to warn operators of potential problems and to protect our space assets from the effects of the space environment."
    The Battlespace Environment Division is one of three divisions that make up the Space Vehicles Directorate. The other two divisions are already at Kirtland.
    Smith, the directorate commander, said he's already working with the University of New Mexico, New Mexico State University and New Mexico Tech to identify potential employees. Of the 175 jobs, only 25 are military but some employees may transfer from Massachusetts.
    "The folks at Hanscom are going to be offered the opportunity to move down here, and they'll be given relocation packages," Smith said, noting those employees have until June to decide.
    But he does not expect high numbers to move, and he hopes to fill dozens of the science and engineering jobs with New Mexico talent.
    "You typically get a fairly small percentage that move under these BRAC actions, so the question is, how do we make up the difference?" Smith said.
    One way, he said, is to "seek out graduating science and engineering students here in New Mexico who have the skills needed for studying space and its impacts on things like satellites, communications, navigation and space-based surveillance systems."
    Smith, a Rochester, N.Y., native who got his Ph.D. in computer engineering at UNM, said he can begin filling some positions as early as next summer. Many of those jobs carry annual salaries in the $60,000 to $120,000 range.
    The Battlespace Environment Division includes the Space Weather Center of Excellence and the Battlespace Surveillance Innovation Center, Smith said.
    The Innovation Center develops detection and imaging technologies that can provide the military with information about combatant forces in the field.
    The Weather Center studies phenomena in space that can affect military systems and develops ways to predict, mitigate and reduce those effects. These range from radio signal interference in the ionosphere to radiation damage to spacecraft hardware.
    The Environment Laboratory will develop technologies to improve space systems and operations.
    Kirtland is already home to the other two divisions of the Space Vehicles Directorate. They are:
    n The Integrated Experiments & Evaluation Division, which evaluates emerging technologies and operational concepts for potential military space applications.
    n The Spacecraft Technology Division, which operates two spacecraft assembly, integration and test facilities manned by NASA-certified technicians. The division also provides expertise in spacecraft design and operation, and military utility assessments.
    The division focuses on spacecraft technologies that enable current and future space missions. It has 112 civilian, military and contract employees.
    Meanwhile, Smith said he plans to have about half of the available positions filled by the time the new lab is built, and to have the lab up and running by September 2011.
    Esther Gomez, director of personnel for the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center at Kirtland, said Kirtland's Air Force Research Lab created the New Mexico First Recruitment Strategy for this type of situation.
    "That means we are going out to University of New Mexico, New Mexico State University and New Mexico Tech to see if there are any students within that pipeline that we could pick up. We have lots of flexibilities where we could appoint someone ... to an internship program."