Fighting the insurgency at the Jersey Shore

Race against time
What is public record, however, is a $550 million contract awarded two weeks ago to Syracuse Research Corp., the same company that produces the counter-mortar radar, in early July. The five-year contract includes money for development, training, production and maintenance -– a typical “full life-cycle” project that will be administered by Ft. Monmouth.

Meanwhile, other military labs run by the Navy and the Air Force are working on similar devices, each racing against time as the insurgency adapts from cell phones to garage door openers to television remote controls to set off its mines. 

Even as its scientists and engineers drill down on these problems, another challenge that could prove as disruptive as any IED has arisen: Fort Monmouth has been listed for on this year’s Pentagon base closings list.

But Fort Monmouth is fighting an uphill battle against its own age, a uniformed military that wants to consolidate facilities to put more money into weapons, and parochial factions in Congress bent on taking jobs to their states. The current base closing template announced by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in May would move much of Fort Monmouth’s work to Virginia’s Ft. Belvoir and the Aberdeen Proving Ground, a weapons testing depot in rural Maryland.

Smith, a professorial-looking man nearing the end of his long Army career, is not at liberty to discuss his views of the proposed move. He concedes, however, that a move like that would pose some challenges. “If the recommendations are implemented, we’ll be expected to complete our mission and relocate at the same time. “It will be challenging.”

On Monday, a report by the General Accountability Office (GAO) confirmed this, noting concerns about the disruption such a move might cause. "The potential loss of a largeretirement age population must be balanced against the impact on ongoing mission activities providing real-time assistance to warfighters," the report says.

Besides extensive labs working on communications, radar, electronic countermeasures and information warfare, Fort Monmouth’s offices contain hundreds of white-collar workers who manage large defense contracts. There is also a support center that operates 24 hours a day providing what amounts to customer service to soldiers all around the world who are having trouble with the Army’s increasingly complex array of systems and software programs.

Indeed, except for the guard and signs at the front gate, the average person could probably drive through a facility like Fort Monmouth without ever realizing they were on a military base. Its 1126 acres employs about 8,000 people – only 467 of them uniformed military. The vast majority of the fort consists of civilian federal government employees, some 5,085 people, who drive to work in skirts or shirts and ties, then drive back out again to homes in affluent Monmouth County, New Jersey.

“Often people come here and say, ‘Where are all the soldiers’,” Smith says. “We’re definitely lopsided toward the civilian side. But we know what our troops need and we’re here to provide it. That’s our mission.”

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