Original Date: 05/23/1994
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

The Special Operations Division at Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Division Keyport provides support for new or unique weapon, vehicle, and test projects. It coordinates work with customers coming to Keyport to conduct test and evaluation projects at any of the available ranges. The Keyport ranges offer a well-controlled, three-dimensional environment with extremely accurate in-water and above-water tracking that increases safety and provides for excellent run evaluations. All ranges have unique strong points, thus providing the ability to replicate many conditions.

Working with its customers to first determine their needs, Keyport can then translate those needs to a test plan, which provides for executing the test, recovering the hardware, and performing analysis as required. This test plan ensures that the customer test requirements are met while securing range safety and recovery operations of all material involved.

The Division also supplies the Weapons Test Directors (WTDs) – the technical test representatives on the ranges - who are charged with ensuring that test programs are conducted to maximize the data gathered and minimize the chance of a non-valid or unsafe test. When the unit is taken to the range, the Range Officer, who controls the range, and the WTD ensure that the range is properly set up to test the unit. They have already studied the test plan and verified that the assets needed to conduct the test are in place. Both the Range Officer and the WTD are required to undergo a specialized and extensive training and certification process. Through a structured training program for the project engineer, Range Officer and WTDs, and Keyport's many unique range capabilities, the Special Operations Division is providing its customers with safe, accurate and reliable test ranges for evaluation of many systems in various environments.

Several projects have undergone extensive research at the ranges including the Unmanned Undersea Vehicles, torpedo defense, shallow water technologies, electromagnetics, advanced propulsion systems, diesel submarines, and mine countermeasures.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.