Sugar Grove Station is a

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level 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, collecti ...

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

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the Bur ...

. According to a 2005 article in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', the site intercepts all international communications entering the

Eastern United States The Eastern United States, commonly referred to as the American East, Eastern America, or simply the East, is the region of the United States to the east of the Mississippi River. In some cases the term may refer to a smaller area or the East C ...

. Activities at the site previously involved the Navy Information Operations Command (NAVIOCOM). In April 2013, the

Chief of Naval Operations The chief of naval operations (CNO) is the professional head of the United States Navy. The position is a statutory office () held by an admiral who is a military adviser and deputy to the secretary of the Navy. In a separate capacity as a memb ...

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

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. It was founded in 1923 and conducts basic scientific research, applied research, technological ...

in the early 1960s for a fully-steerable

radio telescope A radio telescope is a specialized 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 radio frequency ...

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. More generally, it can b ...

on Soviet radar and radio signals reflected from the moon and radioastronomical data from

outer space Outer space, commonly shortened to space, is the expanse that exists beyond Earth and its atmosphere and between celestial bodies. Outer space is not completely empty—it is a near-perfect vacuum containing a low density of particles, pred ...

, 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 The Wullenweber (the original name introduced by Dr. Hans Rindfleisch was Wullenwever) is a type of Circularly Disposed Antenna Array (CDAA) sometimes referred to as a Circularly Disposed Dipole Array (CDDA). It is a large circular antenna array ...

AN/FRD-10 The AN/FRD-10 Circularly Disposed Antenna Array (CDAA) is a United States Navy circular "Wullenweber" antenna array, built at a number of locations during the cold war for high frequency radio direction finding (HF/DF) and signals intelligence. ...

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 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 radio frequency po ...

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

waveguide A waveguide is a structure that guides waves, such as electromagnetic waves or sound, with minimal loss of energy by restricting the transmission of energy to one direction. Without the physical constraint of a waveguide, wave intensities de ...

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

ECHELON ECHELON, originally a secret government code name, is a surveillance program (signals intelligence/SIGINT collection and analysis network) operated by the five signatory states to the UKUSA Security Agreement:Given the 5 dialects that use ...

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 explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

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

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

Menwith Hill Royal Air Force Menwith Hill is a Royal Air Force station near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, which provides communications and intelligence support services to the United Kingdom and the United States. The site contains an extensive sate ...

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 Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

and

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

. 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 state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

. 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 a ...

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 radio a ...

located away at

Green Bank A green bank (sometimes referred to as green investment bank, clean energy finance authority, or clean energy finance corporation) is a financial institution, typically public or quasi-public, that uses innovative financing techniques and market ...

in Pocahontas County,

. 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 $11.2 Million. The transaction later failed and bidding was reopened that September. In 2017, the second auction resulted in a $4 million 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