Analysts and technicians at the center reverse-engineer an adversary’s air, space and cyber-related technology – as it has with Russian-built military aircraft and missiles in past decades — to determine how it works and its weaknesses.
“This mission has grown rapidly over the last five years, but is still at a point where facility and laboratory space lag behind,” NASIC spokeswoman Michelle Martz said in an email. “The new facility will deliver the additional, custom spaces needed to advance exploitation capabilities for NASIC.”
In March, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will solicit contractor bids for the project. “Right now, design review is wrapping up,” she said.
In the last major expansion, NASIC added 100,000-square-feet of space in 2008. NASIC dates its foreign technology mission to the Army Signal Corps’ Airplane Engineering Department to 1917 at McCook Field in Dayton.
Congress OK’d using money that hadn’t been spent on other military construction projects for the expansion, according to the Air Force.
Headquartered at Wright-Patterson, the secretive intelligence organization has more than 3,000 military personnel and civilian employees and a budget around $350 million.
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