Moorestown’s Lockheed Martin packed with secret military projects

Down the long polished corridors are laboratories where engineers test a weapons system that has literally hit a missile with missile — while both flew thousands of miles an hour.

In a nearby manufacturing area, workers assemble sophisticated radar arrays for the Navy. And in a warehouse-like room, high-tech computer consoles await shipment to destroyers.

Most people will never get a look inside the highly secure buildings at Lockheed Martin in Moorestown. They'll more likely gawk at the adjacent "Cornfield Cruiser," the windowless ship-like building rising from a sea of corn and soybeans along Interstate 295.

But that Navy research and development facility is only part of a sprawling 430-acre campus on Borton Landing Road, where thousands of Lockheed Martin workers work on top-secret military projects.

For 25 years, the company has been the prime contractor for the Aegis system, an ever-evolving key element of the nation's missile shield, which uses computers and satellites to track and hit enemy targets.

Workers also are now involved in the upgrade of the Coast Guard's 93 aging ships and 206 aircraft, as well as the development of the Navy's new Freedom class of coastal combat vessels, which travel more than 40 miles an hour and can be used for mine, anti-submarine and surface warfare.

"What we do here is the engineering and developing of the product, not the field work," said Orlando Carvalho, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin in Moorestown.

"Real sailors and Navy officers oversee the work so the Navy gets what it wants at the end of the day," he said. "It's the model program on how to do it right."

Aegis, the name of the mythological god Zeus' shield, has been installed on 67 Navy ships; a total of 84 will be equipped by the time the work is completed. The program is the largest and most successful of its kind since World War II, company and Navy officials said.

The technology has intercepted missiles in 15 of 17 tests over the last six years. In one demonstration on Feb. 20, 2008, it shot down an errant satellite, tumbling 17,000 miles an hour, 150 miles above the earth.

"It would not have been possible" without the cooperation between Lockheed Martin and the Navy, said Rear Adm. Alan B. Hicks, director of the Aegis program, who visited the Moorestown site last week to check on the progress of the system's upgrades. "It was absolutely critical. It's not just hardware but the people who realize what the system can and cannot do."

The technology got a workout after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when the Moorestown facility was used to track all aircraft up and down the nation's Northeast coast. The system also was used during the 1991 Gulf War and in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The requirements [for the Aegis system] come from the Pentagon," said Navy Capt. Kris Biggs, the senior Navy officer at the Navy's Moorestown site, also officially known as the USS Rancocas after the nearest body of water, the Rancocas Creek.

"But the Lockheed Martin engineers have gotten smart and come up with their own upgrades. The information flows both ways between the Navy and industry," Biggs said.

About 64 Navy and federal personnel, and about 160 Lockheed Martin engineers and technicians work together at the Navy facility, called the Combat Systems Engineering Development Site, where they're fine-tuning Aegis to provide better protection from air-, sea- and land-based threats.

Nearly 3,000 Lockheed Martin employees work at the company's adjacent Moorestown campus, which includes replicas of ship deckhouses with radar arrays. Another 2,000 employees are at offices in nearby Mount Laurel.

"We can't fire real missiles from here," Biggs said. "We test the radar and simulate things. To test the whole system, you have to go to a ship at sea."

The U.S. Navy is not the only Aegis customer. The navies of American allies — Norway, Spain, Japan, South Korea and Australia — also have installed or are planning to install the system. Several foreign naval officers have visited the Moorestown facility to learn more about its capabilities.

"You have many countries wanting the system," Carvalho said. "Japan was our first international customer. They bought four Aegis ships and came back and bought two more systems. Spain was our second customer. They've now purchased their 5th system."

During a tour of the Lockheed facility, John DeLucac, site manager of the Maritime System Engineering Center, ducked into a lab where engineers were wrapping up work on another project — the USS Freedom, a fast coastal-combat vessel.

"These are mockups of the consoles," said DeLuca, as he stood next to radar displays of the same kind used in the deckhouse of the Freedom, which is expected to be delivered to the Navy this year.

The consoles provide sailors information on air and sea traffic, and the state of the weapons and communications systems, said Jim Sauerbaum, the project's lead software engineer.

In another building, workers on a manufacturing line were installing long metal columns in octagon-shaped antennas that will be installed on a ship deckhouse.

"We have a philosophy: build a little, test a little," said Ronald Campolungo, manager of operations who oversees the process. "It's 100 percent tested when it leaves here."

Lockheed Martin traces its roots to 1953 when its predecessor, RCA, opened a missile and surface radar division in Moorestown. Its primary customer then was the Air Force. By 1969, it won a contract with the Navy to produce an anti-ship missile system, which evolved into Aegis.

"If we continue to update the system and see results," Hicks said, "we could be working out of Moorestown for a long time."

Contact staff writer Edward Colimore at 856-779-3833 or ecolimore@phillynews.com