Lockheed Martin & US Navy in Santa Cruz Mountains

I'm curious to find out if anyone knows anything about the enormous Lockheed Martin manufacturing facility on Ben Lomond Mountain in Santa Cruz County. The purpose of the facility has been shrouded in secrecy since it opened, and the facility director has refused to allow even limited public tours of the grounds. The US Navy, Lockheed Martin's largest client, has a base of their own within the facility. The facility director's name is Byron Ravenscraft, which seems to me to be a rather obvious pseudonym. I have been able to find very little information on him or his career. There have been suspicions raised among concerned members of the public that LM is manufacturing nuclear components for Titan missiles on the grounds. Exacerbating the suspicious nature of the facility is the fact that LM has refused to allow groundwater and soil toxicity on and around the facility to be tested. I lived in Santa Cruz for a year and spent quite a bit of time in Boulder Creek, just down the mountain from the facility, and frequently saw unusual military vehicles rolling through town, as well as those unexplained-but-certainly-existent unmarked black helicopters moving through the sky to and from the vicinity of the base. To me the whole business reeks to high heaven. If anyone has any information regarding this facility or what may happen there, I would appreciate it very much if you would make it public. Thank you!

I have seen that place.. or at least I think it's the same place.

Is it that group of buildings that are sort of on the way to Mountain View? They have a bunch of really big hangars and some HUGE satellite dishes.

They can't be up to any good...maybe someone oughta test the groundwater covertly...sounds like a good setup for a class-action lawsuit.

reply to post by emsed1


I believe you are describing the Blue Cube and Moffett Federal Air Field. These are some shots of the base I took from a helicopter.

www.lazygranch.com...

On google earth, KNUQ/NASA Ames/Blue Cube is at
37°25'4.95"N 122° 2'54.73"W

Just to be clear, I am not denying the other posters Lockheed Martin facility. Ben Lomond is what the bay area folks call "over the hill." ;-) A coordinate from Google Earth for that facility would be useful. Here is a spot on Empire Grade road, but probably not the facility in question:
37° 8'24.99"N 122°12'7.15"W

The cube was the one I saw when I would go to San Jose. It's sort of creepy but interesting.

It is part of their Space Operations business unit.

I can assure you that Byron Ravenscraft is indeed a real person. This division of LM builds (among other things) satellites and radar products. Very few of the space ops plants offer public tours because of the sensitive nature of their work and material. You can (if you're ever in the area) go and see them work on the big external shuttle tank in Michoud, LA.

Moffett field is a very cool place to visit and they have some really cool stuff going on there. However the correct coordinates for Moffett field are:
maps.google.com...,-122.04574&z=15&t=h&hl=en

Also, the DOD is LM's biggest customer

edited to fix hyperlink to location

[edit on 2/18/2008 by Illuminus]

[edit on 2/18/2008 by Illuminus]

[edit on 2/18/2008 by Illuminus]

I just looked at the high res imagery and Yeah you see some very similar buildings and their piping/support just like I see in the Wright Patterson imagery.
That huge blue"cube" hangar could easily fit something as big as 5 or more large aircraft easily and seems to be a very large blimp housing design. Rather than the large square shape you see most other places.
Odd.
I had read a book years ago by a retired USAF Major and when talking of the exotic and beyond tech he said "They hide the big stuff right under your noses" This certainly is big and right in the middle of a community kinda like Wright Patterson facilities as well.
Thanks for the post/ tip and you get a star.

Edit : Sorry double post. Mods Please remove.

[edit on 18-2-2008 by VType]

reply to post by VType


I've toured the Blue Cube in the mid-90s. Yeah, I know nobody ever believes me when I say this. Fortunately, I have witnesses. ;-) I have no idea if there are any large rooms in the building, but I would not call it a hangar. It was more like an office building. Some of the doors were like meat lockers or bank vaults. The gear was really really old. I spotted VT100s and nixies. The only really cool thing I saw was a room where they did the satellite scheduling. They had huge CRTs that were perfectly flat and very deep. You would need a fork lift to move one. The claim was they had more satellites than they had earth stations to download the data, so scheduling is a big deal.

Originally posted by gariac
reply to post by VType

 

I've toured the Blue Cube in the mid-90s. Yeah, I know nobody ever believes me when I say this. Fortunately, I have witnesses. ;-) I have no idea if there are any large rooms in the building, but I would not call it a hangar. It was more like an office building. Some of the doors were like meat lockers or bank vaults. The gear was really really old. I spotted VT100s and nixies. The only really cool thing I saw was a room where they did the satellite scheduling. They had huge CRTs that were perfectly flat and very deep. You would need a fork lift to move one. The claim was they had more satellites than they had earth stations to download the data, so scheduling is a big deal.

Very cool. I guess I was speaking of the large blueish hangar rather than the blue cube you pointed out.
The above post's images are amazing and the size of the one hangar is nothing short of Massive. Wow.


www.lazygranch.com...

[edit on 18-2-2008 by VType]

reply to post by gariac


Thats the assembly area for ICBM / SLBM's. You will see an AN-124 or a C-5 parked on the tarmac waiting to transport the missiles from there.

We fly out of Moffet all the time for medical transports and My father has based there as a civilian engineer when it was a NAS.

Lost of very cool stuff. The C-141 is always there and occasionaly the F-15 Active could be spotted there as well in the past.

Back on topic. I asked my dad and he said yes there is a base in the Santa Cruz mountains Its used for Trident Missile test among other things

ludb.clui.org...

If you guys have the Microsoft Earth Viewer they actual have the bird eye view of the whole base from various angles and at extremely high resolution. I can read numbers on top of trucks and make out in great detail the amount of exotic piping and plants layout. Amazing stuff. I easily spent an hour just admiring the Blue Cube and all its detail.
maps.live.com...

Vtype, thanks for the MS Earth link, the resolution is awesome! There are some serious wind tunnel facilities there, including some extremely large supersonic facilities!

Little tip, use the rotate function once in birds-eye mode, you'll often find aircraft suddenly appear because the different angles were taken at different times! There is a Volga-Dnepr An-124-100 (once the largest aircraft in the world!) on the pad!

I'm not sure this facility is the one the OP was talking about though?

Cheers

Robbie

[edit on 19-2-2008 by stratsys-sws]

Originally posted by stratsys-sws
Vtype, thanks for the MS Earth link, the resolution is awesome! There are some serious wind tunnel facilities there, including some extremely large supersonic facilities!

Cheers

Robbie

[edit on 19-2-2008 by stratsys-sws]

I know it is off the topic but on the MS Earth link and just to the right of where it goes there are two buildings that create a loop. Are those the wind tunnel facilities? thanks in advance.

Is it the Bonny Doon facility in this link? www.scwit.org...

Moffett is also one of the sites where you can see the U2 taking off and returning.

reply to post by beaverg


Yes to the wind tunnels. When they run them, the fire them up at night so the valley doesn't brown out. ;-) OK, maybe for cheaper power.

Regarding the other poster that land at NUQ, these are "Lifeguard" flights. They show up on the plane tracking websites.

I haven't managed to get my timing right to catch the AN-124 flights in person, but they occur at least 6 times a year.

reply to post by MillionEyedMask


doing a quick google search pretty much explains what is going on there.

BTW the Blue Cube is no more....I think Yahoo was going to lease parts of the building.

Onizkuka is still jammin though until 2011

Anybody know the website for google? I hear it's a good search site.