Officials at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, last week broke ground on the base’s new $27.2 million information technology complex. Located in the base’s Area B, the three-story building (two floors and a basement) will offer approximately 105,000 square feet of space for offices and computer rooms. The facility will support the Defense Department’s Supercomputing Resource Center that the Air Force Research Lab operates via classified computing and through a collaborative modeling and simulation environment. It will also support the Aeronautical Systems Center’s Simulation and Analysis Facility. “This new facility will further solidify Wright-Patt as a center of innovation and technical and acquisition excellence,” stated Steven Wourms, deputy director of requirements and capabilities in ASC’s integration directorate, during the Nov. 4 groundbreaking ceremony. Messer Construction of Dayton, Ohio, is the prime contractor. (Wright-Patterson release)
Retired Col. Carlyle "Smitty" Harris, known for introducing the "tap code" by which American POWs in North Vietnam could surreptitiously communicate with one another, died July 6. Harris was brutalized by the North Vietnamese over almost eight years of captivity.