Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity

Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity
	Perquimans County, North Carolina
	Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity
Coordinates	36.1°N 76.33°W
Site information
Owner	U.S. Department of Defense
Open to; the public	No
Condition	Fully operational
Site history
Built	1942
In use	1942–1946; 1958–present
Garrison information
Occupants	Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Central Intelligence Agency; Federal Bureau of Investigation; United States Navy;

The Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity facility, owned by the Department of Defense, is located on a peninsula in Perquimans County, North Carolina, along Albemarle Sound, near the city of Hertford, NC. It was established in World War II as Naval Auxiliary Air Station Harvey Point, an operating base for sea planes conducting anti-submarine surveillance off the Atlantic coast. A close-by naval facility, Naval Air Station Weeksville, served as a blimp base from 1941 to 1957, while another former naval air facility remains active as Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City.

To comply with various procurement regulations, the Department of the Navy holds the title to and budgetary responsibility for the facility. Agencies such as the ATF, CIA, and FBI have used the facility for complex training relating to overseas counterterrorism and asset-protection training.[1] It has a sister facility in Virginia called Camp Peary.

History

The point was originally occupied during the 1670s by the Harvey family, including North Carolina's first native-born governor, Thomas Harvey—hence the name "Harvey Point".[1]

World War II

Courthouse records indicate that in November 1942 the United States Navy purchased the point, roughly 1,200 acres (5 km²), for $41,751. The Navy then constructed an air station on the property for use during World War II, and commissioned it as Naval Auxiliary Air Station Harvey Point. During World War II, NAAS Harvey Point was used as a PBM Mariner seaplane base.[2]

After the war, NAAS Harvey Point was decommissioned in 1946 and remained deactivated until 1958 when the Navy announced that Harvey Point would serve as the testing grounds for the new Martin P6M Seamaster, an experimental jet-powered long-range seaplane bomber. The project was cancelled in August 1959 when the Navy determined the aircraft wasn't successful enough for it to continue providing support for the program. Then, in 1961, the Navy returned to the property, and announced that the property was closed to the public; it has remained that way ever since.

Current use

Specialty military air operations are located at this facility, as the installation has two usable landing fields, and plans for a third. The FAA Charlotte Sectional Aeronautical Chart identifies this area as Special Use Airspace R-5301, which is continuously restricted from general aviation traffic from the surface to an altitude of 14,000 feet above Mean Sea Level. Areas of Albermarle Sound adjacent to the facility are also under restricted airspace R-5302 (A-D), which is under the operational authority of GIANT KILLER, or whichever ATC has controlling authority over the airspace at that time. Harvey Point is also used for CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) paramilitary and counter-terrorism courses that involve high explosives and ballistics. The explosives are used to simulate terrorist bombs, and can be heard for miles in the surrounding communities.[1] It was also used by DEVGRU (a.k.a. "SEAL Team Six") to train for the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, in a scale mockup of his secret compound.[3][4]

gollark: My very guessed predictions for the PC market's future in the next 10 years:- ARM will become more of a thing in laptops and perhaps servers, but x86 will continue to stick around a lot- Phones (with portable dock things with extra batteries, keyboards and bigger screens) will take over from laptops for a lot of people's casual uses.- HDDs will mostly cease to exist in the average person's devices and mostly be used in servers, some people's desktops for whatever reason, and NASes- CPU clock speeds/IPC will continue increasing slowly and we'll get moar coar and more GPU offloading to compensate- Persistent RAM stuff like Optane will get used a bit but remain mostly niche

gollark: yes.

gollark: Unlikely.

gollark: On ARM, only servers have UEFI or anything, everything else is a minefield of pure horror.

gollark: On x86 platforms, you can have a live USB stick and boot that on basically any recent x86 PC and it will probably work fine apart from hardware accelerated graphics, some networking hardware, and whatnot.

References

Weiner, Tim (March 20, 1998). "Is the Explosion-Noisy Base a C.I.A. Spy School? What Base?". The New York Times. Retrieved April 4, 2013.
Freeman, Paul. "Harvey Point Naval Auxiliary Air Station, Harvey Point, NC". Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields.
Farber, Dan (May 25, 2012). "Bing map shows CIA's secret Bin Laden compound mock-up". CNET News. Retrieved October 10, 2012.
Hudson, John (February 15, 2011). "Satellite Images of the CIA's Secret Bin Laden Training Facility". The Atlantic Wire. Retrieved October 10, 2012.

External links

Elliston, Jon (June 5, 2002). "Bomb School". INDY Week. Durham, North Carolina. Retrieved June 3, 2019.

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[Noisy-1] Weiner, Tim (March 20, 1998). "Is the Explosion-Noisy Base a C.I.A. Spy School? What Base?". The New York Times. Retrieved April 4, 2013.

[2] Freeman, Paul. "Harvey Point Naval Auxiliary Air Station, Harvey Point, NC". Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields.

[3] Farber, Dan (May 25, 2012). "Bing map shows CIA's secret Bin Laden compound mock-up". CNET News. Retrieved October 10, 2012.

[4] Hudson, John (February 15, 2011). "Satellite Images of the CIA's Secret Bin Laden Training Facility". The Atlantic Wire. Retrieved October 10, 2012.