GPA is involved in scheduling and providing training on specific equipment during the Fleet Introduction of the equipment as part of the Alteration Installation Team. GPA will be performing this effort for the MK 74 Mod 3 Solid State Transmitter installation on LHD Class ships. GPA provides support to military and civilian personnel in the Department of the Navy, ashore and afloat, in all aspects of in-service engineering and logistics support of airborne weapons systems, including installation, operation, maintenance and storage of various portions of the systems. Systems include weapons, targets, unmanned aerial vehicles, electronic warfare equipment, suspension and support equipment, and associated training and test equipment.

GPA Team member, Santa Barbara Applied Research, Inc. (SBAR) currently provides support for the INMARSAT test facility including developing, integrating, modifying and maintaining the INMARSAT/HSD test bed located in the secure Joint Integrated Communications Facility (JICF) at the SPAWARSYSCEN OT2 complex. The test facility is equipped with three operational INMARSAT terminals, two ISDN telephone lines for simulated shore side connectivity and completed baseband equipment strings, including operational; cryptographic units. SBAR has designed and installed the B terminal installation, various rack mounted and integrated test equipment, and all new devices under test such as the 128 kbps modems and the dual antenna handover devices. Our engineers design and run computer simulations of structures for mounting of antennas to account for environmental effects. The test bed is used to simulate all ship and shore communication operations for use in developing and testing new features, changes, and procedures.

SBAR engineers are knowledgeable in the design requirements for both ship and shore installations, and the differences in the requirements. In addition to designing the shipboard INMARSAT installations and producing the ICDs, SARs and SIDs for all classes of ships, the SBAR lead engineer was the lead engineer for the initial JICF installation of the commercial SATCOM and VLF communications test beds. SBAR engineers also designed monitored installation and tested shore installations at Fleet Training Center for classroom instruction. SBAR has also designed and constructed two communication ISO shelters for the Fleet Hospital. These shelters provide the fleet hospital with deployable communications suites that include HF, VHF, UHF, INMARSAT and UHF SATCOM capabilities.