Special Operations in Rural Virginia

The town of Bridgewater, Virginia has a nice “lawn party” every summer. If you like old tractors and trucks, it’s a good place to visit on a hot July day. If your interests or needs are more in the area of “special operations” or “laser targeting” of insurgents, you still might be in the right place. Just head south out of town, cross the bridge over the North River and make a left onto Airport Road. Eventually, you’ll come to the Bridgewater Air Park – the home of Dynamic Aviation.

If you are lucky you might see a plane taking off or landing, but the extra-fortunate will get to see one of Dynamic’s “gray ghosts” – Beechcraft King Airs and Bombardier Dash-8s loaded up with sensor pods and cameras and painted to not draw attention to themselves (at least in locations where that matters). If you want to record the hard-to-read tail number on one of these planes, you’ll have to use your memory since there is a sign by the road that forbids photography of the premises – a prohibition which would probably be enforced by the airport’s own police force.

If on the other hand, you want some “Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance” services and have a lot of cash and political connections, you might be welcomed right on in. Since Dynamic is a subcontractor for Science Applications International Corp (SAIC) through SAIC’s Special Projects Division, you might get to meet one of their spooks. It needs to be noted that SAIC happens to be the company that developed the NSA’s PRISM software which was exposed by Edward Snowden and the Guardian newspaper. SAIC has had it’s share of former CIA and NSA directors working for them including Bobby Ray Inman and Robert Gates. At SAIC, the revolving door between government and business spins faster than the propeller on a Dash-8! SAIC is controversial enough to have earned themselves an episode of WNET’s Exposé series in 2007 called Friends in High Places.

The next step in your adventure might involve talking to some of the good folks from “Special Operations Solutions LLC (Sole Proprietorship).” From the looks of things, these folks will be an integral part of your ISR mission. Remember, the money is all coming from the war, er, defense budget, and it’s big enough for many contractors to get a piece of it.

Note: Either all of these companies are using the same generic pictures of Dash-8’s or the Dash-8’s all belong to Dynamic Aviation (and someone really should brush up on their photoshopping skills). We are betting on the latter.