A new security complex at Naval Station Rota, Spain, replaces a handful of 1950s-era Quonset huts that peppered the base, scattered security personnel and made communications difficult.

The new building features a centralized dispatch center, holding cells, interrogation rooms, armory, weapons simulator, office space and training classrooms, said Lt. Cmdr. Scott Silk, the base’s U.S. security officer.

“The new 36,000-square-foot security building replaces inadequate and outdated facilities that were constructed in the late 1950s for different functions,” Silk said.

The roughly $10 million complex is much more convenient for not only staff, but also for base customers who need to take care of business such as visiting the pass and ID office, firearms registration and vehicle registration, he said.

In addition to the base security personnel, the complex houses the department’s internal criminal investigative division, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, operations, explosives division, force protection, consequence management, and training division.

“The new dispatch center has American and Spanish [forces] sitting side-by-side, providing a better, more comprehensive dispatch service,” he said. The base is shared by U.S. and Spanish forces.

“We used to have to go around the base to find empty rooms. Now we have our own in-house, state-of-the-art training rooms,” Silk said. Office space for staff used to be “any cubbyhole where we could put up a temporary wall.”

The new building, which opened for business Oct. 7, has detention cells that replace the old system in which security held someone in a barracks room, Silk said. “That took lots of manpower to guard, an extensive amount of manpower.”

It also features a weapons simulator for firearms proficiency training. “Now we don’t have to go to the range … and we can shoot as often as we’d like and it doesn’t cost the Navy anything to run the simulator.”

The old buildings are slated to be torn down, he said.

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