On November 6, 2024, the Albemarle Board of Supervisors agreed to allow the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to conduct non-combat training on land Albemarle purchased around the military base. The county’s police and fire rescue departments already do so.
“The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has requested use of nine of the County’s Rivanna Futures parcels to conduct similar non-combat training, including in Medical, Land Navigation, Basic Outdoor / Survival Evasion skills, Downed Aircraft Recovery Team (DART), Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Defense (CBRN) threat protective gear, and Counterintelligence threat identification and mitigation,” reads a staff report that was on the consent agenda at the November 6 meeting. “These courses are considered unclassified and low risk.”
The land use agreement has more descriptions on each of the above. No firearms are to be used as part of any of the trainings, nor are large military vehicles. One of the parcels includes an unoccupied dwelling that can be unlocked for the military upon request.
Albemarle County paid $58 million for 462 acres of land last December. Supervisors unanimously gave their approval for the purchase in May 2023 and agreed to a rezoning earlier this for part of the land to create space for something called the Intelligence and National Security Innovation Acceleration Campus. Albemarle is currently seeking partners to develop that project.
Before you go: The time to write and research of this article is covered by paid subscribers to Charlottesville Community Engagement. In fact, this particular installment is from the November 11, 2024 edition of the newsletter. To ensure this research can be sustained, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing monthly through Patreon.
Discover more from Information Charlottesville
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I updated this post on the morning of November 15 to make some grammar corrections and provide more context. One of the faults of my model of delivering stories is that I often write the newsletter as one element and there are references to previous stories. Usually I am pretty good about updating these and making them stand-alone pieces for this website. In this case, I didn’t do a good job. But all of this is about learning and trying to do better. That takes work, and I put the time at least. Thank you for your patience.