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Kent Island Research Facility

Buildings and structures in Queen Anne's County, MarylandNational Security Agency facilities

The Kent Island Research Facility is a U.S. National Security Agency facility located on Kent Island, Maryland, near the town of Chester.The facility was established in 1961 to conduct research on very high frequency and microwave antenna systems—specifically, on problems associated with anomalous propagation in communications interception. According to James Bamford in 1983, the location consists of the NSA Propagation Research Laboratory, a single-story, white, windowless building that houses automatically operating, unattended equipment, as well as a small, white cinder-block "control" building surrounded in a barbed-wire fence. Near the control building are a number of unusual antennas.In 2016, the United States government shuttered various Russian diplomat vacation facilities, including one that, according to Australian security expert Des Ball, was well positioned to spy on the NSA’s "Propagation and Research Laboratory" on Kent Island.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Kent Island Research Facility (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Kent Island Research Facility
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N 38.964 ° E -76.286 °
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21619
Maryland, United States
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Kent Island (Maryland)
Kent Island (Maryland)

Kent Island is the largest island in the Chesapeake Bay and a historic place in Maryland. To the east, a narrow channel known as the Kent Narrows barely separates the island from the Delmarva Peninsula, and on the other side, the island is separated from Sandy Point, an area near Annapolis, by roughly four miles (6.4 km) of water. At only four miles wide, the main waterway of the bay is at its narrowest at this point and is spanned here by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. The Chester River runs to the north of the island and empties into the Chesapeake Bay at Kent Island's Love Point. To the south of the island lies Eastern Bay. The United States Census Bureau reports that the island has 31.62 square miles (81.90 km2) of land area.Kent Island is part of Queen Anne's County, Maryland, and Maryland's Eastern Shore region. The first English establishment on the island, Kent Fort, was founded in 1631, making Kent Island the oldest English settlement within the present day state of Maryland and the third oldest permanent English settlement in what became the United States—after Jamestown, Virginia (1607), and Plymouth, Massachusetts (1620). The census-designated places of Stevensville and Chester are located on the island, along with several other communities, including the fishing community of Kent Narrows, which is located partially on the island. Although all of Kent Island's communities are unincorporated, the census designated places of Stevensville and Chester on the island are both more populous than any of Queen Anne's County's incorporated towns.