Construction is currently underway inside the building that was once a World War II aircraft factory at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on the engineering site that will teach future generations of U.S. Navy sailors how to operate the systems aboard the new Constellation-class frigate, writes Mallory Shelbourne for the USNI News.

The Philadelphia Navy Yard is already home to the land-based test and land-based engineering sites that train the service’s large and small surface combatants.

However, Navy personnel and sailors currently share an open campus with civilians in the fashion industry, as the corporate headquarters of the parent company of Urban Outfitters and Free People, URBN, is located there.

The new site will sit on the banks of the Delaware River, facing New Jersey.

“LBES is tactical equipment … this means shipboard equipment in a shipboard representative architecture with shipboard representative environment,” said Sean Brennan, the director of research, development, testing, and evaluation at the Naval Surface Warfare Center. “That really drives what we’re going to do and how we’re going to test something. And then how we’re going to lay it out, how we have to configure it.”

Read more about the Philadelphia Navy Yard in the USNI News.

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