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Lockheed Martin Opens New Facility in Titusville

Company Continues Supporting Critical National Security Missions from Space Coast

Top Image: An unarmed Trident II D5 Life Extension (D5LE) missile launches from Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS Kentucky (SSBN 737) during a Commander Evaluation Test (CET) off the coast of Southern California. (U.S. Navy Photo)

For nearly seven decades, Lockheed Martin has supported the U.S. Navy as a critical partner for its mission to provide sea-based strategic deterrence solutions through the company’s Fleet Ballistic Missiles (FBM) program.

In July 2023 Lockheed Martin FBM program leaders, along with government and public officials, commemorated the opening of a logistics facility to support the program at the company’s Titusville, Florida campus. The facility represents a capital investment of approximately $23M, wrapping a multi-year plan that included transitioning FBM program headquarters to the Space Coast.

“The Titusville area plays a prominent role in the defense industry and is a great home for our program as we support the U.S. Navy in this critical mission,” said Jerry Mamrol, vice president of Fleet Ballistic Missiles at Lockheed Martin. “The completion of this state-of-the-art logistics center marks the final step of our program’s transition, allowing us to fully take advantage of centralized key skills and cost savings for the Navy.”

Digital transformation is central to the logistics facility, providing an efficient and more agile workplace leveraging technology to our advantage. One example is a new integrated environmental monitoring system, replacing previous methods using humidigraphs on paper. This will be the first Lockheed Martin construction project to achieve the U.S. Green Building Council LEED Silver Certification on the Space Coast.

Lockheed Martin is a critical partner for modernization of the nuclear triad, poised to bring the FBM program into the future.

Lockheed Martin’s FBM program supports the U.S. Navy and U.K. Royal Navy to sustain and upgrade submarine-launched ballistic missiles as the Flight System Integrator; developing and producing Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs) and support equipment. The Trident II D5 missile will continue to serve as the seaborne leg of the U.S. Nuclear Triad for decades to come, recently completing its 190th successful test launch — a record unmatched by any other large ballistic launch vehicle.

“The FBM program’s next great challenge is of global importance. We are primed for innovation with advanced digital technology, modern facilities, and a culture of excellence,” Mamrol said. “Our mission in support of our customers is not only exciting; it’s a cornerstone of our national, and allies’, security.”

Interested in joining the Lockheed Martin FBM team? Click here to learn more about job opportunities in the Titusville area.

Lockheed Martin is helping our customers adapt to the challenges of this new era of deterrence, growing rapidly and transforming our business processes with digital enablement in order to meet the needs of the warfighter today and in the future. Deterrence for the future means a digital approach today to enable 21st Century Security.

Suzy Fleming Leonard

Born as a fresh bread and pasta home delivery service during the pandemic in 2020, The Daley Trade has grown into a sought-after restaurant and marketplace with a menu inspired by flavors of the world and created with fresh, locally sourced ingredients.

Located in downtown Titusville, Florida, the stylish eatery with a mid-century modern vibe also is enjoying national buzz. It's among 47 restaurants included on the 2024 USA TODAY Restaurants of the Year list.

"This is such an incredible honor," said Laura Daley, who owns the market and restaurant with husband and chef Terrence Daley. "Still in shock! We will be on cloud nine for awhile with this."

How many have you been to?Check out USA TODAY's 2024 Restaurants of the Year.

Our criteria forUSA TODAY's Restaurants of the Year for 2024: How the list of best restaurants was decided

What makes The Daley Trade stand out

Terrence Daley is a Culinary Institute of America-trained chef who has worked in high-end kitchens across the country. He dreamed of opening a funky sandwich shop and record store. Instead, Laura put her career as an artist on hold to help him run The Daley Trade.

The front room of the establishment serves as a market, showcasing Daley's European-style sourdough bread and fresh pastas as well as natural wines and locally made products.

Step into the glass-enclosed dining room, and discover a groovy space where Apollo-era astronauts would have felt right at home.

The Back Bar is a tropical oasis, with lush plants, a wine bar and plenty of shade. Enjoying your visit? Write a note on a Post-it in the restroom and stick it on the wall.

What to order at The Daley Trade

The menu changes regularly, so you never know what might be coming out of Daley's kitchen. Dishes are meant for sharing, so go with friends and order several things.

Pizza. Wednesdays are Pizza Night at the Daley Trade. Crusts are made in-house, then topped with whatever suits the chef's whim. Recent creations include roasted Romanesco and Bolognese with fresh fresh mozzarella, house-made sourdough breadcrumbs, Pecorino Romano and fresh basil; Meatball Pie with house-made spicy heritage pork meatballs, crushed tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, Pecorino Romano and fresh basil; and Mac and Cheese Pie with five-cheese blend fancy-boi cheese sauce and crispy cheese crumble.

The pasta. Whatever pasta is on the menu, order it. How could anyone resist buttermilk ricotta and local veggie tortellini with housemate egg pasta, buttermilk ricotta, zucchini and roasted tomato with Pecorino Romano cream and edible flowers?

Dessert. Daley may have a fancy culinary degree, but that doesn't stop him and his team from playing with their food. The menu recently included croissants aux baies, berry croissants topped with Fruity Pebbles. Blueberry Panna Cotta takes a spicy twist with marinated blueberries, goat cheese, black pepper, fennel pollen sugar and Spanish olive oil.

The hummus. Roasted garlic hummus features crispy chickpeas and Home Spice spicy za'atar and is served with crazy-good sourdough bread.

Follow The Daley Trade on social media to see weekly menus posted in Instagram Reels or in Facebook Stories.

Good to know before visiting The Daley Trade

The restaurant accepts a limited number of reservations, but via email, not phone. Email thedaleytrade@gmail.com several days before you'd like to visit. Otherwise, seating is first come, first served.

Also, each ingredient is thoughtfully chosen as Daley builds a dish. For this reason dishes come out of the kitchen as described. According to the menu: "Substitutions politely declined. While modifications & substitutions may seem easy to accommodate, these requests compromise the unique characteristics of our food & the efficiency of our service."

The Daley Trade market often offers take-home meal kits for holidays.

If you're a space buff, check the launch schedule for nearby Kennedy Space Center. When a launch goes, step out front and look up.

Details: The Daley Trade, 330 S. Washington Ave., Titusville, Fla.; thedaleytrade@gmail.com, thedaleytrade.com.

Suzy Fleming Leonard is a features journalist with more than three decades of experience. Reach her at sleonard@floridatoday.com. Find her on Facebook: @SuzyFlemingLeonard or on Instagram: @SuzyLeonard.

The environmental advocates behind a “right to clean water” referendum overwhelmingly approved last year by Titusville voters won in court for a second time Thursday, when a judge ruled in the advocates' favor, directing the city to certify the charter amendment.

More than 82% of Titusville voters approved the referendum last November, but the city still hasn’t certified those votes — despite a judge’s May order for it to do exactly that.

Representatives for the city and Speak Up Titusville, the nonprofit that campaigned for the referendum, appeared before a different judge Thursday for a rehearing requested by the city of Titusville.

Michael Myjak chairs Speak Up Titusville and serves as vice-chair for Titusville’s Environmental Protection Commission. He likens the right to clean water to the right to free speech or religion.

“There’s no reason that the city should be fighting this, because those people need to drink clean water, too,” Myjak said. “We’re not talking about the specifics of what they’re doing to treat the water for our homes, that’s something else. We’re talking about our environment.”

Myjak said the area’s ecology is “collapsing,” pointing specifically to poor water quality in the Indian River Lagoon.

Titusville area waters received the lowest possible grade — an “F minus minus” — on the most recent annual “report card” published by Marine Resources Council, a Brevard-based nonprofit working to restore the lagoon to “sustainable balance” by 2050.

Florida's growing movement for a right to clean water

A Titusville spokesperson told WMFE News the city does not comment on pending litigation. In its initial complaint filed last year, the city argues that the proposed charter amendment would violate Florida law: specifically, CS/SB 712, also known as the “Clean Waterways Act,” which state lawmakers approved in 2020.

That law created new statutory language that blocks local governments from recognizing or granting “any legal rights to a plant, an animal, a body of water, or any other part of the natural environment that is not a person or political subdivision.”

The Titusville charter amendment approved by a majority of voters last November is one local iteration of a statewide campaign for a “right to clean water” constitutional amendment, endorsed by the Florida Rights of Nature Network (FRONN).

According to FRONN, the proposed amendment to Florida’s constitution is not a “rights of nature” law. Such laws grant inalienable rights to natural entities like forests and wetlands, versus simply viewing them as property, according to the International Joint Commission.

Last summer, a judge struck down Orange County’s charter amendment aimed at protecting rights of nature, which voters also overwhelmingly approved in 2020.

But the clean water amendment advocates want to add to Florida’s constitution is different, FRONN says:

“Instead of a right of nature, the amendment creates a fundamental human right to nature, because the health of our families, the strength of our economy, and the wildlife we cherish, among other things, all depend upon clean and healthy waters,” FRONN’s website reads.

"It should outweigh property rights"

For Myjak, a retired rocket scientist and simulation modeler who’s lived in Brevard County for more than thirty years, it’s “heartbreaking” to watch the lagoon’s biodiversity and overall health plummet.

“I want my children and my grandchildren to be able to fish and swim in this lagoon. And I don't see that that's gonna be possible if we keep going in the direction we're going,” Myjak said.

That’s why, Myjak says, a fundamental right to clean water is so important: “It should outweigh property rights, because no one person should have the authority or the capability, without oversight, to destroy a natural habitat.”

But Myjak says that’s exactly what’s happening in Titusville, as residential and commercial development ramps up.

“[The lagoon is] just not improving. And it's not improving because the problem continues to exist,” Myjak said. “And that's excess freshwater, [which] is poisonous in the Indian River Lagoon, as an estuary, and people don't seem to get that: that just the volume of it is too much.”

Estuaries like the Indian River Lagoon, where freshwater meets the ocean, are delicate ecosystems that can suffer when certain conditions change: including the lagoon’s salinity, or saltiness. For example, certain types of fish eggs will float or sink, depending on the water’s salinity, according to a report about the lagoon published in 2007 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

That EPA report pointed specifically to increased development and the resulting “large volumes of freshwater discharges” as a major reason for the lagoon’s deteriorating health. Although those discharges often carry harmful pollutants, excessive freshwater in itself also poses a threat to the lagoon, per the report.

There are many different ongoing efforts to improve and protect the Indian River Lagoon, including via Brevard County’s Save Our Indian River Lagoon (SOIRL) program, funded by a half-cent sales tax that county voters approved in 2016.

The SOIRL program identifies stormwater as the second-largest source of pollution to the lagoon, and includes stormwater system upgrades as a priority. But Myjak and other advocates say currently, there isn’t enough scientific data to determine how much freshwater is entering the lagoon, due to a lack of systematic monitoring.

“You have to measure it to understand it, and you have to understand it to be able to control it,” Myjak said, referencing a mantra he often heard during his former life working on network infrastructure projects for NASA.

“It has to begin with metering and measuring,” Myjak said. “We have to understand what's happening, with a critical eye and an honest look. No politics.”

Updated: November 16, 2023 at 4:28 PM EST

This story was updated at 4:28 p.m. on November 16, 2023 after a judge ruled in the advocates' favor, directing the city to certify the charter amendment.

TITUSVILLE, Fla. — The city of Titusville is joining a class action settlement involving contaminated drinking water.

What You Need To Know

The suit is directed at the 3M Company and Dupont.

The companies aren’t accused of putting the per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — also known as forever chemicals because they are nearly indestructible — directly into groundwater, but for their role in using those chemicals in products which would ultimately end up there.

Now, one Titusville woman’s quest to hold the two businesses responsible is finally coming to fruition.

Stel Bailey is the executive director of Fight for Zero, an organization pushing for a healthy community. She’s a cancer survivor, whose focus now is water that is safe to drink.

“It changed my perspective on health and prevention, and preventing these diseases, and one way to do that is clean drinking water,” Bailey said.

Bailey and her team began testing the city’s drinking water for signs of PFAS contamination in the groundwater throughout the Space Coast.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, PFAS don’t break down in the environment and can move through soil and contaminated water sources. PFAS can be found in numerous commercial products like clothing, furniture, adhesives and non-stick cookware, among others.

Information from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry shows that if someone drinks water contaminated with PFAS over a long period, studies show that they can experience increased colesterol levels, decreases in infant birth weight, and an increased risk of certain types of cancer.

“When I first started addressing this, I think a lot of the cities for them it was the unknown," Bailey said. "It was scary, but Titusville has done a 180 — do the right thing, step up."

This week, the Titusville City Council voted to join a class action settlement against the 3M Company and Dupont, claiming these companies played a key role in the groundwater contamination.

“PFAS aren’t something put in the water by these companies, they’re in your cooking utensils, the coating on your pan, it’s in your waterproofing of your rain jacket," says Titusville Public Works director Kevin Cook. "For firefighting side, it’s in firefighting foam, which is where a lot of this started with the foam on airfields."

From there, the chemicals can seep into the water table, and the cost to test all the wells in the city over the next two years will be more than $30,000 — an amount the city is hoping to recoup through the lawsuit.

Bailey said she is happy the responsibility to pay could be put on the companies.

“The taxpayers, the utilities, the city, should not have the burden of cost in fixing this problem,” she said.

The settlement has gotten preliminary approval from the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina.

TITUSVILLE, Fla. — The waters around Titusville have been lighting up every night, and Jenny Wright says the best way to see them is kayaking in complete darkness.

“We stage everything out and prepare the vessels," said Wright, who owns Epic Paddle Adventures. "And when guests arrive, we are all set and ready to go."

What You Need To Know

The star of the kayak, or paddleboard, adventure (you choose) is something called bioluminescence — a natural process created by microscopic microorganisms that live in the water.

Wright says that when someone stirs up the water with their hands, feet or kayak, the water below will light up blue like a glow stick.

She said the natural process happens seasonally from the months of May until October, and you need complete darkness to see it.

“So, if you think about a firefly on land, that natural light that comes from a firefly, it’s a chemical reaction," said Wright.

Wright and her team of sightseeing experts meet at Parrish Park in Titusville nearly every night this time of the year to take guests to a nearby island to see the lights.

“It never gets old," she said. "It’s like seeing an entire universe below you."

Wright says the people who take part in the adventure — some of whom come from around the country and world — are usually beginners with little or no experience being on the water.

Tim Ginas traveled from New York to Titusville for a vacation, and to see the lights in the waters near Titusville.

“The water is warm and unbelievably clear," he said. "So, you can see the bioluminescence even clearer — it’s bright and beautiful and something you have never seen before."

Wright says the organisms that create the natural glow have no effect on the human body, so her guests have nothing to fear.

“You know, the whole way out here is only 2 to 3 feet deep,” she said.

Wright said the tour lasts about two hours and there is a good chance participants might also hear and see dolphins, manatees, and large schools of fish.

Reservations are mandatory and prices vary depending on the size and type of kayak or paddleboard.

For more information, you can reach out to Epic Paddle Adventure directly at their website.