The McMullen County-NAS Kingsville ROTHR Road Design Project
Bottom Line Up Front
McMullen County, Texas, is partnering with Naval Air Station Kingsville (NASK), Duval County, Texas, and the Alamo Area Council of Governments (AACOG) to design road improvements to improve safety and service to the Navy’s McMullen Range and a Remote Over-the-Horizon Radar (ROTHR) site, which provides long range surveillance and reconnaissance in support of National Security and law enforcements in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. This site is vital to the many missions and task forces currently underway in the Caribbean and along the border with Mexico.
The Story
The ROTHR-Texas site is one of only three in the world, all of which provide vital long-range surveillance capability for the United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) and the Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-S,) which conducts detection and monitoring operations to facilitate the interdiction of illicit trafficking in support of national and partner nation security. This site is also planned to be a part of the Golden Dome defense shield.
For decades, military personnel and civilian contractors who man the ROTHR-Texas site 24/7, 365, have been plagued with a dirt road over 12 miles long that is extremely rough when dry, causing damage such as broken axles to Navy vehicles, and impassable when wet, trapping personnel at the site for multiple days during rain events, such as tropical storms, coming off the nearby Gulf of America. This same road serves an important oil transfer site carrying crude oil from Texas and several very large ranches in the area. It is the only access to the Texas-ROTHR site.
Seeking help through partnership, NASK personnel contacted the County of Judge of McMullen County, Texas, to explore options for improving the road. The Judge turned to AACOG for support, and AACOG asked SONRI to step in to help.
SONRI convened stakeholders, including the County Judges of both McMullen and Duval Counties, who jointly own and maintain the road, the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of War, Counternarcotics and Stabilization, NASK, SOUTHCOM, JIATF-S, the Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation (OLDCC), and the Texas Military Planning Commission (TMPC) to identify options. The road does not qualify for the Defense Access Roads Program, and converting the road to an improved surface with proper drainage will cost in excess of $20 million, resources that the two Counties do not possess.
SONRI brokered a coalition to seek funding for design of the road project through multiple sources, including OLDCC’s Installation Readiness (IR) grants program, TMPC’s Defense Economic Adjustment Assistance Grant (DEAAG) program, project execution support through AACOG, in-kind support from the two counties, and a cash contribution from McMullen County. AACOG led the grant writing effort, and it was praised by Mr. Patrick O’Brien, OLDCC’s Director, as a model for other communities to follow.
Once funding was in place, AACOG tasked SONRI to work with McMullen County to advertise for and select an engineering firm to design the road; and SONRI is providing project management and grant administrative support at the time of this writing.
The design is expected to be completed well ahead of schedule in December 2025. SONRI is already working with stakeholders to identify sources of funding for construction of the road, which is planned to begin in 2026; and expanding the coalition to include the Texas Department of Transportation through the Navy’s statewide Intergovernmental Support Agreement with the agency
