A 14-acre parcel on Liberty Street in Stonington could soon house the headquarters of a defense contractor that designs technology for the Navy's nuclear submarine fleet. Developer READCO is proposing a technology park there that would become the new home for Applied Physical Sciences, a subsidiary of General Dynamics that specializes in research and development for nuclear submarines. The company has roughly 250 employees.
A Campus Built Around Submarine Research
READCO purchased the 14-acre site at 511 Liberty St. in January for $2 million, adding to an adjacent 8 acres it acquired in 2025 for nearly $3 million, according to the Stamford Advocate. The site sits about a half-mile north of the Stonington Village apartment development. Town meeting minutes connected the planned campus to Applied Physical Sciences and Electric Boat; Applied Physical Sciences' parent company is General Dynamics. The Stonington Inland Wetlands Commission heard a presentation on the proposal from a Robinson & Cole attorney representing READCO in early October.
Plans call for the first phase of the technology center to include an 80,000-square-foot research-and-development building alongside a 77,000-square-foot light-manufacturing building, according to the Westerly Sun. The campus would also include roughly 400 parking spaces, electric-vehicle charging stations and an outdoor amenity space for employees. READCO projects the first phase would generate 74 to 75 peak-hour vehicle trips, with full build-out eventually producing 140 to 142 trips, the outlet reported.
Review Still Pending Before Local Commission
The Stonington Planning and Zoning Commission continued its review of READCO's site-plan and groundwater-protection permit application to Nov. 17, per the same outlet's reporting. Applied Physical Sciences currently operates its main facility at 475 Bridge St. in Groton and a smaller facility at 100 Mechanic St. in the Pawcatuck Business Park — a building that was formerly used for printing-press assembly and later housed Cottrell Brewing, which closed in 2022, according to the Stamford Advocate. An Electric Boat spokesperson did not immediately provide details on the company's or any subcontractor's plans for the Liberty Street site, the paper reported.
Applied Physical Sciences became a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics in 2012, when it had fewer than 100 employees, according to the company's own overview page. It now counts about 250 employees, including roughly 175 in Southeastern Connecticut. The firm describes its current work as applied science, technology and research-and-development efforts for customers including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research, with projects spanning unmanned undersea vehicles.
Defense Contracts and a Wider Undersea Push
The U.S. government listed $290 million in Applied Physical Sciences contracts at varying stages of completion for the fiscal year that ended in September, according to the Stamford Advocate. Among them, the company is developing an experimental advanced propulsor system for submarines and underwater drones under a DARPA program the agency says is meant to revolutionize the capabilities of future submarines and the broader undersea community. Applied Physical Sciences also worked on DARPA's Willow project, a $27 million contract aimed at countering surface sonars used to hunt submarines, and won a $50 million contract in October to develop advanced hull treatments and study foreign undersea technologies, per a Department of War contract announcement cited in the paper's reporting.
That undersea research push comes against a backdrop flagged by the Council on Strategic Risks, which warned in a report last August that rapid advances in artificial intelligence could help China better hunt submarines. Separately, Applied Physical Sciences developed the Navy's environmental and ship-motion forecasting system, known as FutureWave, which predicts whether waves may jostle ships during ship-to-ship transfer operations — technology NASA adapted to help recover the Orion capsule in the Pacific Ocean following the Artemis II moon mission last spring.
Electric Boat's Hiring Surge Reshapes the Region
The Liberty Street proposal arrives as Electric Boat ramps up hiring to meet production schedules for Virginia-class attack submarines and the future USS District of Columbia. The shipbuilder targeted hiring 8,000 people in 2026 and reported more than 18,700 employees in Connecticut as of October, per the Stamford Advocate. Electric Boat already maintains an office at 9 Kings Highway in Groton and leases a 125,000-square-foot office in Eagle Park from the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, and it is building a new warehouse just north of Interstate 95 in North Stonington to serve its Groton shipyard and Quonset Point auxiliary facility.
The company is also outfitting the former Crystal Mall in Waterford into office and training space that could accommodate as many as 5,000 workers, part of a broader expansion documented by Hartford Business Journal. That outlet reports the hiring surge is straining housing stock in Groton, New London and Waterford, with a regional study suggesting Southeastern Connecticut may need as many as 18,000 additional housing units by 2035. Groton alone currently has roughly 1,400 to 1,500 housing units under construction or expected to break ground this fall.
Developers elsewhere in the region are already racing to keep pace. The $95 million Mizzen project in New London will add 251 studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments near Electric Boat's New London engineering building, with the first units expected to become available in mid-2028. Nearby, The Beam, a 203-unit New London complex, leased up to 90% of its units within 90 days, according to RJDA CEO Yves Joseph as cited by Hartford Business Journal — a sign of just how tight the submarine-industry labor market has made housing across the region.
The broader undersea-defense sector is also drawing new industrial investment beyond Connecticut. Austal USA opened a facility in Alabama to produce large submarine components, while Anduril plans to open a $3.7 billion underwater-drone manufacturing facility in Maryland, according to the Stamford Advocate's reporting. Whether READCO's Stonington campus moves forward now rests with the town's Planning and Zoning Commission, which is slated to pick up its review next month.
