With roughly 10% of the base’s highly educated and trained personnel refusing the shot, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain all the classified weapons and their testing operations in top working order if all resisters are fired.

The Navy itself touts its NAWCWD employees operating at China Lake and Naval Air Station Point Mugu in Ventura County as “some of the brightest minds in the world” conducting work in “high-tech areas including battlespace integration, airborne electronic attack, aircraft survivability, counter-improvised explosive devices, directed energy, robotics … and more.”…

So far, roughly 40% of the base’s estimated 3,000 employees (those working for the Navy on base or nearby) are vaccinated, according to estimates circulating throughout the base. Those numbers are likely to rise as vaccination deadlines draw closer in the coming weeks, but they still could cause serious readiness problems for the Navy and its weapons systems. Active-duty sailors and Marines must by fully vaccinated by Nov. 28, while those in the select reserve have until Dec. 28. The Pentagon is requiring federal civilian employees to be vaccinated by Nov. 22.

The high number of workers – civilian and military – refusing to get the vaccine at China Lake and other key research and development bases could force the Navy to make some difficult decisions in the coming months. All of these civilian workers must hold a security clearance just to enter the base, and many hold advanced engineering degrees and extensive technical training that takes years to acquire.