Letterkenny Township, Pa. - All Patriot and Hawk missiles used by the United States military and foreign allies will now be processed in Franklin County.

The Letterkenny Army Depot on Friday opened its new missile testing facility, the only one of its kind in the U.S.

"There is a trust that we will never walk away from and that is the trust when a soldier believes it's going to work, it will work. This facility is about assuring that trust in our soldiers,” said Major General James Myles, U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Commander.

Myles joined the new commander at Letterkenny Army Depot to cut the ribbon on the new Theater Readiness Monitoring Facility.

"They've streamlined it. They've allowed for a really smooth operation in there, which should be good for safety, good for production, and should open up some opportunities later down the road and build some capacity at the depot,” said Colonel Cheri Provancha, who took command of the depot on Friday.

The facility will process Patriot and Hawk missiles; testing and repairing them for the U.S. military, NATO and foreign allies.

"We do recertification of missiles in the field. We also do new production sample testing. If they do a new production run, we'll actually do a baseline sample test of those missiles,” said David Putman, facility director.

The $11.6 million dollar facility stemmed from the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission. It took a year to build and will replace the current facility at Red River Army Depot in Texas. It will also bring about 75 new jobs.

"We just made the United States Army better and we just made our country better by having this workforce say that they're going to start re-certifying missiles here at this facility,” said Myles.

Letterkenny is expected to see its first missile by May of 2010.

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