When the nation's biggest military complex is operating around you 365 days a year for decades, the details of its 300 or so commands can skip by. Here's a select few pulled from a defense consultant's overview on the San Diego defense scene.

• The headquarters of the Third Fleet in San Diego is located on board the USS Coronado, an amphibious transport dock ship with an added level of superstructure. Designated a "sea-based battle lab," it is the most advanced command ship in the Navy.
  
  
• Point Loma is home to the Arctic Submarine Laboratory.
  
  
• When Navy ships sail in and out of the bay, an underwater sensor records their magnetic signature. When it gets too large, the ships are sent to a degaussing operation at the Magnetic Silencing Facility tip of the Point Loma submarine base or even the bases deperming pier where electric cables are wrapped around the ship and then energized.
  
  
• In the 1995 BRAC, the Department of Defense recommended the Naval Health Research Center on Point Loma be closed. But the BRAC commission disagreed, finding the base's work was overwhelmingly biomedical research and that moving it would be detrimental to its mission.
  
  
• One tenant of the Miramar Marine Base is the Naval Consolidated Brig, built on 23 acres in 1989 for $17 million. The 208,000-square-foot prison can house up to 400 male and female prisoner. A "Level II" brig, it houses prisoners serving sentences of 31 days to 7 years.
  
  
• Camp Pendleton's 125,000 acres run from the sea to 12 miles inland and stretch along 38 miles of coastline. It has 2,900 buildings are 41,000 people living on base.
  
  
• In 1995, the Pacific Fleet made a strong case to keep its attack submarines, Submarine Squadron Eleven, in San Diego. With BRAC 2005, a relocation to Hawaii, where most the subs are based, is possible. However, the Cassidy report, drawing on the same logic used in 1995 about the need for training on the West Coast, notes, "The distance between Pearl Harbor and Point Loma has not changed, and the cost considerations are likely to remain as significant in 2005 as they were in 1995."