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Fort Walton Beach, Fla. (AP) — To tourists basking in the crystal blue surf of this picturesque white-sand beach, the Fort Walton Beach Holiday Inn Resort looks like a Holiday Inn topped with a giant beach ball statue. But to military officials it is known as the Eglin Air Force Range A5.

The combination resort hotel and military test site opened in late May in an unusual partnership between the military and a private business at a time of tight military budgets. In exchange for allowing hotel company Innisfree to build a 152-room resort on Air Force grounds, the military was able to build a rooftop station that receives radar signals and a secure conference room for secret meetings. The dome, which hides military equipment, is painted red, white, blue and yellow like a beach ball.

While the Air Force has done other projects with private companies before, this is the first time a base has combined a hotel, said Mike Speights, a base spokesman.

Radar installations were added to make the dome "less military and more visitor-friendly," said Wesley Mason, the contractor who helped develop the project.

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Outside, tourists strolled across the beach's landscaped pool with a rocky waterfall fountain, drinks in hand. Inside, families browsed the beach-themed gift shop and dined at a restaurant overlooking the pool.

The military presence is unclear and limited to a few people, often contract workers without uniforms, who work on the roofs.

Lyman Moody, a hotel guest in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, relaxes on the beach with his family on a recent afternoon. Moody said he had no idea the beach ball was covering military equipment.

Another vacationer, Jeff Harwell of Fort Worth, Texas, said he and his family speculated about the giant beach ball.

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"We talked about it when we first noticed it," he said. "We thought the things sticking out of it were lightning rods."

The hotel was a win for both parties. That allowed the military to use a small portion of the Okaloosa Island-owned beach, which has been cut off from the rest of Eglin's more than 17 miles of beach by commercial development, Speights said. The military could not make good use of the land for beach training or test missions without building a tower or other structure to place equipment above nearby hotels, restaurants and shopping centers. Innisfree pays the military about $190,000 a year in rent, the Air Force said.

This allows the hotel company to build a prime location on the beach, surrounded by popular attractions such as Gulfarium Marine Park and the nearby convention center, said Ivana Cotet, the hotel's director of sales.

"It's a perfect spot. You can see us from the bridge on Highway 98. You can't miss us," she said.

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People in the area who know about the system sometimes ask to tour the roof, but that's prohibited, Cottet said.

Chris Nixon, who oversees testing at the range, said the A5 test site is a desirable location for personnel overseeing testing and equipment because of its view of the pool and beach.

There is a small conference room on the roof where military officials including Brig. Gen. David Harris, commander of the 96th Test Wing at Eglin, may conduct secret conversations.

But Harris said the most important benefit of the partnership is the morale boost it provides to military families, who receive discounted rates at the resort.

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"Young Airmen who may never have the opportunity to be in place like this can bring their families for some R and R," he said.

Nathan King, a long-range telemetry engineer at Eglin Air Force Base who sometimes works at the A5 test site, jokes that the atmosphere can be "confusing" at times.

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