Brown Field Municipal Airport is in the Otay Mesa neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States, southeast of Downtown San Diego and named in honor of Commander Melville S. Brown, USN, who was killed in an airplane crash in 1936. Its main runway is long. Its FAA/IATA airport code is SDM. Formerly Naval Auxiliary Air Station Brown Field, it is now a civilian reliever airport and a port of entry from Mexico. It is sometimes staffed by the U.S. Customs Service, but only upon request of incoming pilots to the Federal Aviation Administration. The development plans for the SDM airport have been announced on 4th Oct 2022, the development will occur in phases over 20 years. The plans include a new FBO terminal building and individual airplane hangars. There is also talk of adding a million square feet of retail and industrial buildings and possibly a hotel. History Brown Field is 1.5 miles north of the US/Mexico border in the Otay Mesa Community of the City of San Diego. The airport, originally named East Field in honor of Army Major Whitten J. East, opened in 1918 when the U.S. Army established an aerial gunnery and aerobatics school to relieve congestion at North Island. Major East completed flight training at the Army Signal Corps Station, Rockwell Field on North Island before flying over the front lines in France during World War I. He was killed in an auto accident in 1918 while in command of Mitchel Field in New York at the age of 25. From 1918 to 1919, pilots flying the Curtiss JN-4D Jenny trained at East Field. After World War I the military maintained control of East Field for touch and go landings and radio controlled target drone experiments. In 1943, the U.S. Navy took over the airfield and changed the name to NAAS Otay Mesa; later that year the name was changed again to NAAS Brown Field in honor of Commander Melville S. Brown, USN, who was killed in the crash of F2F-1, BuNo 9660 near Descanso, CA on 2 November 1936. CDR Brown was the Commanding Officer of the USS Truxtun (DD-229) when the ship was commissioned in 1921, and was Executive Officer of the aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV-2) at the time of his death. Between 1943 and 1946, the U.S. Army Air Forces, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps used NAAS Brown Field