Army designates 2 additional ‘permissive’ sites for commercial vendors to test their drone and counter-drone tech
The Army designated Camp Atterbury Joint Maneuver Training Center and Muscatatuck Training Center as “premier, permissive sites available for commercial testing” of drone and counter-drone systems, the service announced Wednesday.
The move is part of a broader Army initiative to facilitate vendor access to test ranges as the service races to add new unmanned aerial systems and counter-UAS tools to its arsenal.
The Camp Atterbury Joint Maneuver Training Center and Muscatatuck Training Center are both located in Indiana.
Other locations with test ranges that fall under the initiative include Camp Grayling in Michigan, Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, Arizona’s West Cibola Range, Camp Shelby in Mississippi, and the Africa Multidomain Training and Experimentation Center (AMTEC) in Morocco.
Prior to his resignation as Army secretary, Dan Driscoll pushed to make it easier for vendors to get access to Army locations where they can put their technologies through their paces.
“Sometimes it can take 12 to 18 months for a company that wants to go test the thing that can make a soldier’s life better, that can increase their lethality, and that can keep them safer,” Driscoll said in August. “That is not sufficient.”
Acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle, who was appointed to his position after Driscoll’s departure, announced the additions to the Army’s Permissive Test Range Expansion Initiative on Wednesday.
“The sites selected for inclusion provide specialized capabilities to facilitate drone and counter-drone testing. Camp Atterbury offers more than 34,000 acres of secure space with a dedicated restricted airspace corridor up to 40,000 feet. The Muscatatuck Training Center is a 1,000-acre developmental testing site featuring configurable urban infrastructure, which allows testing of drone and counter-drone navigation and tracking systems within complex physical and structural layouts,” officials wrote in a press release.
Vendors can request access to the sites at Atterbury, Muscatatuck, or other locations that are part of the initiative via an online portal: testrange.army.mil. Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) has created a so-called “concierge team” to assist companies with the scheduling process.
“Once a request is submitted, the dedicated ATEC private industry concierge team will work with the vendor and Indiana National Guard to coordinate testing schedules and requirements,” officials wrote in the press release.
“While submitting a request does not guarantee a vendor’s desired location or timeline due to capacity limits, the concierge team will work closely with all applicants to find suitable testing locations and windows,” per the release.
