US Air Force considers opening test ranges to defense industry, following Army's lead

Earlier this year, the Army announced it was opening five of its military test ranges—four domestic and one overseas—to approved companies, a move designed to accelerate innovation and deliver weapons and technology to warfighters more quickly.

Now, the Air Force says it is considering a similar approach. During a forum hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies on Tuesday, the commander of the Air Force Test Center, Brig. Gen. Mark Massaro, stated that service leaders were "actively working with the Army" to understand how the concept could be applied.

"We're … looking at how the Army has opened up some of their ranges to commercial access and understanding what it is that we can do, on the Air Force side, to maybe move forward in that direction," Massaro said.

Massaro noted that the Air Force has held discussions with leaders from the Army Test and Evaluation Command to "understand where they have gone with their access to ranges … to open up opportunities for contractors." He added that during a previous posting as commander of the 96th Test Wing at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, he had worked with Air Force officials and contractors to arrange smaller-scale test range access for specific tests. That experience, he said, yielded "a lot of lessons" for how such an arrangement could work.

Security Concerns and Benefits

Massaro acknowledged the threat posed by adversaries gathering imagery from above—an existing and growing risk with the rise of drone incursions that such a move might exacerbate.

"We do understand that we have critical capabilities that we're testing and we need to protect them," Massaro said. "We do understand that there is a threat from an information security standpoint that we do pay attention to when we execute our tests, and we do work to design our processes and our ways of testing to account for that."

However, he emphasized that the advantages are also clear.

"Industry really is leading the way in a lot of ways on exploration and development, using their own internal research and development," Massaro said. "And allowing them the ability to gain access to capabilities like the ranges helps … them to accelerate that learning to a point when it may become a useful, relevant technology for our military to consider using … So to help them along that process in ways that we can through range or other assets, enable some of that work to help move the needle forward."

Army's Initiative as a Model

Former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll made the opening of service test ranges to industry a centerpiece of his efforts to eliminate barriers to industry and drive innovation efficiency. In a January interview with CBS, he described conditions that private companies could not easily replicate on their own, such as a range set up to imitate a Ukrainian battlefield and space to test anti-jamming and hypersonic weapons technology. He also stated that opening Army ranges would cut the traditional range test process from up to 18 months to as little as 30 days.

"A company with a good idea shouldn't need a team of lawyers and a program of record just to prove their equipment works," Driscoll said in an August statement announcing the range openings. "So we fixed that. One front door … a real person to walk you in, and on the other side, everything the modern battlefield demands: contested airspace, degraded signals and the space to test at real scale."

Army Ranges Now Open to Industry

The ranges the Army made available to industry via an online application portal include:

• Dugway Proving Ground, Utah
• West Cibola Range, part of Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona
• Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center, Mississippi
• Camp Grayling Joint Maneuver Training Center, Michigan
• Multidomain Training Area range complex, within the Morocco-based Africa Multidomain Training and Experimentation Center

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