Army adds Indiana's Camp Atterbury and Muscatatuck to its permissive test ranges for commercial drone and counter-drone vendors

· Drones

TLDR

  • The Army added Camp Atterbury and Muscatatuck in Indiana to its Permissive Test Range Expansion Initiative on 28 October.123
  • Atterbury offers more than 34,000 acres and restricted airspace up to 40,000 feet; Muscatatuck is a 1,000-acre urban site.12
  • Vendors request access through testrange.army.mil; a request does not guarantee a location or timeline.123

Acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle announced on 28 October, at the Northeast Indiana Defense Summit in Fort Wayne, that Camp Atterbury Joint Maneuver Training Center and Muscatatuck Training Center are now "premier, permissive sites available for commercial testing", through a partnership between the Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) and the Indiana National Guard.1 The Army says Camp Atterbury has more than 34,000 acres of secure space with a dedicated restricted airspace corridor up to 40,000 feet, while Muscatatuck is a 1,000-acre developmental testing site with configurable urban infrastructure for testing drone and counter-drone navigation and tracking in complex layouts.1

Commercial vendors can request access through the Army's portal, testrange.army.mil, and an ATEC "concierge team" works with the vendor and the Indiana National Guard on schedules; the Army says capacity limits mean a request does not guarantee the desired location or timeline.12 DefenseScoop lists the other sites under the initiative as 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 in Morocco, and recalls that former Army secretary Dan Driscoll said in August that vendor access to Army test locations "can take 12 to 18 months".2 Stars and Stripes says the Army announced the first five ranges in August.3

Why it matters: the Army is widening commercial access to ranges with restricted airspace and an urban test site for drone and counter-drone trials, but the sources give no data on vendor requests or approval times.123

Sources

  1. Army expands test range initiative to Indiana National Guard sites, boosting commercial drone testing options (U.S. Army)
  2. Army designates 2 additional 'permissive' sites for commercial vendors to test their drone and counter-drone tech (DefenseScoop)
  3. Army expands commercial weapons testing access to 2 Indiana training centers (Stars and Stripes)