Key Factors
- The Military chosen Camp Grayling and the Nationwide All-Area Warfighting Heart in Michigan as considered one of 4 U.S. websites opened to personal trade drone testing.
- The Military will host a particular electromagnetic warfare check occasion at Camp Grayling in the course of the week of September 13, 2026, with quarterly repeats deliberate.
A patch of forest and lakeshore in northern Michigan has turn into probably the most essential items of actual property within the U.S. navy’s race to meet up with China on drone warfare.
Camp Grayling and the Nationwide All-Area Warfighting Heart, a sprawling navy coaching advanced in Michigan’s northern Decrease Peninsula, has been chosen by the Military as considered one of solely 4 websites nationwide the place non-public drone makers can now check their expertise instantly alongside the navy, U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, introduced Thursday.
The designation got here from the U.S. Military Take a look at and Analysis Command, the department of the Military chargeable for verifying that new gear really works earlier than troops depend on it in fight, working in partnership with the Michigan Nationwide Guard and U.S. Africa Command, the Pentagon’s regional command overseeing navy operations throughout the African continent. Collectively they chose Grayling as considered one of 5 premier navy check ranges worldwide, and considered one of 4 inside america, that are actually open to personal trade for what the Military describes as accelerated analysis, growth and fast experimentation on rising protection applied sciences, mainly small drones and the programs constructed to shoot them down.
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Slotkin, who has pushed for this designation alongside a bipartisan group of Michigan lawmakers, framed the announcement as a direct financial and strategic win for the state.
“This an essential win for Michigan, chosen as considered one of solely 4 websites nationwide, that helps our position in growing, testing and constructing new tech for the U.S. Military. Opening Camp Grayling to collaborate with non-public trade means producers, startups, and engineers – of all sizes — will get a direct line to the Military. It will deliver firms from throughout the nation to Michigan to check their programs towards the identical circumstances we’re seeing on the battlefield in Ukraine proper now. And so they’ll be doing it with American provide chains and American staff,” mentioned Slotkin.
The push to land this designation for Michigan didn’t occur in a single day. Slotkin, fellow Senator Gary Peters and Consultant Jack Bergman, together with the broader Michigan Congressional delegation, first made their case in a letter despatched to Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth on July 29, 2025, urging him to call the Nationwide All-Area Warfighting Heart as considered one of three new nationwide drone check websites the Pentagon had been ordered to determine. That letter, signed by senators and Home members from each events, argued the Michigan website already had a confirmed document operating drone testing throughout Train Northern Strike, the most important reserve forces coaching train within the nation, and pointed to a devoted 60-mile-long by 6-mile-wide (97-km by 10-km) drone hall set to open on the base. The lawmakers additionally cited the bottom’s scale as a promoting level, noting the middle spans almost 150,000 acres (61,000 hectares) of coaching land and controls roughly 17,000 sq. miles (44,000 sq. kilometers) of special-use navy airspace stretching out over Lake Huron, giving drone operators room to fly and check weapons that may be far too harmful or disruptive to attempt over populated areas.
Camp Grayling’s enchantment goes past sheer dimension. The lawmakers’ letter famous the vary affords year-round, all-weather testing throughout each area the navy now fights in, land, air, sea, cyber and area, permitting firms and the Military to pressure-test drones underneath circumstances starting from live-fire workout routines to contested digital warfare, the place an enemy jams or spoofs communications and navigation indicators. As a result of it operates as a Nationwide Guard base slightly than an active-duty set up, Michigan’s ranges additionally enable firms to hire area instantly on-site and get open entry to coaching areas for business drone testing, a flexibility the lawmakers argued makes the situation each cheaper and sooner to work with than comparable ranges elsewhere within the nation.
The Military is concurrently opening Dugway Proving Floor in Utah, the West Cibola Vary at Yuma Proving Floor in Arizona, Camp Shelby Joint Forces Coaching Heart in Mississippi and the African Multidomain Coaching and Experimentation Heart in Morocco to the identical type of private-sector entry, giving firms engaged on drones, counter-drone programs, long-range weapons and low-cost interceptors, cheaper options to costly missiles designed to knock small threats out of the sky, a menu of testing environments throughout totally different terrains and climates. Military Secretary Dan Driscoll solid the hassle as a direct assault on the bureaucratic hurdles which have traditionally saved smaller, newer firms from working with the navy in any respect.
“An organization with a good suggestion shouldn’t want a crew of attorneys and a program of document simply to show their gear works. So we fastened that. One entrance door — testrange.military.mil — an actual individual to stroll you in, and on the opposite aspect, all the pieces the fashionable battlefield calls for: contested airspace, degraded indicators and the area to check at actual scale,” mentioned Driscoll.
The Military has already scheduled its first main occasion underneath the brand new initiative, a specialised check in the course of the week of September 13, 2026 at Camp Grayling designed to simulate the type of degraded, jammed digital warfare setting American and Ukrainian forces have encountered on the battlefield in Ukraine, giving firms a uncommon probability to see whether or not their drones and counter-drone programs can really survive that type of interference slightly than simply carry out effectively in a clear laboratory setting. The Military mentioned it expects to repeat that type of occasion on a quarterly foundation going ahead, and firms trying to get entangled don’t want an present authorities contract or prior relationship with the Pentagon to request vary time by way of the newly launched on-line portal, testrange.military.mil, the place a devoted employees member is assigned to stroll every applicant by way of the scheduling course of.
