US Air Force, Army eye industry access on test ranges

Earlier this year, the Army announced it was opening five of its military test ranges – four domestic and one overseas – to approved companies in a move designed to speed innovation and get weapons and tech to the warfighter faster. Now, the Air Force says it’s considering a similar move. In a forum hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies on Tuesday, the commander of the Air Force Test Center, Brig. Gen. Mark Massaro, said service leaders were “actively working with the Army” to understand how they could apply the concept. “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. The Air Force, he said, has had discussions with leaders from Army Test and Evaluation Command to “understand where they have gone with their access to ranges … to open up opportunities for contractors,” he said. He added that in a previous posting as commander of the 96th Test Wing at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., he had worked with Air Force officials and contractors to arrange smaller-scale test range access for specific tests. That experience, he said, had yielded “a lot of lessons” for how the arrangement could work. He acknowledged the threat from 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 capa…