Mentioned:No public companies identified
The Air Force is actively working with the Army to understand how to open military test ranges to approved industry contractors. The move, modeled on an Army program that cut testing timelines from 18 months to 30 days, aims to accelerate validation of weapons and advanced technologies at operational scale.
What's happening
- Air Force Test Center commander Brig. Gen. Mark Massaro said the service is actively working with the Army to apply the concept of opening ranges to commercial access.
- The Army opened 5 test ranges to industry this year: 4 domestic locations including Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, Camp Shelby in Mississippi, and Camp Grayling in Michigan, plus one overseas facility in Morocco.
- The Army's program compressed the traditional range test process from up to 18 months to as little as 30 days through a single online application portal with dedicated personnel.
- Massaro cited prior experience at Eglin Air Force Base arranging smaller-scale test range access for specific contractor tests and said that work yielded lessons for broader expansion.
Why it matters
- Opening ranges to industry reduces barriers to validation of emerging technologies like anti-jamming and hypersonic weapons without lengthy regulatory approval processes.
- Accelerated testing timelines allow private companies to move capabilities from development to military consideration faster, enabling the armed services to evaluate commercial innovation at scale.
- The initiative addresses capacity bottlenecks by leveraging existing military range infrastructure that companies cannot replicate internally, particularly contested airspace and degraded-signal environments.
Going deeper
- Former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who championed the range-opening initiative, described ranges configured to replicate contested environments such as a Ukrainian battlefield setting.
- Massaro acknowledged that adversary imagery collection from space poses a growing security risk that the Air Force must account for through process design and operational security measures.
The intrigue
- The Air Force must balance the innovation acceleration benefit of industry range access against the risk that expanded contractor presence and activities could provide adversaries with intelligence on critical capabilities under development.
The fine print
- The Air Force has not yet formally opened ranges to industry; Massaro stated the service is still in the exploration phase and actively working with Army leadership to understand implementation mechanics.
- Any Air Force range-opening initiative remains contingent on designing security protocols and operational procedures that protect classified testing and development programs.
Source: Defense News · Oct 8, 2026 · Drafted with Claude, reviewed by Industrial Base Alpha.
