As the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea becomes a hot spot between the Philippines and China, stability and defense in the First and Second Island Chains is an absolute must for deterrence. The United States and its Indo-Pacific Allies and partners in and around the Pacific require mass and a greater modernized foundation of defensive capabilities to deter China, help maintain stability throughout the region, and defend their national security. 

To rapidly deploy new defensive capabilities with the urgency demanded by combatant commands is directly dependent on our test range development and ability to validate live fire and utilize a joint virtual trainer and planner. The United States has many ranges that span from the Pacific to the Atlantic and in between. They cover huge swaths of land and water and have air corridors where they fly missiles connecting the ranges over great distances. The more capable the ranges are in telemetry gathering the more effective they are in measurement and hence faster development. The prominent ranges for kinetic and non-kinetic effects of missile defense are:

White Sands Missile Range

• Home to a variety of testing facilities such as the Aerial Cable Range, White Sands Solar Furnace, and many others
• Supported the testing of the world’s first atomic weapons
• 3,421 sq. miles can be expanded to 7,569 of restricted airspace during tests

Aberdeen Proving Ground

• Lead DoD organization for land-combat and direct-fire testing
• Has conducted testing for the Army since 1918, controls 72,000 acres

China Lake 

• Home of the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division
• Single largest land holding by the US Navy at 1,100,000 acres 

Pacific Missile Range Facility 

• Located on and around Hawaii, providing a wide and encroached space for testing MD
• Host Aegis Combat Ship Qualification Training range
• 1,100 miles of underwater range and 42,000 sq. miles of controlled airspace

Nellis AFB

• Largest contiguous air and ground military testing space in the free world
• 2.9 million acres, with 5,000 sq. miles of restricted airspace

Dugway Proving Grounds 

• Remote facility allows for the testing specifically around chemical, biological, and nuclear survivability
• At 800,000 acres it is larger than the state of Rhode Island, and 90 miles south of Salt Lake City

Kwajalein Test Range

• Located near the equator providing for efficient launches to equatorial orbits
• Situated strategically to observe foreign and low-inclination launches
• Isolated location permits full spectrum of MD systems to be operated
• 750,000 sq. miles of sea and airspace for testing

Kodiak Launch Complex

• Provides low-cost access to polar orbits for testing
• 3,200 Acres in Alaska, US’s only full-service high latitude launch complex

Western Range

• Headquartered at Vandenberg Space Force Base
• Provides launch support for national security, commercial space launches and DoD missile tests
• 16,000 acre spaceport with many thousands of additional sq. miles of protected sea and airspace, and capable of long range test launches to Kwajalein Test Range 4,800 miles away

McGregor Range

• Artillery testing and training facility located adjacent to White Sands
• 1,119,700 Acres across Texas and New Mexico

Point Mugu

• Home of the Pt. Mugu Sea Range and the Navy’s electronic warfare cetner
• Enormous geographic diversity: vast ocean, deep water ports, protected islands within restricted air space of 36,000 square-miles

Live, virtual, and constructive training is not something new. There is no substitute for developing, testing and proving new integrated missile defense systems in live fire intercepts, providing confidence and reliability to the end user- the war fighter. As the newly appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General CQ Brown stated “We must accelerate change”. Virtual trainer and planning simulation labs testing and war gaming in parallel across multiple domains and locations can provide an idea of how a system may work and integrate. Only a live flight test can emulate the complex conditions necessary to develop effective command and control, sensor and intercept systems. 

These Test Ranges on new and current systems exponentially reduce risk and accelerate rapid deployment. Repetitive failure on the road to initial operational capability is integral to success. The new systems must be placed in extreme conditions and push their technical envelopes. This commitment to testing has a tremendous historical track record on our most challenging systems from going to the moon to ICBMS to Missile Defense. 

These test ranges must have the best telemetry and sensors to accurately measure new capabilities from Hypersonics to Directed Energy Lasers. These test ranges must also have sanctuary from being spied upon from our near peers of China and Russia, as well as nefarious actors. Unauthorized drones and balloons crossing the Borders must not be tolerated and we must develop defensive capabilities to counter them in authority, sensoring, and negating on those Test ranges near our borders no different than how we execute in our forward operating bases overseas. These counter-UAS systems are being actively operationally deployed in our forward operational bases. Having Chinese drones launched from Mexican cartel land crossing our borders and Chinese balloons breaching United States airspace and freely flying across our homeland collecting technical testing data is as unacceptable as Chinese balloon’s flying over our homeland. 

The comprehensive effort to integrate air and missile defense for the United States Homeland requires a sense of urgency and can no longer be a sole service responsibility or a sole service planner. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) was originally designed to do this, and the Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense Office (JIAMDO) was formed to advise the Joint Chiefs of Staff on coordinating air and missile defense capabilities. Due to a lack of authority, policy, and/or decision making, neither have been able to gather all the exact effects and integrate all existing sensors, shooters, and C2 across all Domains across all the 5 Service existing capabilities to defend together jointly against the entire missile threat arsenal of Counter Drones, UAVs, Cruise Missile Defense, Ballistic Missile Defense, and Hyper Sonic Glide Defense. Each of these service systems are stovepiped for classification and thus the actual planning layout of what can be maximized for full defense is not being materialized. 

Now is the time for unity of command and a single agency responsible. Leveraging the Department of Defense Ranges and the technical capabilities of each is paramount. Doing so will allow for further development of existing and future missile defense capabilities needed to defend the homeland.