U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground’s threat targets second to none
As the busiest test center in the Army, U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) evaluates virtually every piece of equipment a Soldier is likely to put their hands on.
The post’s personnel conduct this developmental testing in the natural environment in as realistic a manner as possible.
Using realistic threat targets are a critical aspect of this testing, and the U.S. Army's Threat Systems Management Office (TSMO) has long kept a large depository of foreign systems at YPG. From T-72 tanks to Scud Missile Launchers, American weapon systems can be tested against real adversary equipment they are likely to encounter in battle.
“We’re the largest primary operators for TSMO, which is a great advantage,” said Carlos Molina, YPG test officer. “It saves a lot in transportation costs to our customers because they are located here.”
The Threat Systems yard of YPG’s Sensor Branch consists of mechanics, welders, and fabricators. Molina worked for the section for 17 years and has extensive experience with both sides of the branch’s activity. The branch assists in all aspects of testing, including things like supplying moving targets.
“They support remote control operations of tracked and wheeled vehicles, from tanks to motorcycles,” Molina said. “They can instrument any vehicle to make it autonomous for a live fire event.”
Maintaining vintage foreign equipment never utilized by the American military with engine components and gauges labeled in foreign languages is an advanced task that takes years of institutional knowledge to practice.
“This is a unique group of people,” Molina said. “The community of people that can operate and sustain foreign vehicles is small. It’s hard to find people that can work and troubleshoot these types of systems.”
In addition to being utilize in multiple major test events at Yuma Test Center, from Project Convergence 2020 and 2021 to the Experimental Demonstration Gateway Event and Combined Focused Warfighting Experiment, they are also utilized at YPG’s other natural environment test centers, Arctic Regions Test Center (ARTC) at Fort Greely, Alaska, and the Tropic Regions Test Center (TRTC) that conducts jungle environment testing on leased land in Central and South America.
“This group maintains and operates a lot of the instrumentation used locally at YPG but also support a lot of safari operations at TRTC and ARTC and other military branches,” Molina said.
In addition to providing threat targets for YPG’s test mission, the branch has long supported realistic training for things like the Marine Corps’ twice-annual weapons and tactics instructor course at MCAS-Yuma.
“This section doesn’t only support YPG test, they have projects for off-site support of the Marine Corps and Navy,” said Molina. “We support MCAS-Yuma with steel targets and radar maintenance.”
In the event a test requires a system that isn’t available in the inventory, the branch can fabricate stunningly realistic full-scale replicas of military vehicles, self-propelled howitzers, and air defense guns complete with simulated heat signatures.
“They are very creative,” said Molina. “Any time customers have requirements for a vehicle we don’t have in our inventory, we’ll provide the option of building a surrogate. There are times where customers will want a thermal package for it, which we can also provide.”
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