Photo By Mark Schauer | Held at U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) for the second consecutive year, the 2024...... read more read more
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The work done at U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) in 2024 is having real-world impact today-- and will influence modernization and Army doctrine for years to come.
From hosting the Experimental Demonstration Gateway Event (EDGE) to tests of the Next Generation Squad Weapon and the German Bundeswehr’s G95 rifle, YPG remained at the forefront of Army transformation efforts all year.
Army senior leaders say the nation is at an inflection point and that successful deterrence against near-peer adversaries with the ability to conduct large-scale combat operations will require autonomous capability and leveraging of other new technologies across all of the Department of Defense’s military branches.
Earlier this year, the Experimental Demonstration Gateway Event (EDGE) 24 conducted intense natural environment experimentation at YPG for the second consecutive year. The top leadership of AFC’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) CFT were pleased with the support they received from scores of YPG personnel.
“YPG was essential for us to have the simulated threat array to conduct the experiment in at echelon that would replicate an enemy capability that we would potentially face in the future,” said Brig. Gen Cain Baker, FVL CFT Director. “YPG has the air space that allows us to operate at the distances we need and the instrumentation to collect the data to inform our requirements from an analytical standpoint.”
EDGE 24 was deliberately smaller in scale than previous iterations of the event and focused on autonomous collaborative behaviors of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), launched effects (LE), and unmanned ground vehicles.
“The Yuma personnel have once again knocked it out of the park,” said Baker. “Our industry partners have already reached the objectives we set for them in the first week.”
YPG has long been on the cutting edge of developmental and operational testing of new airdrop capabilities, and in 2024 conducted a complex test to expand the effectiveness of currently-fielded cargo parachutes by helping them function at higher altitudes to protect pilots from ground fire.
“The main goal of the test is to increase the capability, to drop at a higher altitude to have a higher offset from whatever location you are trying to drop to,” said Ervin Rosales, Air Delivery test engineer. “We’re testing on all currently-fielded parachutes, everything from G12s that come down on drogue and then open up to systems like the JPADS.”
Flying at altitudes typically used by commercial airliners required additional considerations: it is harder for an aircraft to make a turn in the air density at the higher altitude, so approach paths were carefully delineated before the drops. The testers also had to collect data on safety systems prior to beginning of the test.
“There are new hazards to this,” said Rosales. “We’ve had multiple safety boards to get our eyes on the technology and set parameters in order to mitigate those potential hazards.”
The sophisticated rigging configurations necessary for the test bundles and new parachute configurations largely depended on the expertise of the soldiers and civilian personnel from YPG’s Airborne Test Force. In some cases, wholly different methods were required.
“In most cases this is the first time that the parachutes are being dropped from that altitude, so everything we are collecting is new data,” said Rosales. “We’re seeing if they open properly, what descent rates they have, the effects of the larger opening shock on the loads since the air density is different. Each parachute has a maximum and a minimum weight, so we’re trying to verify that everything between those ends works.”
From Korea to Afghanistan, the lives of American Soldiers have frequently depended on properly functioning equipment in inhospitably frigid environments. This fact led to a multiweek test of the Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) at the U.S. Army Arctic Regions Test Center (ARTC) at Fort Greely, Alaska this year.
The XM7 and XM250 are successors to the M4 rifle and M249 light machine gun that American forces have used for decades. The new weapons boast improved accuracy and range, weigh less, and fire with less recoil even though it’s 6.8-millimeter (mm) round is larger than the two legacy weapons’ 5.56 mm cartridge.
“The big idea behind this weapon is for close-combat forces,” said Test Officer Steven Prewitt. “It’s a capability gap-filler for infantry and special forces, not necessarily an M4 replacement. It gives them a different tool.”
Even when outfitted with a flash suppressor, the XM7 weighs less than 10 pounds. The new weapon has a standard rifle scope with an etched reticle, but also much more.
“It has adjustable modes of operation where it can act like a red dot or close combat optic,” said Prewitt. “It also has a corrected aimpoint: it has a ballistic calculator and range finder built in, so if you range a target it takes into consideration your environmental conditions, the distance to target, and the attitude of the weapon to ensure first shot accuracy.”
Soldiers from the Army’s 11th Airborne stationed at Alaska’s Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson supported the testing. Extreme cold was a coveted commodity for this test, and the weather forecast delivered beyond the highest hopes of the testers.
“The Soldiers really got to experience what a long, cold day was,” said Isaac Howell, Test Operations Division Chief. “Every day they went out one week it didn’t get above -20. The next week it was hovering in the -30 to -40 range all day, every day.”
American military policy has evolved to emphasize the Asia-Pacific region in recent years, and tropical locales are home to more than half of the world’s population, comprising nearly 40% of the planet’s land surface.
The necessity of testing equipment in these conditions is just as clear to the United States’ North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) partners. The Bundeswehr, the armed forces of Germany, has tested a variety of equipment at YPG and its constituent test centers in the past decade, from the PzH 2000 155mm howitzer to the MG 5 machine gun and G29 sniper rifle. This year, the Bundeswehr returned to test both variants of its recently adopted G95 assault rifle in the desert of Yuma, followed by testing at a Panamanian facility frequently utilized by U.S. Army Tropic Regions Test Center (TRTC).
The G95 is based on Heckler and Koch’s HK416A8, chambered for 5.56 NATO ammunition in both a 16.5- inch barrel rifle and 14-inch barrel carbine. The pistol grip, trigger guard, and cheekpiece of the weapons are slightly different from the civilian model.
For the tropical portion of the testing, 55 German soldiers spent two wet and extremely humid weeks on the ground in Panama utilizing a firing range and muddy jungle trail that traversed two creeks flowing beneath a triple canopy of vegetation, bordered with large trees bearing thorny vines and tall grasses. The trail contained pop-up and stationary targets as the soldiers conducted mock patrols as part of their simulated missions that put the weapons under test through their paces.
“The jungle trail and its tactical targets were outstanding,” said Sgt. Maj. Ernest Tretow of the Bundeswehr. “We tested the new night vision goggles inside the jungle trail at night and utilized the trail for live firing in the daylight.”
| Date Taken: | 12.23.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 12.23.2024 08:40 |
| Story ID: | 486655 |
| Location: | YUMA PROVING GROUND, ARIZONA, US |
| Web Views: | 86 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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