Nineteen months after taking his giant leap for mankind, in February 1971 the Apollo 11 commander visited YPG to witness testing of the AH-56 Cheyenne attack helicopter, where he was joined by then-congressman Lucien Nedzi (right) of Michigan.
Though the AH-56 was cancelled by the Army the following year, the program was a boon to aviation testing at YPG, as it brought about the construction of a substantial amount of infrastructure like laser and optical tracking sites.
YPG has done testing for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) since 1966, when the mobility test article (MTA), a precursor to the lunar rover, came here for engineer design evaluations. VIEW ORIGINAL
This year, the same aircraft used in 2018 returned to YPG, albeit with some differences. The Zephyr crew labored at YPG since late last year utilizing test flight vehicles constructed at 30% scale of the actual Zephyr and an instrumented full-sized aircraft that flew 18 days over YPG collecting data prior to the most recent record-setting flight. VIEW ORIGINAL
YTB engineers also developed the cantilevered delivery system for the more versatile and robust Bailey Bridge, which enabled Soldiers to construct the bridge on the friendly side of a gap and push it across before engaging the enemy. By the end of the war, Allied combat engineers had erected thousands of these temporary bridges as retreating Axis forces destroyed permanent bridges behind them. VIEW ORIGINAL
The year is 1949.
The United States is four years past victory in World War II.
Thanks to the heroic efforts of 16 million American Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines, the nation is safe from the aggression of hateful adversaries across each ocean.
At Yuma Test Branch during the war, engineers used the Laguna Dam to rapidly test and field thousands of pontoon bridges adequate to modern mechanized warfare.
Meanwhile, at Camp Laguna and nearly a dozen other sites across the Arizona and California deserts, 20 divisions of Soldiers had trained in general Geroge S. Patton’s Desert Maneuver Area, rationed to two quarts of water a day. Two of the divisions hit the shore at Normandy on D-Day, and 10 of the divisions of the 20 went on to liberate concentration camps in Europe.
The nation was safe. It was time to demobilize and enjoy post-war freedom and prosperity. Yuma Test Branch wasn’t needed any longer-- it was shuttered.
And then, in June 1950, a new war began.
Communist North Korea suddenly invaded free South Korea. In September, General Douglas MacArthur led a United Nations force in a daring amphibious landing at Inchon. By November, the North Korean invaders had been pushed back nearly to North Korea’s border with China.
The weather was brutally cold. The uniforms the American forces had were not suitable for the frigid conditions. Their rations froze to the point of being inedible. Then, an American force of about 30,000 near the Chosin Reservoir was attacked by a Chinese force four times as large.
The weather got worse. Rifle bolts froze shut in the most desperate moments of combat. Tank treads froze to the ground.
Against all odds, the Americans made a successful fighting withdrawal south across two grueling weeks of some of the most intense combat in the history of warfare.
What if their equipment had been up to the extreme conditions?
What if their equipment had been tested in a natural environment before their lives depended on it?
‘What if’ was a painful question America’s armed forces never wanted to face again.
Yuma Test Branch reopened as Yuma Test Station in 1951. A new name. A greatly expanded mission. One that has continued every year since.
It would be shorter to describe what the proving ground didn’t test in the following decades. If a Soldier drove, fired, or wore it, most likely it came here before it entered their hands.
As a multi-purpose test center that took on the lion’s share of the nation’s artillery testing, it was always a majority civilian post, with engineers and technicians busy testing numerous pieces of artillery and armored vehicles in the rugged desert.
In 1958, the Airborne Test Force, the Army’s most elite active-duty experts in all manner of cargo and personnel parachutes, was stood up here.
In 1963, the post got a new name: U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground (YPG). And across the long years in Vietnam, YPG’s personnel kept up the test mission. Virtually all the weaponry you can think of.
There was even more than that, though. In 1966, the highest-ever artillery shot took place at YPG. At the same time, NASA was testing the mobility test article, precursor to the lunar rover, across the rugged ranges.
In 1971, the aircraft armament testing mission permanently relocated from Aberdeen Proving Ground to Yuma Proving Ground. The nation’s first prototype and fielded attack helicopters got their potent compliment of weaponry thanks to the efforts of Yuma Proving Ground’s testers.
Around that same time, the post’s engineers were testing a network of satellites that came to be called the Global Positioning System.
The core components of the Army that roared to rapid victory in Desert Storm: the Apache attack helicopter, the M1 Abrams main battle tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, all proved their mettle here before Soldiers needed them there. In those years, a tread on an Abrams or Bradley might last hundreds of miles. After long testing at YPG, their life expectancy is now measured in thousands of miles.
The Soviet Union fell. The Cold War ended. In the early 1990s, the economy was in recession. Did America really need to invest as much as it did in its armed forces? Across the nation, bases were realigned and closed. People wondered if Yuma Proving Ground’s story was nearing an end.
And then, once again, the world changed. Terror visited the homeland in unprecedented fashion. Towers fell. The epicenter of America’s military was attacked.
The Global War on Terror was going to be a new kind of warfare. Irregular. American forces were targeted with improvised explosive devices rigged up by insurgents. Their power against unarmored and under-armored vehicles was deadly to American forces inside. YPG personnel worked 60- and 70-hour weeks, in some years on every day except Christmas, to rapidly test and field jamming devices for remote triggers and new armored vehicles with blast-diffusing V-shaped hulls. Their efforts saved the lives of thousands of U.S. Soldiers, and the limbs of thousands more.
And during those same years, guided artillery projectiles were tested and fielded. The punishing power of the King of Battle could be delivered with near pinpoint accuracy, sparing civilians while taking the fight directly to the enemy’s own hideaways.
Today, near-peer adversaries loom across the ocean. The United States isn’t going to be caught off guard this time. In 2018, the Army formed the Army Futures Command tasked with preparing for all comers in this multi-domain new world, and Yuma Proving Ground remains at the forefront of the constant effort to defend the nation. We hosted the first two iterations of Project Convergence, the annual capstone of Army Futures Command’s campaign of learning, the second of which was the largest single capabilities demonstration in the Army of the preceding 15 years.
YPG hosts the Experimental Demonstration gateway Event making the Army’s next-generation combat helicopter and the Joint Counter UAS Office’s semi-annual demonstration to fight and defeat small adversary unmanned aircraft.
The fight is more complex then ever, but Yuma Proving Ground is bringing its best to the nation’s defense. Machine learning and AI is being utilized to drive major efficiency gains in our testing.
For as long as the United States has a military, and for as long as America wants their Soldiers’ weapons and equipment to work as it should, the work of this post will remain vital and necessary to our national defense.
Eight decades. Soldiers. Civilians. Contractors. One team. One fight. For now and always, the story continues.
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