Dan Driscoll, the former venture capitalist who is serving as Army secretary, is overseeing a massive effort to get the newest and latest technology into the hands of soldiers, shredding the bureaucracies that have long extended and complicated the process.The effort is a part of the department’s mission to increase the production and capacity of the defense industrial base, both in response to the autonomous and artificial intelligence revolutions as well as the realities of current U.S. stockpiles of critical munitions and reduced readiness to the heavy tempo of operations under the Trump administration.His newest announcement came on Friday, when he shared that moving forward, defense companies can request to use one of five Army ranges to test their systems out, and the Army will give them that access within 30 days. Previously, it could take 12-18 months to get into a range.
Now, defense companies looking to use a U.S. military range for testing can go to testrange.army.mil, and there will be a team of concierges ready to help them get scheduled. Notably, companies do not have a military contract to request time.“This is a different way of doing this,” Driscoll told reporters. “It used to be you have to fight through the bureaucracy again and again and again and again, just to get to the range to try to build a thing that can help soldiers.”The five ranges that can now be reserved are: Dugway Proving Ground in Utah; West Cibola Range, a newly opened component of Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona; Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center in Mississippi; Camp Grayling Joint Maneuver Training Center in Michigan; and the Multidomain Training Area range complex, a component of the Africa Multidomain Training and Experimentation Center, in Morocco. Each facility has its own specialties for testing.“It is, as of this exact moment in time, we will not miss the 30-day goal,” Driscoll said. “So, and this should be again, when you’re kind of processing why does this matter, this is good government. We can just choose to not have to wait 12-18 months for these companies to get to ranges. We can choose to care enough. Under Secretary of War [Pete Hegseth], he has empowered us to break through the regulations that are stopping this. This is not a first-principle problem like gravity that we’re trying to overcome that required some sort of scientific innovation. We just had to get out of our own way, and so the 30-day clock starts today.”Covenant Industries became the first company to utilize the new program an tested a new cruise missile at the missile test range in Morocco. Abby Denburg, an executive with Covenant, said it “demonstrated not only the performance of the Anthem missile but also a repeatable pathway now available to every company.”Driscoll said the Army aims to “break down every single barrier that we have put up over the last 20 or 30 years.”Army Secretary Dan Driscoll pilots a first-person view drone during a demonstration on March 11, 2026, at Fort Riley, Kansas. The demonstration provided Driscoll an opportunity to observe emerging small unmanned aircraft capabilities and better understand how soldiers are employing commercially inspired technologies to enhance training and readiness. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Amanda McLean)
