As Army Col. John Rooney pointed out features on five armored vehicles being tested at Aberdeen Proving Ground, an experimental cannon fired in the distance with a thunderous boom.
Rooney points in one direction where several miles away a submarine was being tested, “and that’s all I can tell you about that,” he said. He points in another direction where a series of hills tests the drivetrain of all military vehicles.
“There are people on this installation who have no clue what we do here,” said Rooney, commander of the Army’s Aberdeen Testing Center.
Rooney and other officials gave The Examiner a very limited tour of the 125-square-mile testing grounds Monday — most details were withheld for “security reasons,” officials said.
The testing center is isolated from the rest of the proving ground.
As the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to wage on, ATC performs 120 tests a day on boots, uniforms, rifles, tanks, helicopters and cannons.
“Anything a soldier touches, rides in or fires, we test it here at Aberdeen,” said James Johnson, executive director of the Army’s Development Test Command, which oversees ATC and six other testing grounds in the United States.
One of the items being tested at ATC is the mine resistant ambush protected vehicles, or MRAPs, a heavily armored vehicle developed 18 months ago to protect service members from improvised explosive devices.
There are five versions of the MRAP, each made by a different manufacturer, and ATC is conducting tests to determine which vehicle is the best for combat situations, officials said.
The vehicles have V-shaped chasis to divert blasts away from its occupants. Its sheer mass with optional extra armor plating is aimed at surviving improvised explosive device attacks, Rooney said.
The goal now is to make the massive vehicle lighter keeping its strength, officials said.
ATC puts vehicles through many tests, measuring its armor against attacks, engine endurance and suspension systems.
Earlier this year, officials were critical of the slowness of deploying MRAPs. Rooney said 8,000 of the vehicles were in theater, and 4,000 were in the pipeline.
Meanwhile, the Department of Defense announced Monday three soldiers died this past week in two separate incidents where a vehicle was struck by an IED.
“What we do can’t be guess work,” he said. “It’s a balance between rapid development and safety. We get to know the safety limitations. We can test all we want, but it will do no one good if we test forever and not move it to the front.
“It’s tough to defend against everything.”
Johnson said ATC will soon be testing a new military vehicle aimed at replacing the Humvee. The center also does testing for other military branches and the federal Department of Homeland Security.
Rooney said he makes it a point for each of the center’s 2,000 employees to go to Iraq or Afghanistan as a way to motivate his workforce.
“Either they’ve been there or have people they know there, and it hits home,” he said.
“They see that what we are doing directly affects those people fighting over there.”
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