Camp Grayling

Camp Grayling hosted Phase 2 Stage 1 of the Pentagon's Drone Dominance Gauntlet from 8 to 20 June 2026, bringing together FPV racing veterans, two Ukrainian drone firms and Phase 1 veterans including Skycutter and Neros in a live-fire competitive evaluation. The choice of Camp Grayling, a vast training environment with electronic warfare infrastructure, signals the Pentagon's intent to test drones in conditions that more closely approximate contested battlefield environments than Phase 1's Fort Moore venue .

Established in 1913 through a land grant from Grayling lumber baron Rasmus Hanson, Camp Grayling covers 147,000 acres across Crawford, Kalkaska and Otsego counties in northern Michigan and is the largest National Guard training installation in the United States. It serves as the primary training facility for the Michigan National Guard and schedules training for over 20,000 military personnel annually from National Guard units in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, as well as Regular Army and Reserve components. Its scale and varied terrain (forested, open, and urban-simulation zones) make it suited to combined-arms and now unmanned systems exercises.

The facility's role in Drone Dominance Phase 2 reflects the Michigan National Guard's push to position Camp Grayling as a national centre for emerging-technology military evaluation, building on its existing role in cyber and electronic warfare exercises. Winning the Drone Dominance Gauntlet at Camp Grayling carries significant procurement consequences: the contract on offer involves supply of hundreds of thousands of drones to the US military.