These days, however, it’s time to rethink what we know about one of the largest and perhaps most secretive military installations in the nation. Dugway has, with little fanfare, moved to the vanguard of our country’s defense apparatus.
On one front, Dugway is now one of the most important counterterrorism training facilities in the nation, and it’s not only soldiers who are training there. Municipal police and civilian defense contractors of the sort that have risen to prominence in Iraq receive training at the post. Some of these personnel are from foreign governments counted as U.S. allies.
On another front, Dugway has become an important training site for troops being deployed to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, which has become our nation’s main battlefront overseas. The west desert’s vastness and mountainous terrain allow for everything from large-scale armored divisions to constructing mock Taliban compounds to practice cross-cultural diplomacy and village reconstruction. That was illustrated last spring when native Afghans were contracted to help provide a simulation of the type of rural warfare-cum-reconstruction scenarios soldiers are currently facing in the AfPak region.
Last week, a Dugway spokeswoman announced that the installation would like to expand its nearly 800,000-acre territory to accommodate increased interest in training there. The expansion bid is clearly tied to Dugway’s rising stock in the global — not just national — defense community.
While we would need to see the particulars of any expansion deal to weigh up what public areas might be lost, we back Dugway’s bid to expand on principle. Increasing the installation’s prominence even further can only be good for our nation’s defenses and the future of our county’s largest employer.
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