Michael Army Airfield (MAAF) is a military

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial Aviation, air transport. They usually consist of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surf ...

located at the

Dugway Proving Ground Dugway Proving Ground (DPG) is a United States Army facility established in 1942 to test biological and chemical weapons, located about southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah and south of the Utah Test and Training Range. Location Dugway Provin ...

and owned by the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

. It is west of the proving grounds barracks at Dugway, Tooele County,

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

, United States.

Overview

Michael Army Airfield is located in a secluded, distant location and the secretive nature of its missions are generally undisclosed by the Army. Built by the Army during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, as Dugway Army Airfield, the facility is located in the Dugway Proving Ground which is one of the Army's main facilities for developing defenses against biological and chemical attacks. Workers at Dugway test defense gear to make sure they can survive nuclear, biological and chemical attacks. MAAF is located just south of

Hill Air Force Base Hill Air Force Base is a major U.S. Air Force (USAF) base located in Davis County, Utah, just south of the city of Ogden, and bordering the Cities of Layton, Clearfield, Riverdale, Roy, and Sunset with its largest border immediately adja ...

's massive Utah Test and Training Range, where

F-35 Lightning II The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is an American family of single-seat, single-engine, supersonic Stealth aircraft, stealth strike fighters. A multirole combat aircraft designed for both Air superiority fighter, air superiority and att ...

fighters from Hill train in air-to-air combat and the Air Force tests cruise missiles, and is used occasionally by the Air Force as an emergency landing field. It has been called the "new Area 51" by some, with the Dugway Proving Ground serving as a buffer zone, as the Nevada Test Site served for

Groom Lake Area 51 is the common name of a highly classified United States Air Force (USAF) facility within the Nevada Test and Training Range in southern Nevada, north-northwest of Las Vegas. A remote detachment administered by Edwards Air Force Ba ...

Projects

In the 1990s, MAAF was associated with the

NASA X-38 The X-38 is an experimental re-entry vehicle designed by NASA to research a possible emergency crew return vehicle (CRV) for the International Space Station (ISS). The 1995–2002 program also developed concepts for a crew return vehicle design ...

Crew Return Vehicle (CRV) program, for the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

. That program, however, was canceled in 2002 due to budget cuts. One frequently rumored test project is the

Lockheed Martin X-33 The Lockheed Martin X-33 was a proposed uncrewed, sub-scale technology demonstrator suborbital spaceplane that was developed for a period in the 1990s. The X-33 was a technology demonstrator for the VentureStar orbital spaceplane, which was pl ...

. It is undetermined if MAAF will be used in association with the

Boeing X-37 The Boeing X-37, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), is a reusable robotic spacecraft. It is boosted into space by a launch vehicle, re-enters Earth's atmosphere, and lands as a spaceplane. The X-37 is operated by the Department of th ...

Advanced Technology Demonstrator, the military derivative of the X-38, a classified project which was transferred from NASA to the

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

on 13 September 2004. In 2009, it was announced that Michael AAF will be used for the development and testing of

Unmanned Aircraft System An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or unmanned aircraft system (UAS), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft with no human pilot, crew, or passengers onboard, but rather is controlled remotely or is autonomous.De Gruyter Handbook of Drone ...

s (UAS), which are sent overseas to provide soldiers with an aerial view - via video feed - of combat situations.

Facilities

Michael AAF previously had a runway which was in poor condition. An FAA airport diagram effective January 2008 shows a 7,000 by runway (12/30) open parallel to the prior runway, but the diagram effective February 2009 shows a new 11,000 by runway is open in place of the original runway.FAA airport diagram, effective 14 February 2008
/ref> As of 2013, 1,000 feet of each end of the runway is designated as an "overrun," leaving only 10,000 feet available for takeoffs and landings in each direction.

References

External links

* Pappalardo, Joe (October 2009)
New Area 51: Mojave's Desert Outpost Holds Space Flight's Future
Popular Mechanics. * * {{US-airport-mil, DPG United States Army airfields Airports in Utah Buildings and structures in Tooele County, Utah Great Salt Lake Desert Transportation in Tooele County, Utah

Overview

Projects

Facilities

See also

References

External links