The road curves to the left and really isn’t that long, but it doesn’t seem to stop. The signs on the fences denote a restricted area and can pique one’s interest. And then, finally, at the dead end of the road nestled in the back of the 2,000-acre RELLIS campus in Bryan, where the old Bryan Airfield lies along the Brazos River bottoms, is one of Texas A&M University’s hidden secrets that is becoming more well-known: the Bush Combat Development Complex (BCDC).
It’s a one-stop shop, $200 million-plus complex with several collaborative and connected facilities that’s bringing together researchers from academia, the U.S. military and the private sector for national defense innovation.
One year ago, the BCDC’s Research Integration Center (RIC) opened its doors to the public. Since then, those inside this pristine building have invited in outsiders to showcase its capabilities. Plans have been made, infrastructure has been and continues to be built, and now those at the BCDC are turning their focus to the next phase: testing.
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Maj. Gen. Tim Green, director of the BCDC, said most of their work is done quietly and professionally. He recognizes if the BCDC stays too quiet, though, outsiders won’t see the talent and opportunity it can provide.
“I’m trying to learn how to strike that balance because when I was working for the government, it was all about being quiet about some of those things, so we didn’t talk about it,” Green said. “But I can see I find in academia there is a marketing competition for dollars and recognition that I have to now acknowledge and play in so we can compete.”
Coming together
Brick by brick, and connection by connection, the BCDC came to life over the span of three years.
The initial investment in 2019 included $50 million from the state for innovative proving ground (IPG) instrumentation, $80 million from the A&M Board of Regents, and $65 million from the Army Futures Command, a deal that was upped to $96.2 million two years later. Most of the Army funds are research dollars. Roughly $18 million was given to assist in specialized equipment for a 1-kilometer long Ballistic, Aero-optics, and Materials Range (BAM). Even more money was invested in infrastructure — power, sewage, water.
Ground broke on the RIC in October 2019, and although people began to move into the building in August 2021, the building wasn’t dedicated until Nov. 4, 2022, when the IPG had reached its initial operating capability, according to Patrick Seiber, the BCDC’s public relations director.
One of the people who joined the BCDC at its inception in 2019 was Nancy Currie-Gregg, a former astronaut who served as BCDC’s interim deputy director and chief technology officer from June 2021 until this August when she took over as director of A&M’s Space Institute.
The vision for BCDC was to have a place for highly applied military defense-related research with a team of research engineers, Currie-Gregg explained. She noted some academic partners were a bit skeptical of the format at first, but over the last two years have changed their mind on the new paradigm of an academic environment.
“We’ve seen this conversion of, it’s not for everybody, but for the people who are willing to invest their time and talents and helping the defense of the nation, they’re on board 100%,” Currie-Gregg said.
Leading up to World War II, Currie-Gregg explained that universities created considerable research and development that helped the nation. That changed over the latter half of the 20th century, though, as universities shifted their focus to more theoretical research. Today, Currie-Gregg said there’s a need for college campuses to shift a portion of their applied research back to helping America achieve its goals.
Being a land-grant school with a military background, A&M officials routinely ask how can they help, Currie-Gregg said. She noted state and federal officials have recognized A&M’s willingness to help, too.
“Everyone who’s ever worn a uniform in this building and beyond will tell you none of us ever want to go to war,” Currie-Gregg said. “What we want to do is deter the threat, and in order to deter the threat you have to have the capabilities to make your adversaries not want to engage you.
“We need researchers to help us with that, and there are some university campuses who, quite frankly, shy away from that. ‘I don’t want to deal with all of these security concerns. I don’t want to deal with stipulations on publication of my research.’ And I think A&M, in particular, is unique in that they embrace that.”
A true one-stop shop
On Sept. 21-22, Raytheon, now known as RTX Corporation, conducted the first open-air test of an operational laser weapon in the state of Texas on BCDC grounds.
Raytheon’s high-energy lasers (HEL) are combat-ready weapons that use silent and invisible-to-the-eye beams of light that can destroy objects such as drones. The McKinney-based company fired from 1.1 kilometers away down into a created culvert.
Most HEL test sites are in Alabama, Arizona, New Mexico or Oklahoma at military ranges. James Creel, a senior research engineer, explained how companies like Raytheon have to fill out paperwork and have government oversight to get range time at these military ranges, which also can be expensive. Creel said the BCDC can provide quick access and fast turnaround time for results.
The third floor of the BCDC has a room called the Fusion Cell where test data can be captured and analyzed in real time while clients can watch a multitude of camera angles during testing.
“A company like Raytheon, who’s based in Texas, doesn’t have to fly their 3,500-pound laser system out to New Mexico, test it there, and if something breaks, they’d have to send it all the way back to their facility in McKinney,” Creel said. “In this case, not only are we close to McKinney, but we have a capability of doing things in house in terms of fixing systems. We have a clean room, laser lab and other facilities to augment or fix the system if something goes wrong.”
On the edge of BCDC’s property lies quarries currently used by Knife River — a construction materials and contracting company — which will be eventually taken over by the A&M System. Seiber said they view the space as an expansion for the maneuver challenge course from the off-road test area. It also can be used for space and robotics research led by Rob Ambrose and to increase ranges for the HEL testing.
Other areas of the BCDC provide for cross collaboration. The IPG has a mound called the “Mayan Temple” with inclines ranging from 20 to 45 degrees. There is also an area in the IPG where they can simulate the ground as a lake or a beach.
“It’s amazing how you can fake out sensors and databases when you tell them this piece of dirt out here for the next three hours of our integration event’s actually water,” said John Diem, director of the IPG. “We’re going to use the power of simulations in some cases to tell the AI applications on the platforms and sensors that they’re now in the water.”
Collaborating with industry
Many BCDC employees could probably list tour guide under other duties as assigned.
Over the past year, they’ve welcomed in a number of government and industry leaders to showcase the capabilities of this new facility. Nathan Tichenor, BCDC’s new chief resource office who works with the BAM, said in the last year they averaged 2.5 visits per week.
“You have small companies who don’t have resources, they don’t have a lot of money to work with, but they have great ideas,” Tichenor said. “They can leverage what we’re doing here to help advance and drive forward their technologies and their good ideas. They can leverage the resources we have.
“The big companies are always interested in next-generation workforce development. They’re always looking to hire people. So, how can they advance technologies through applied research and the facilities we’re building, but also have access to the students? [They can] pull those students through the educational process here at A&M providing applied research projects for the students to work on or capstone projects and then hopefully recruit them to work for them full-time.”
The second floor of the RIC is what Seiber calls the “Field of Dreams,” a floor full of office space. Around 60% of the spaces were occupied earlier this week, and that was without clients on-site or the BAM in operation.
The IPG held eight events for around 20 customers in the last year, John Diem said. Early in the year, the IPG hosted its first big customer that brought two large combat vehicles and four large robots, Diem noted. The vehicles were here for six weeks getting ready for a soldier touchpoint at Fort Cavazos.
“We’ve been building on those lessons learned as we get to full operating capability by the end of this year and it’s really good based on having customers’ inputs, not just our own experiences and insights and what we plan to do,” Diem said.
Looking toward the future
One reason Green said he returned to A&M in 2019 after he retired from the Air Force was because of the talent and commitment from state and university leaders to do applied research that could help solve national problems.
There are 45 permanent hires on BCDC’s staff, Green said, plus 22 faculty members and 38 students. He expects to add 15 people in the next year to their full-time research staff.
Research security is taken seriously, Green noted. There are some Department of Defense contracts conducted at BCDC that require American citizenship to participate.
“We understand that we’re a target,” Green said. “We understand we’re someone of interest. And we take appropriate precautions.”
Tichenor said the BAM timeline is still on track for first phase operations to begin in the spring or early summer of 2024. Lately, he and his team have held conversations with potential external partners and collaborators to discuss what early testing will look like and how they can use the new tool to answer critical questions for the country.
While the BCDC has a local impact, Tichenor said the BCDC’s ability to complement its main campus capabilities and leveraging the System’s resources can benefit the nation as a whole.
“I think we’re really stepping up and contributing in a big way,” Tichenor said.
Operational realism is something Diem said he’s looking toward moving forward, such as using the Brazos River topography as a corridor to fly drones with a realistic environment. It’s just one example of what those at the BCDC have their eyes set on as they move toward the next phase of operations.
“This is the beauty of once you’re up and running,” Diem said, “now you really start to think about what’s next.”
