U.S. Central Command is planning to establish a new facility in Saudi Arabia that will test new military technologies designed to counter threats posed by unmanned aerial vehicles, NBC reported Wednesday.
The military testing facility, which is still in the early planning stage, will be called Red Sands Integrated Experimentation Center and is envisioned to support the development and testing of air and missile defense capabilities.
Defense officials familiar with the matter said the exact location of the facility has not been finalized but acknowledged that Saudi Arabia has the space needed to test signal-jamming, directed energy and other electronic warfare capabilities without interfering with the civilian population.
CENTCOM’s area of responsibility covers the Middle East and Iran, whose ballistic missile arsenal and drone fleet have grown in recent years.
