The U.P. is home to an array of commercial and non-profit testing entities that support defense, aerospace, and commercial applications with a wealth of experience and plenty of cold weather. In addition to the DoD, companies like John Deere, Toyota, and Ford Motor Company use Upper Peninsula proving grounds to test everything from snow blowers and plows to ground vehicles and tanks.

Keweenaw Research Center (KRC), based at Michigan Technological University, was originally established by the US Army for deep snow mobility testing. KRC has been involved in military, industrial, and commercial vehicle applications for more than 60 years, with 900+ acres of proving grounds, specifically developed to evaluate ground vehicle systems.

U.P.-based companies provide a range of physical and virtual testing services for defense and aerospace, including:

• customer-specific solutions for sound, vibration, and shock problems in ground combat vehicles
• vehicle durability, design validation, verification, and specific instrumented testing
• highly complex multi-player/multi-sensor test and evaluation activities
• small single-purpose tests to multi-participant/multi-objective tests for air-to-surface and surface-to-air objectives
• real-world thermal data collection
• thermal signature prediction and simulation modeling
• human thermal testing
• battery modeling
• infrared signature management
• transient thermal analysis of design environments
• modeling of transient solar loads, wind speed, air temperature, and other environmental factors