A new study is underway examining whether Selfridge Air National Guard Base or a site nearby would be suitable for a facility for hypersonics and extreme environment testing, officials said.
The study is being conducted over the next 18 months by LIFT, the Detroit-based high-tech manufacturing research institute in Corktown with $1.5 million from the 2023 Department of Defense and a matching $1.5 million from the Michigan Economic Development Corp.
Hypersonics vehicles, which travel faster than the speed of sound at Mach 5 or higher, are of great interest to U.S. defense planners, though research and testing of materials to ensure they can withstand such speeds is critical to advancing hypersonic technology.
“We’ve been working on hypersonics materials development for last couple of years, and as we have worked on those materials, we could not find places where we could test these materials that wasn’t backed out two to four years, except for taking them down to Florida,” said Joe Steele, LIFT’s vice president for government affairs.
“As our stakeholders, our government officials and other folks are talking about the future of Selfridge, we thought that, hey, this would be a great addition to southeast Michigan and the Michigan defense sector ― to be able to bring such cutting-edge technology and things that we’re already working on here in Corktown and to establish something like that at Selfridge.”
The study comes as elected…
