President Trump announced Wednesday that Montana will be home to a new Department of War “super range” built to test the most advanced weapons the U.S. military is developing.
Speaking to a packed rally at the Majestic Valley Arena in Kalispell, Trump said the department had chosen Montana for a “super range for testing advanced weapons and technologies,” NTD reported. He listed autonomous weapons, space and electronic warfare technology, supersonics and hypersonics as the kinds of systems it could test.
“Montana will help ensure the American military always reigns supreme,” Trump said. He added that “a lot of other people wanted it also.”
Why it matters
New weapons have to be tested before they reach the troops. A dedicated range for the newest categories of weapons, from hypersonic missiles to autonomous systems, gives the military room to develop and evaluate them at home.
NTD tied the announcement to the administration’s push to rebuild America’s defense industrial base and speed up military modernization, including advanced weapons testing and integrating artificial intelligence.
Montana is a natural fit. NTD noted that the state’s wide-open spaces and small population make it a strong candidate for this kind of testing.
The state already hosts defense and aerospace work. The Montana Spaceport & Test Range and the affiliated Limestone Hills Innovation & Test Campus support aerospace and defense testing, according to WMAL. Trump didn’t say whether the new range would be connected to those sites.
The exact location, construction timeline and cost have not been announced, according to WMAL and NTD. The Epoch Times said it had asked the War Department for comment.
Part of a bigger defense push
The Montana announcement is the second defense project Trump has unveiled on the road this week. On October 12, he announced a submarine component production and repair facility in Youngstown, Ohio, NTD reported.
Both moves point the same direction: bringing defense manufacturing and testing back to American communities, especially in the heartland.
A packed house in Kalispell
More than 7,000 people turned out, according to NTD. The arena was standing-room only, overflow crowds watched on a big outdoor screen, and traffic backed up for hours. The crowd included people of all ages, among them a 105-year-old local.
Gov. Greg Gianforte pledged to keep working with the administration on border security, tax cuts and energy, including Montana coal.
Voters at the rally named energy prices and the cost of living as their top concerns. One Libby resident told NTD that fuel costs matter most because “everything runs on diesel.”
The races on the ballot
Trump’s Western swing is aimed at the November 3 midterms. In Montana, Republican Kurt Alme is running for the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Steve Daines. He faces Democrat Alani Bankhead and independent Seth Bodnar, and recent polling shows Alme with a slight edge in the three-way race, according to NTD.
In the 1st Congressional District, Republican Aaron Flint is running to replace retiring Rep. Ryan Zinke. Trump endorsed Flint, a fifth-generation Montanan who enlisted in the Army after 9/11 and served more than 20 years, calling him “a true American patriot” who would be “a warrior” in Congress. Flint framed the race against Democrat Sam Forstag, a Forest Service smokejumper and former lobbyist, as “common sense versus crazy.”
Trump rallied in Arizona earlier the same day and in Alaska on Tuesday. Upcoming stops include Dalton, Georgia; Highland Heights, Kentucky; Wichita, Kansas; and Greenville, North Carolina.
The bottom line
America’s rivals aren’t waiting. Hypersonic missiles, autonomous drones and space and electronic warfare are where the next fights will be decided, and the U.S. needs places to test those systems quickly and at scale. A dedicated super range does exactly that.
Putting it in Montana makes sense on the merits: open land, few people and existing aerospace testing infrastructure. It also brings high-skill defense work to rural America instead of leaving it concentrated on the coasts.
Details like the site and price tag still need to be filled in. But the direction is right: a stronger military, built and tested at home, with good jobs in towns that voted to put America first.