Weber State University opened the Miller Advanced Research and Solutions Center, better known as the MARS Center, on Aug. 24, 2022. This center was developed in conjunction with Hill Air Force Base to give students the opportunity to work on projects related to aerospace engineering. Weber State is in the process of growing its collaboration with the Department of Defense with the goal of opening up two new facilities on Hill Air Force Base.
The first of the facilities has already received funding, “The legislature gave us funding to develop a secure facility, which it would include a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility), some SAPF (Special Access Program Facility) space and collateral space, which is those spaces that not just anybody can go into, but you have to have a badge and you have to be credentialed,” said Mark Halverson, vice president of Administrative Services. The secure facilities would focus on software engineering for projects like “the 309 software and the new Sentinel Missile program,” Halverson said.
Part of the goal for this new secure space facility is to make it easier for students and local industry to work on classified projects. “The folks on base really would like to have that type of facility off base so that industry partners don’t have to go through the process of getting on the base,” Halverson said. The new facility aims to be more inviting to aid in attracting workers.
The second facility Weber is proposing is the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Production, or CAMP building. If the plan goes through, Weber State would have a contract with the Department of Defense to “develop robotics maintenance equipment for the maintenance of aircraft, the F-16, the F-35s, the fighter jets and the other aircraft that constantly need maintenance,” Halverson said.
The camp building would help Hill Air Force Base to adopt new manufacturing technologies, “That will include things like robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and something called digital threads,” said Brian Rague, Ph.D., dean of the College of Engineering, Applied Science and Technology.
The new facilities being developed on federal land means the university would not own the land the buildings are on. Instead they will be leasing the land, which can cause some issues. “They get complicated very quickly. There’s a lot of red tape and rules you have to jump through.” said Jacob Cain director of operations.
Despite the complexities of projects that involve the federal and state governments, the outlook for the project appears promising.
“We will end up with a secure facility. I think it’s secure because we actually have the funding from the legislature in hand. That’s going to move forward. And so that’s a certainty. The camp project right now, I would probably give it a 95 % chance. Everything looks very good. Everything’s teed up and ready to go. The finances look very good,” Halverson said.
Unless there are drastic changes from our legislators, students can expect ground to break on the project within a year, and it is expected to be finished within two years.
