Unconventional Concepts, a professional engineering and technical consulting firm specializing in counterterrorism analysis, has a five-year lease to utilize 197 acres of land in Essex County.
The company, which has worked with the U.S. Department of Defense, wants to conduct internal ballistics testing on howitzer guns.
Some environmental groups are against the idea, especially after residents reported low-flying military helicopters “hovering” over their houses during a separate exercise earlier this month.
But the president and senior principal investigator with Unconventional Concepts, Michael Hopmeier, says the land lease is for something completely different: scientific testing that measures recoil and barrel-ware on large military guns.
Asked about the proposal, John Sheehan of the Adirondack Council told Capital Tonight that the environmental group is concerned about the precedent it would set for weapons testing within the park.
“The Adirondacks itself is a place the U.S. military uses fairly regularly for combat training, both troops and pilots, under the supervision of army officers. They move it around very carefully to make sure that no community is impacted for any real length of time by any of this training,” he said. “In this case, we’re talking about a private company that wants permission to keep a fixed location in a neighborhood where 40 to 44 houses are located and fire a cannon into a target next to the forest preserve.”
Hopmeier joined Susan Arbetter on Capital Tonight to discuss his application which is currently before the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) for review.