A bright yellow sign on County Road 612 running east into Lovells offers a matter-of-fact warning: “Field artillery projectiles may be fired at any time of day.”

Lovells Township, a community of about 600 on the north branch of the Au Sable River, is the site of Camp Grayling’s 40 Complex, where troops conduct live-fire training with anti-tank weapons and drop 500-pound bombs from planes.

It’s also the home to some of Michigan’s most storied trout streams, a destination for anglers for more than a century.

Even as the Michigan National Guard’s training activities there have expanded, the township’s tens of thousands of acres of state-owned land have remained the engine of its economy, drawing fishermen and ORV riders in the summer, hunters in the fall, snowmobilers in the winter.

Even though the Guard can close public access to the natural areas it leases from the state without notice. Even if the shriek of fighter jets sometimes drowns out the soft murmur of the river.

But now Camp Grayling wants more.

Earlier this year, the Michigan National Guard put forward a plan to more than double the camp’s size, asking the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to allow it to lease additional state land that, in aggregate, would be larger than the city of Chicago.

“The major problem is they simply looked at how many acres of state ground were in Area 6″ – the part of the proposed expansion that covers much of Lovells Township “and they want them all,” said township Supervisor Gary Neumann.

Camp Grayling is already the largest National Guard training facility in the country, covering some 230 square miles.

Col. Scott Meyers, the camp’s commander, says it needs the additional space to conduct training in space, cyber and electronic warfare. The distances are essential, both to simulate what troops would encounter on the battlefield and to keep that training separate from other activities at the camp.

That training would be “low impact,” he said, and there is “no intent for closures of these additional areas to the public,” or at least only intermittent closures. Guard officials have pledged always to keep them open during regular firearms deer season.

But the proposal has uncapped a deep well of distrust for Camp Grayling from many in the communities that surround it.

Opponents question the sheer size of the proposal. They note that the expansion would give the same National Guard that inadvertently contaminated waters surrounding Camp Grayling with PFAS greater access to the Au Sable and Manistee rivers. They wonder whether a region defined by its wild spaces can afford to see them compromised.

“Our concern is that even though they say their initial trainings on these new proposed lands will be minimal and non-invasive, that is what was originally happening on the lands they already have,” said Martha Duby, whose family has lived in Lovells Township for six generations. “And it evolved over time.”

Martha Duby, of Lovells Township, has been a vocal opponent of a plan to expand Camp Grayling.

The Michigan National Guard unveiled what it calls the National All-Domain Warfighting Center two years ago.

It’s essentially a rebranding of four Lower Peninsula installations - Camp Grayling, the Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center, the Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Harrison Township and the Battle Creek Air National Guard Base – in order to better market what they can offer both to the U.S. Department of Defense and to private industry.

“Ever since we unveiled NADWC, my phone has been ringing off the hook with private industry trying to get into this space. And the advantage is that we have a lot of availability and a lot of land for folks to come out here and play,” Meyers was quoted as saying in an enthusiastic article in DBusiness magazine published last month under the headline “Camp Innovation.”

Asked about those comments at a public meeting held on July 19 underneath a picnic shelter next to the Lovells Township Hall, Meyers assured the crowd that, “Most of those industry partners, when they want to develop their technologies, there’s zero interest to come out in these types of lands.”

But collaboration with industry seems to be very much a part of the camp’s future. It was, at least, among the stated goals of the expansion listed in a white paper that the Michigan National Guard submitted to the DNR.

“A part of our organizational strategy is to leverage Michigan’s industrial, academic, and technological base to maximize what Camp Grayling and the National All-Domain Warfighting Center contribute to our National Defense Strategy,” Meyers said in an emailed response to questions from MLive.

The plan for the proposed expansion, however, “is a completely different type of training use,” he said.

Which can be understood in the context of a modernization strategy put forward by the U.S. Army three years ago called “multi-domain operations.” It emphasizes the military’s ability to operate simultaneously across land, sea, air, space and cyberspace.

The National All-Domain Warfighting Center has land, air and sea (i.e. Lake Huron) in spades. The expansion would provide more room for on the ground training in the use of space capabilities on the battlefield, in cyber warfare and in electronic warfare, a category that includes locating an enemy’s signals, jamming those signals and preventing them from jamming yours.

But that sort of engagement can happen at distances of 25 miles or more, Meyers said, and the additional land “would offer a realistic field environment for personnel to experience cyber effects” and “reinforce Camp Grayling as one of the best one-stop locations for training within the Department of Defense.”

The Army apparently has faith that it will be. Last year, it picked Michigan as the site of a new National Guard Intelligence and Electronic Warfare & Sensors battalion that will begin operations in 2026.

The question opponents are asking is whether the additional training really required 250 square miles of additional state land.

“I believe and others believe that they have not shown that they can’t do this electromagnetic warfare training and testing on their existing footprint,” said Neil Wallace, chair of the Au Sable North Branch Area Foundation.

“It’s up to them to demonstrate that it’s impossible.”

A Michigan Department of Natural Resources map showing the proposed expansion of Camp Grayling.

The expansion would push the camp’s footprint south along the west side of Higgins and Hougton lakes, west along the Manistee River, north into Otsego County and east into Oscoda County.

The plan has already shifted slightly. In response to public concern, the Guard added 1,500-foot buffers around lakes and rivers, and firing points that were included on an early map have since been removed.

“What led to the original inclusion of the firing points was a provision for training on projected long-range weapons, then in development,” Meyers said. “The technology for these weapons has already advanced to make this training infeasible for a variety of reasons.”

There is support for the plan, particularly is areas somewhat removed from the proposed expansion.

“Change is always, as always scary, and, up here in rural northern Michigan, there isn’t a lot of change,” said Crawford County Commissioner Carey Jansen, who represents a portion of Grayling Charter Township, “but what the camp is proposing is not invasive to many landowners and residents. We’ve been assured that when that there won’t be live fire. You won’t see any troops in your backyard.”

There is also a mounting opposition.

The Kalkaska County Commission passed a resolution opposing the plan, saying it “wants to retain its rustic and outdoor playground atmosphere.” Bear Lake Township passed one, as well. The Michigan United Conservation Clubs has expressed reservations about the plan and about the DNR resources that would be required to evaluate its impact.

“Everybody who is opposed to this is as patriotic as the next person. This is not against our military. This was against this proposal,” said Jim Knight, a Bear Lake Township trustee who has run generations of hunting dogs over state land that could be leased to the camp.

But the distrust is clear.

Guard units have left tangles of razor-sharp concertina wire on state land they now use, Knight said. The “massive land grab” would expand Guard operations in the watersheds of the Manistee, Au Sable and Muskegon rivers and, despite the promised buffer zones, “because of how questions got answered, we’re just not sure if that’s going to be adhered to.”

It doesn’t help that the Guard would pay nothing to use the land, though, in the white paper submitted to the DNR, it does say it would pay for maintenance of sensitive habitats and other areas of interest “fully or partially.”

Meyers said the Guard has worked to address past problems.

There is, for instance, a new protocol for using concertina wire. It’s taking seriously the contamination caused by the camp’s use of firefighting foam that contained PFAS, virtually indestructible artificial compounds linked to multiple health issues, he said, and the DNR would be able to “void the lease at any time if Camp Grayling’s use is deemed to be outside its agreed-upon scope.”

And the plan would have other advantages, he said. Northern Strike, the twice-yearly exercise led by the Michigan National Guard, has an annual economic impact of about $30 million, he said.

“For the citizens of Northern Michigan, we would expect the economic benefits to continue to grow, as we continue to strive (through our partnership with the DNR) to steward and maintain access to the natural resources that make this region of Michigan such a great place to live,” he wrote.

Bear Lake Township Trustee Jim Knight.

The DNR is still gathering public input on the proposal. It is reviewing proposed expansion areas and will remove those deemed incompatible with military training, said Tom Barnes, manager of the DNR’s Grayling Forest Management Unit.

If DNR Director Dan Eichinger approves the proposal, it will set off another review process with more rounds of public input. He’s expected to make that decision by the end of the year.

Neumann, the Lovells Township supervisor, isn’t optimistic that the plan will be stopped. He noted that both Eichinger and Maj. General Paul Rogers, who leads the Michigan National Guard, were appointed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. It would make sense if the plan had her blessing.

Asked if Whitmer supported the plan, her office responded that she is “proud to be the Commander-in-Chief of the strongest national guard contingency in the country” and that the DNR’s public comment period was “a great opportunity for Michiganders to make their voices heard.”

Neumann was an active-duty Marine for two decades then went to work for the defense contractor Northrup Grumman. He understands why the camp wants to grow.

But he is also the son of Art Neumann, one of the founders of the conservation group Trout Unlimited, and pulled his first trout from the east branch of the Au Sable in the early 1950s.

And he sees how important access to his community’s wild spaces are for ways people there make a living.

“All they really need to do is shut that down once on a major weekend,” he said, “and the tourist side of our township would go south.”

For more information on the proposed expansion of Camp Grayling, go to www.michigan.gov/dnr/managing-resources/public-land/camp-grayling-proposal

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