Young in IBJ: Great Lakes states can lead way on drone development

WASHINGTON — The following column by U.S. Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.) was published by the Indianapolis Business Journal on October 23, 2026.

U.S. Sen. Todd Young: Great Lakes states can lead way on drone development

Indiana is a coastal state.

Some might laugh at that statement, but it’s true. Indiana has miles of scenic beauty and powerful industry along the Lake Michigan shorelines.

When the Hoosier state is combined with the rest of the Great Lakes region, the Midwest is home to the largest shoreline in America. And that matters for America’s national security.

Restoring American production of critical technologies is the defining national security and economic challenge of our time. A nation that depends on its chief strategic competitor for the technologies that decide the outcome of wars and power its economy is not secure.

Deterrence begins in the factory, and prosperity is built in the same place.

Congress has begun to act on that imperative. The CHIPS and Science Act, which I helped write, is returning semiconductor production to the United States because America could not leave the engine of modern computing dependent on Taiwan, where adversaries could disrupt the supply chain by force.

The same imperative has now reached unmanned and autonomous systems — better known as drones. In December, at the direction of Congress, the Federal Communications Commission closed the American market to new foreign-made drones and their critical components. It was the right decision and an overdue one.

But this is only half of what needs to be done. The other half is building American manufacturing and testing capacity for autonomous systems at scale, both commercial and defense.

The solution to this challenge lies in the Midwest. Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin together hold 2.8 million manufacturing jobs, nearly a quarter of the national total. Indiana has the highest concentration of manufacturing employment in the nation, roughly twice the national average, and has produced about a quarter of America’s raw steel for half a century.

Great Lakes shipyards can build nearly every kind of naval, commercial and autonomous vessel, with the exception of the largest platforms. The region hosts National Surface Warfare Center Crane Division, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Army’s ground vehicle center and National Guard training environments in every state.

Indiana hosts a cyber-physical range at Muscatatuck Urban Training Center, a munitions testing facility at Jefferson Proving Ground and a significant aerial drone testing footprint through the Department of War Task Force Rapid Assessment of Prototype Technology Readiness at Camp Atterbury.

Equally important, an unmatched network of technical colleges and workforce programs connects this research and defense infrastructure to the skilled workers who power the region’s manufacturing and industrial base. Major research institutions, including Indiana University, the University of Notre Dame and Purdue University, offer dedicated education programs to ensure a talented workforce prepared for next-generation technological development.

Expertise is important not just for end products but also for the components and sensors that will truly set American drones apart.

What the region lacks is the infrastructure to connect these extraordinary assets in a coordinated way.

A new testing ground, which I intend to push for in Congress, would create a developmental test range for autonomous systems on, under and over the waters of Lake Michigan, linked by federally authorized drone corridors to test sites across the Great Lakes and the broader Midwest.

An integrated testing ground, capitalizing on the strengths of all the states in the Midwest, would be a truly unique asset capable of not just rapidly testing integrated unmanned operational concepts but scaling the manufacturing of the validated unmanned systems capable of further iteration.

The word “developmental” matters. America’s existing test ranges are excellent, but they are overbooked, expensive and far from most factory floors. A machine shop in Elkhart or Green Bay, Wisconsin, with promising technology might wait months — and pay tens of thousands of dollars — for just a few hours of testing, assuming it can access a test facility at all.

Putting affordable testing in the middle of the industrial base will facilitate rapid development, collapsing the cycle of prototype to production from years to months. This will benefit our operational test ranges by allowing them to focus on mature technologies that have already been validated.

Lake Michigan is the one candidate site wholly within U.S. borders that offers deep water for undersea systems, existing restricted airspace and factories within an hour’s drive. It is also geographically advantageous to help reduce direct view of our adversaries.

Lessons learned in recent years in places like Ukraine and the Middle East demonstrate why the United States needs to make a substantial investment to ensure we have safe, secure and resilient unmanned and autonomous technologies across domains. These systems are no longer a niche defense product — they are about to become as ordinary as the telephone, battery and internet.

To put this in perspective, defense accounts for less than 3% of American economic output; the other 97% — the commercial sector — is where these machines will do their work. It’s already happening.

American farm acreage treated by spray drones jumped nearly 60% from 2024 to 2025. The Cleveland Clinic now flies prescriptions to patients’ homes. One American drone logistics firm has flown over 135 million autonomous miles delivering blood, medicine and everyday goods in the United States and abroad.

Next comes bridge and pipeline inspections, search and rescue on lakes and rivers, emergency resupply for rural counties and delivery for the small towns the last-mile economy skipped.

The Midwest is uniquely positioned to play an outsized role in onshoring this critical production and development. Much of our capability is already here, built over generations by people who make things for a living. What this moment asks of us is to step up and claim the work to transition the Midwest’s historical automotive and aerospace manufacturing, now for autonomy.

It’s up to everyone with a stake: the Great Lakes congressional delegations, our governors and legislatures; our National Guard units; private and philanthropic capital; our universities and community colleges; our manufacturers; and our airports, ports and shipyards.

Our priorities are clear: Secure funding for and establish a first-of-its-kind Lake Michigan range and regional test and production network, organize at home so our region is ready to capture federal investment when it arrives, and address the threats posed by not securing the unmanned systems ecosystem at home.

Eighty years ago, the Midwest played an outsized role in equipping the free world to defeat tyranny. Today, we stand ready to scale up critical production again. The Midwest is the nation’s Autonomous Heartland, where the systems that will guard our security and grow our economy will be designed, tested and built by people with the heritage to get the job done.

Young is the senior U.S. senator from Indiana. He is the Republican lead sponsor of the SHIPS for America Act and was a lead author of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022.