--- alias: - APG category: Military Installation created: 2026-09-24 location: Maryland relations: - fn: 1 reverse: true start: 1917-10-20 type: owned with: '[[U.S. Army]]' start: 1917-10-20 summary: The Army's oldest proving ground, on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland since 1917, which absorbed Edgewood Arsenal in 1971 and housed the Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity's Grill Flame trials. tags: - Place - USArmy - Maryland - EdgewoodArsenal - ChemicalWarfare - GrillFlame - ENIAC updated: 2026-09-24 --- Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) is the [U.S. Army](/organizations/us-army/)'s oldest proving ground, on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay near the city of Aberdeen, [Maryland](/places/maryland/). After the [United States](/places/united-states/) entered World War I in April 1917 the Army needed a larger and less populated testing site than Sandy Hook Proving Ground at Fort Hancock, [New Jersey](/places/new-jersey/). "It took an act of Congress and two presidential proclamations, providing financial compensation for the 35,000 acres of upland and 34,000 acres of swamp and tidal lands, to persuade the farmers to leave their property." The government took formal possession on October 20, 1917, and from January 1918 the post proof-tested field artillery, ammunition, trench mortars, air defense guns and railway artillery.[^1] ### Ballistics and the laboratories After the war the post's mission shifted to research and development of munitions: powders, projectiles, bombs, and interior and exterior ballistics. Phillips Army Air Field, named for the post's second commander, served aircraft that supported the preparation of bombing tables. Building 328 was completed in 1941 for the new Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL). Seven thousand acres were added in 1942 and 1,800 more with the acquisition of Spesutie Island in 1945. Wartime strength peaked at 27,185 military personnel and 5,479 civilians. The post credits its wartime work with the ENIAC (the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator), the Bazooka and "the first system-wide practical applications of Statistical Quality Control." The Human Engineering Laboratory was established there in 1952, and in the 1950s and early 1960s the BRL took up electronic computers, space study and satellite tracking. The Test and Evaluation Command (TECOM), created at APG in 1962, managed ten test installations and activities across the country.[^1] The [Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity](/organizations/army-materiel-systems-analysis-activity/) (AMSAA) was formed at APG in 1968 from the BRL's Weapon Systems Laboratory as a separate reporting activity of the Army Materiel Command.[^2] In the late 1960s the post was home to the Decision Information Distribution System of the Army's Office of Civil Defense, designed to warn the public of a nuclear attack, and in the early 1970s it tested [NASA](/organizations/nasa/)'s Lunar Roving Vehicle.[^1] ### Edgewood Arsenal "A significant change was made on July 1, 1971, when Edgewood Arsenal, the former chemical center and current chemical research and engineering center for the U.S. Army, was merged into APG. From this point on, APG was the common identifier for both areas."[^1] Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain wrote that the [Army Chemical Corps](/organizations/army-chemical-corps/) tests of [LSD](/concepts/lsd/), code-designated EA-1729, took place at Aberdeen Proving Ground, [Fort Benning](/places/fort-benning/), [Fort Leavenworth](/places/fort-leavenworth/), Dugway Proving Ground and Edgewood Arsenal as well as in war games at Fort Bragg, with nearly 1,500 military personnel tested by the mid-1960s.[^3] The Army's chemical demilitarization program was activated at APG in 1986, and in 1994 the storage of chemical agent and munitions at APG passed from TECOM to the Chemical Biological Defense Command.[^1] ### Grill Flame In 1978 and 1979 AMSAA ran twenty sessions of its own at APG to test "confirmation and/or rejection of the SRI remote viewing protocol" of [Stanford Research Institute](/organizations/stanford-research-institute/), reporting that "our replication of the protocol did not result in statistical significance."[^4] [John Kramar](/people/john-kramar/), who had moved with his parents to Edgewood at fourteen, was chief of AMSAA's Ground Warfare Division and its Grill Flame project officer.[^5] Major [Murray Watt](/people/murray-watt/) and Lieutenant [Frederick Atwater](/people/frederick-atwater/) of [INSCOM](/organizations/united-states-army-intelligence-and-security-command/) visited AMSAA at Aberdeen on January 12, 1979.[^6] The [Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee](/events/grill-flame-scientific-evaluation-committee/) recommended in December 1979 that "the current AMSAA effort should also be terminated."[^7] ### Later reorganizations In 1992 the Laboratory Command at Adelphi, Maryland, was redesignated the Army Research Laboratory, and the BRL and the Human Engineering Laboratory were renamed and transferred to it. The Combat Systems Test Activity became the Aberdeen Test Center in 1995. The Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM), created in 2004, took in the Army Research Laboratory, AMSAA, the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center and the RDECOM Acquisition Center. Under the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure law, Fort Monmouth closed and its command, control, communications, computers, intelligence and reconnaissance organizations moved to APG with others from Fort Belvoir, Redstone Arsenal and Fort Huachuca; the Army Test and Evaluation Command, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the [Walter Reed Army Institute of Research](/organizations/walter-reed-army-institute-of-research/) and the Army Research Institute also moved there, while the Ordnance Center and Schools went to Fort Lee. The realignment was completed by September 2011. The post describes itself as the Defense Department's center of excellence for C4ISR, chemical and biological defense, research and development, test and evaluation, public health and personnel security investigation, with more than 18,000 civilians and soldiers.[^1] [^1]: U.S. Army Aberdeen Proving Ground, "History," home.army.mil, page last modified October 10, 2018. https://home.army.mil/apg/about/history [^2]: U.S. Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity, "History," amsaa.army.mil, archived November 23, 2016. http://web.archive.org/web/20161123141731/https://www.amsaa.army.mil/History.html [^3]: Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, *Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond*. Grove Press, 1985. Chapters 1 and 2. [^4]: US Army Intelligence and Security Command, "The US Army's Interest in Psychoenergetics," undated, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100370005-6; US Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity, "Project Grill Flame AMSAA Phase I Efforts," Interim Note No. 15, July 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100080005-8. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. [^5]: "John Winston Kramar," obituary, McComas Family Funeral Homes, January 20, 2026. https://www.mccomasfuneralhome.com/obituaries/john-kramar; Kramar, John W., AMSAA Grill Flame Project Officer, memorandum for record, "Scientific Evaluation Committee (SEC) GRILL FLAME Report, Dated November 1979," February 13, 1980, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200230026-7. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. [^6]: US Army Intelligence and Security Command, "INSCOM Project Grill Flame: Progress Report #1," February 21, 1979, with enclosures, CIA-RDP96-00788R001100070001-3. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection. [^7]: *Report by the Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee,* December 1979, Manfred Gale, chairman, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.