Jaded Thunder, the Nuclear Silo, and the Other Story of Unconventional Concepts
For much of the public controversy surrounding Unconventional Concepts, Inc. in Lewis, New York, the company has increasingly been reduced to a single image: a 155-millimeter howitzer in the Adirondacks. That image is powerful because it combines nearly every ingredient necessary to turn a complicated regulatory dispute into a simple political narrative. There is a military cannon, a former nuclear missile installation, low-flying helicopters, gunfire, active-duty personnel, private land inside the Adirondack Park and an ongoing fight with the Adirondack Park Agency over what UCI may or may not do on that property. To residents who were surprised by military training in September 2025, those concerns were not abstract. Black Hawk helicopters appeared over the community, weapons fire was heard and people complained that they had not received adequate notice about what was taking place around them. Whatever one's position on UCI, the proposed howitzer testing or the APA, those residents were entitled to ask questions about what was happening in their town.
The problem is that the public controversy has become so narrowly focused on the howitzer that the larger history of the property, the nature of UCI's work and the military context surrounding Jaded Thunder have been pushed almost entirely into the background. The more the debate has been reduced to the image of a private contractor trying to fire artillery in the Adirondacks, the easier it has become to overlook the fact that the Lewis property has been connected to American military operations for more than sixty years. Long before Michael Hopmeier or Unconventional Concepts arrived, the federal government had already transformed the site into one of the most consequential military facilities ever built in the North Country. Beneath the ground in Lewis once stood an Atlas F intercontinental ballistic missile armed as part of America's Cold War nuclear deterrent, while missile crews waited underground with the equipment necessary to launch it if the order ever came.
That history matters because the property did not begin as an ordinary tract of private Adirondack land that was later converted into a military research site. Its military purpose predates UCI by decades. During the early 1960s, the United States Air Force constructed twelve Atlas F missile sites around Plattsburgh Air Force Base, creating a network of hardened underground facilities intended to survive a Soviet attack and preserve America's ability to retaliate. Eight of those sites were located in Clinton County, two in Essex County and two in Vermont. The installation in Lewis, known as Boquet 556-5, was one of them.
The Atlas F program represented one of the most serious technological undertakings of the early Cold War. These were not ceremonial installations or training mock-ups. They were operational nuclear missile sites. Deep underground, an Atlas F missile carrying a nuclear warhead stood inside a reinforced silo while Air Force personnel operated from a separate hardened launch-control center. Their responsibility was simple in description and almost unimaginable in consequence. If an authenticated launch order arrived, they were expected to carry it out. The equipment surrounding them was designed for that purpose, and the site existed as one component of a strategic system intended to ensure that the United States could respond even after suffering a nuclear attack.
The Atlas F sites were constructed during a period when nuclear war was not treated as a distant theoretical possibility. The Cuban Missile Crisis had brought the United States and Soviet Union frighteningly close to direct conflict, and military planners were attempting to create a deterrent force capable of surviving a first strike. The Lewis installation was therefore built with enormous amounts of reinforced concrete, hardened underground infrastructure, independent power and communications systems, and a launch-control environment designed to remain operational under conditions far beyond those encountered by an ordinary civilian facility. The installation reaches roughly 190 feet beneath the surface, and although the Atlas program itself became obsolete relatively quickly, the physical structure remained long after the missile was removed and the Air Force departed.
The Atlas F was a transitional weapon. Its liquid-fueled design was cumbersome, and more advanced missile systems soon replaced it. The Plattsburgh sites were deactivated during the mid-1960s, only a few years after becoming operational. The missiles disappeared, but the silos did not. The reinforced structures remained scattered across the North Country, where later owners attempted to find practical uses for facilities originally constructed for one of the most destructive purposes imaginable. Some deteriorated. Others were converted into unusual residences or private projects. The Lewis site followed a different path.
Michael Hopmeier acquired the property in 2015 for use by Unconventional Concepts, a defense and national-security engineering company. That acquisition did not introduce military technology to Lewis so much as it returned a long-dormant military installation to a new form of national-security work. The physical characteristics that once made the site valuable to Strategic Air Command also made it useful for modern research. A hardened underground facility built to withstand extraordinary forces provides opportunities that cannot easily be recreated inside a conventional commercial laboratory.
When WCAX toured the Lewis installation in 2021, Hopmeier discussed research involving materials, propellants, steel, coatings, remote sensing and diagnostics, as well as work related to hardened and deeply buried targets. The logic is straightforward. If researchers want to understand how reinforced underground structures respond to blast effects, remote sensing, penetration or other forms of military testing, there are few environments more authentic than an actual Cold War missile complex. UCI's use of the site therefore reflects the unusual nature of the property itself. What once existed to launch a nuclear missile has been repurposed to study modern national-security problems.
That work developed for years without attracting anything close to the public attention generated by the current howitzer dispute. In 2024, Adirondack Life described the Lewis installation as the most commercially successful reuse of the former Plattsburgh missile sites and reported that UCI was using the property for advanced military-system testing. The site has also had a historical and educational role that rarely appears in the current debate. Adirondack Architectural Heritage has organized public tours of the missile complex, allowing visitors to enter a facility that was never intended to be accessible to the general public. UCI's owners have led those tours, explaining both the Cold War history of the installation and its modern reuse.
One of the clearest examples of that preservation effort is the Atlas missile launch-control console that once stood inside the underground complex. That console was not the entire nuclear launch-control system, and it should not be described as such. An Atlas F facility depended on a network of electrical, communications, monitoring, mechanical and control systems. The console was, however, a major component of the site's nuclear launch-control system and one of the primary human interfaces through which missile crews monitored and controlled the missile and associated ground equipment during alert and countdown operations.
The importance of that distinction is not merely technical. The console was directly connected to the original nuclear mission of the site. It occupied the same underground environment in which American missile crews waited for orders during one of the most dangerous periods of the Cold War. Decades later, rather than allowing that equipment to decay indefinitely underground, Hopmeier and UCI removed it and donated it for historical preservation.
The donation is not a recent claim created in response to the APA controversy. In 2017, WPTZ documented the removal of the launch-control panel from the Lewis site and its donation to the Plattsburgh Air Force Base Museum. Public museum materials from 2018 specifically advertised a real Atlas missile launch console from the Lewis silo as part of the museum's collection. WCAX later reported that Hopmeier had also donated original launch keys associated with the site. Taken together, the documentary record establishes that UCI helped preserve a major component of the site's nuclear launch-control system and return it to the historical community connected to the Air Force base that once operated the missile network.
That history deserves more attention than it has received. A piece of equipment once built to help launch a nuclear weapon from beneath the Adirondacks was not scrapped, sold for parts or abandoned to corrosion. It was removed, preserved and placed in a museum where the public could encounter a tangible piece of North Country Cold War history. The missile is gone. The Air Force crews are gone. The launch mission ended more than half a century ago. The console survived, and the company now at the center of the Adirondack howitzer controversy played a role in preserving it.
None of that proves that UCI should be allowed to conduct every activity it proposes in Lewis. Historical preservation does not confer regulatory immunity, nor should it. The significance of the museum donation lies elsewhere. It demonstrates that the history of UCI's presence at the site cannot honestly be reduced to the image of a contractor attempting to turn the Adirondacks into a weapons range. The company's relationship with the property has included defense research, historical preservation, public tours and interaction with local and regional institutions long before the current controversy reached its present intensity.
The same problem of oversimplification appears in the public discussion of Jaded Thunder. After the September 2025 military activity in Lewis, the name itself became associated locally with helicopters, gunfire and community disruption. Yet Jaded Thunder was not created by UCI, nor is it simply a private exercise with a dramatic name. It is an established United States Special Operations Command live-fire exercise with a documented history extending well beyond Lewis.
Army records identify Jaded Thunder exercises going back many years. In 2013, Army artillery personnel participated in the exercise in Kansas, where they fired hundreds of rounds while working with Joint Terminal Attack Controllers and integrating ground fires with air operations. Kansas National Guard records from that period identified Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, as the organization conducting Jaded Thunder. The exercise continued to evolve, and official military records from Fort Drum later described it as a U.S. Special Operations Command live-fire exercise designed to improve interoperability and efficiency in combined-arms operations.
The Department of Defense's own fiscal year 2026 budget documentation makes the organizational relationship even clearer. In its discussion of USSOCOM exercise programs, the department lists Air Force Special Operations Command's Emerald Warrior, Marine Forces Special Operations Command's Raven, Naval Special Warfare Command's Trident, Army Special Operations Command's Sage Eagle and JSOC Jaded Thunder. That characterization matters because it does not come from UCI, Hopmeier or any participant in the Adirondack regulatory dispute. It comes directly from the Department of Defense.
Official military reporting from Fort Drum further demonstrates the scale and purpose of the exercise. During the September 2024 iteration of Jaded Thunder, more than one hundred special-operations personnel participated in training supported by a wide range of aircraft and ground forces. Military imagery documented Marines, Soldiers, mortar teams, tactical air-control personnel and aviation units working together in live-fire scenarios. United States Marines were photographed operating an M777 howitzer during the exercise, an important detail given the separate controversy now surrounding UCI's proposed 155-millimeter testing operation.
The existence of artillery during Jaded Thunder should not be confused with UCI's proposed howitzer testing program. They are different activities with different purposes. Jaded Thunder is a military combined-arms training exercise focused on interoperability among services and forces. UCI's proposed outdoor howitzer testing concerns experimental work involving 155-millimeter cannon-barrel internal ballistics and nonexplosive projectiles. The fact that both involve artillery does not make them the same operation. What it does establish is that Jaded Thunder is a broad military exercise in which aircraft, ground forces, communications systems, artillery and other capabilities are integrated in realistic operational scenarios.
That context changes how the September 2025 activity in Lewis should be understood, although it does not invalidate the complaints of residents who were surprised by what occurred. People in the community reported low-flying Black Hawk helicopters, weapons fire and military activity they had not been adequately prepared to expect. Lewis Town Board member Lanita Canavan publicly described receiving calls from residents who wondered whether some kind of emergency was unfolding. Those reactions were reasonable. A rural community should not be expected to understand unexplained military aviation and gunfire without sufficient communication.
Hopmeier later acknowledged that communication surrounding the activity should have been better. That admission is important because legitimate military training does not excuse poor notification. The two issues are separate. The nature of Jaded Thunder can be accurately described while also acknowledging that residents deserved clearer information about what was happening near their homes.
At a subsequent public meeting, Hopmeier stated that participants included active-duty personnel from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, along with members of foreign militaries. Independent reporting connected the Black Hawk helicopters operating in Lewis with Fort Drum and described the activity as part of Jaded Thunder. The public record therefore supports a careful but significant conclusion: Jaded Thunder is an established USSOCOM exercise associated with JSOC, Fort Drum hosted documented iterations of the exercise before the Lewis controversy, and activity publicly identified as Jaded Thunder occurred at or involved the UCI property in September 2025.
There is one evidentiary boundary that should remain clear. I have not located a publicly released Department of Defense document specifically designating the UCI property in Lewis as an official 2025 Jaded Thunder training site. That does not mean such documentation does not exist, but it does mean that the strongest available public evidence comes from two related but distinct sources. Military records establish what Jaded Thunder is and where it sits within the special-operations training structure, while independent reporting establishes that military activity identified as Jaded Thunder involved the UCI property in Lewis.
Maintaining that distinction is not weakness. It is what serious reporting requires. A complicated story does not become stronger when a writer claims more than the public record establishes. It becomes stronger when the boundaries of the evidence are clearly identified and the reader can distinguish documented fact from allegation, interpretation and unresolved question.
The same standard should apply to the broader public debate surrounding UCI. The company has pointed to fire-and-rescue training, support for youth activities, local spending, broadband improvements and other community contributions as evidence that its presence in Lewis has been more constructive than the current controversy suggests. Some of those claims can be independently verified, while others remain primarily the assertions of Hopmeier or supportive local figures and should be reported that way. Government records show officials attending an intercounty gathering at the former missile silo in 2023, and Adirondack Life reported that then-Town Supervisor Jim Monty regarded UCI as a good neighbor and credited the company with helping to expand broadband infrastructure.
Those facts do not resolve the dispute over the howitzer, nor should they be used as substitutes for the legal and scientific questions at the heart of the APA proceeding. The proposed testing operation should rise or fall based on the law, the evidence, public safety, environmental effects and the actual scope of the Adirondack Park Agency's authority. Arguments about jurisdiction should be resolved by law. Arguments about noise should be resolved by measurable evidence. Arguments about environmental impact should be resolved by competent technical analysis. Arguments about safety should be resolved through engineering, physics and established standards rather than political imagery.
The fact that UCI helped preserve a Cold War launch console does not prove that the howitzer proposal should be approved. The fact that Jaded Thunder is associated with JSOC does not mean every military exercise should take place in Lewis. Likewise, opposition to the howitzer project does not justify mischaracterizing every other activity conducted at the property or ignoring the documented history of the site and the company that now occupies it.
The easiest version of the UCI story is also the most dramatic. A military contractor bought an old nuclear missile silo in the Adirondacks, military helicopters later appeared over the community, weapons were fired and the same company now wants to conduct limited 155-millimeter testing nearby. Every element of that description can be factually accurate while still leaving the reader with an incomplete understanding of the whole.
The old missile silo is also a surviving artifact of one of the most important periods in North Country military history. The company occupying it has reused the structure for modern national-security research. Historical organizations have brought visitors through the facility. A major component of the site's nuclear launch-control system was preserved and donated to the Plattsburgh Air Force Base Museum. Jaded Thunder was not invented in Lewis but is instead an established U.S. Special Operations Command exercise associated with Joint Special Operations Command. The property has hosted government officials, researchers, military personnel and historical visitors during a period that predates much of the current dispute.
None of this requires anyone in Lewis to support UCI. Residents are entitled to oppose activities they believe threaten the character, safety or environment of their community. Environmental organizations are entitled to challenge projects they believe are inconsistent with the laws governing the Adirondack Park. The APA is entitled to exercise whatever jurisdiction the law actually gives it. UCI is equally entitled to challenge the agency where it believes that authority has been exceeded.
What the public deserves is a complete record.
There is a deep irony beneath the entire controversy. More than sixty years ago, the federal government excavated deep into the Adirondack earth at Lewis, poured enormous amounts of reinforced concrete and placed a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile underground. American airmen entered a hardened control center and waited for an order that everyone hoped would never come. The facility existed because the Cold War had created a world in which national survival could depend on the ability to launch a nuclear weapon after an enemy attack.
The world changed, the missile disappeared, the Air Force departed and the Cold War ended. The structure remained. Eventually, a private engineering company acquired it and began using that extraordinary piece of military infrastructure to study a different generation of national-security problems. A launch-control console that once formed part of America's nuclear deterrent was removed from the site and preserved in a museum. Decades after the Atlas missile vanished, American military personnel again came to Lewis, this time not to prepare for nuclear war but as part of modern joint training.
That historical continuity does not answer every question surrounding UCI. It does, however, reveal why the current dispute cannot be understood simply by looking through the barrel of a howitzer. The Lewis property is not an ordinary site with a sudden military identity. Its connection to American defense began during the Cold War, survived the disappearance of the Atlas missile and continues today in a different form.
The people of Lewis deserve adequate notice when disruptive military training occurs near their homes. They deserve clear answers about safety, noise and the activities taking place around them. They deserve to question UCI and expect serious answers in return. They also deserve accurate information about the nature of Jaded Thunder, the history of the missile facility beneath their community and the work that has taken place there since UCI acquired it.
For months, the public debate has increasingly invited people to judge Unconventional Concepts through the image of a cannon in the Adirondacks. That image is real, but it is only one part of a much larger story. The full record includes an Atlas F nuclear missile site, a modern defense-research facility, a documented special-operations exercise, preserved Cold War equipment and a major component of the site's nuclear launch-control system that now survives as a museum artifact.
Understanding that history does not require anyone to change their position on the howitzer. It requires only that the argument be based on the whole story.