Fort Indiantown Gap is again the busiest National Guard training center in the U.S.

Fort Indiantown Gap was once again the busiest National Guard training center in the nation, topping the list for the ninth time in 12 years.

For fiscal year 2025, which ended on Sept. 30, Fort Indiantown Gap hosted 132,200 personnel for 985,514 man-days of training, National Guard spokesman Brad Rhen said in a release. Man-days are a computation of the number of personnel multiplied by the number of days they trained on post.

“I’m not surprised Fort Indiantown Gap is once again the busiest National Guard training center,” said garrison commander Col. Kevin Potts.

Col. Potts said in a statement that it’s a testament to the soldiers and civilians on the team “who work tirelessly to ensure that the units that come here to train have whatever they need. Additionally, we are always trying to improve our ranges and facilities to ensure units can conduct challenging, relevant and realistic training.”

Camp Shelby, Mississippi, was the second-busiest training center, with 536,138 man-days of training. Camp Atterbury, Indiana, was third, with 527,766 man-days, and Fort Pickett, Virginia, was fourth, with 273,196 man-days.

FY2025, Rhen said, was Fort Indiantown Gap’s busiest year since at least 2016. The installation was the second-busiest training center in FY2024 and has been in the top three every year since 2013.

Fort Indiantown Gap hosted training for 325 units and organizations in FY2025, including 278 military units and 43 non-Department of Defense organizations, such as local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies. Over the course of the year, they expended 3,945,761 rounds of small-arms ammunition, 7,008 pyrotechnics, 6,789 artillery rounds, 6,336 demolitions, 4,052 mortar rounds, 510 fragmentation grenades and nine shoulder-fired rockets.

Also, Rhen said, Fort Indiantown Gap hosted a Warfighter Exercise in late January and early February that brought about 3,000 personnel to the installation for several weeks.

Lt. Col. Gordon Kinneer, who served as Fort Indiantown Gap’s director of planning, operations, training and security for the fiscal year, said there were several reasons for the installation’s high through-put, including units getting ready to deploy and hosting units that don’t typically train here.

“Of note, we had a multitude of Marine Corps units training and working, helping us improve our ranges and training areas; and getting after their own training requirements,” Kinneer said in the release. “We executed some significant improvements to our range facilities during 2025 like adding the capability of conducting a company level live-fire exercise and a few additional platoon level LFXs. The Marines, our own engineers, Range Operations and Range Maintenance employees made that project happen with very little resources and even less funding.”

The high through-put is a testament to Fort Indiantown Gap’s forward-leaning attitude, which is attracting units that require complex training environments, Kinneer said.

Fort Indiantown Gap, in northern Lebanon and Dauphin counties, encompasses more than 17,000 acres of land and includes numerous ranges, training facilities and schools as well as the headquarters of the Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and the Pennsylvania National Guard.