American mercenary firm expands with launch of 'the largest shoot house on the East Coast'
Military contractor behind controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation launches new umbrella group alongside a training center on east coast of North Carolina.
Updated on 8 July 2026 to reference the Spartan Ranch Tactical Training Center.
The Mooresville-based private military contractor which last year operated controversial vehicle inspection checkpoints and food distribution sites concentrated in the southern region of Gaza has opened what it describes as “a 287-acre live-fire complex” on the east coast of North Carolina.
Reachable through a roughly 12-minute drive west from the small town of Maysville, UG Group’s Swamp Tactical Training Center has advertised itself as hosting the “largest shoot house on the East Coast” and as located “right outside of Camp Lejeune.” The property is a rebranding of a location previously operated by UG Group executives Jameson Govoni and William Cipriani under the name Spartan Ranch Tactical Training Center.
Participants in the facility’s inaugural shooting competition on May 30, known as the Swamp Gauntlet, included a bevy of representatives from regional companies, including the Robbins-based pistol producer OA Defense and the Aberdeen-based suppressor manufacturer Deadline Defense.
The social media account of The Swamp, whose imagery is styled after the comic book character Swamp Thing, promoted a participant’s call to “check out the Ukraine simulator at the Swamp in May,” which was described as involving the MOD 1 rifle from Pennsylvania-based Geissele Automatics and the 9CT submachine gun produced by South Carolina-based PTR Industries.
The infamous private military contractor Blackwater similarly drew its name from the color of the water of the Great Dismal Swamp located near Moyock, North Carolina, which is a roughly three-hour drive northeast of The UG Group’s Swamp Tactical Training Center.
Founded by former Green Berets as an offshoot of a special operations-branded counter-trafficking nonprofit known as Sentinel Foundation, UG Solutions became the boots-on-the-ground for the second Trump administration’s partnership with the Israeli government in an effort to sideline the United Nations. Following the October 10 ceasefire agreement between the Israeli military and Hamas, UG’s lead partner in the US-Israeli aid effort, known as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), announced the end of its operations in late November.
(Another highlight reel promoted by The Swamp demonstrated a visitor firing a variety of weapons throughout the facility, while wearing a UG Solutions shirt and Sentinel Foundation hat. The seemingly AI-generated metal soundtrack included the chorus, “American soil, American soul. Taking back every piece they stole.”)
UG soon began lobbying the White House and Pentagon through Micah T. Ketchel, a recent senior advisor to current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Michael G. Waltz whose transition to the influential lobbying firm Ballard Partners was announced two days after the codification of the Trump administration’s ‘pay-to-play’ Board of Peace coalition.
UG Solutions has recently rebranded its website and, despite the sustained international criticism of its ‘militarized’ aid distribution into Gaza, a flyer published by UG in June described the company as “the photo negative of malign private military models” and “A PMC for Change.” UG also advertises providing the services of its former elite soldiers to “UHNW,” meaning Ultra-High-Net-Worth individuals.
The company has also published several hints as to the scope of its work beyond Gaza, claiming in the June capabilities statement to “bring order to chaotic theaters like Gaza, Africa, and Haiti.” And a still-active job posting for a communications instructor to deploy into Sub-Saharan Africa in January or February claims that the role would require “Coordinat[ing] with Civil Affairs/PSYOP for […] community information operations and training acceptance."
Civil Affairs and psychological operations battalions are frequently referred to as the ‘step-children’ of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, with both the general public and the U.S. Army itself having a much deeper understanding of the roles and responsibilities of U.S. Army Special Forces, better known as the Green Berets.
Formally grouped together as components of the U.S. Army’s 1st Special Forces Command (Airborne) — which recently purchased licenses to the facial recognition product Clearview AI — the 95th Civil Affairs Battalion and the 4th and 8th Psychological Operations Groups are frequent partners with their siblings in the Green Berets on campaigns to win hearts and minds.
The civil affairs staff are generally tasked with direct engagements with local populations, behaving as a uniformed analogue of USAID that makes no secret of its goal of trading acts of kindness for actionable intelligence on military objectives and political sensitivities. Such intelligence is then handed to psychological operations teams to craft the equivalent of political campaigns against their adversaries, backed up by military force.
UG’s explicit reference to coordination with “Civil Affairs/PSYOP” adds weight to previous interpretations of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as a privatized civil affairs operation whose driving goal was the delegitimization of Hamas.
Hi Jack (pardon my familiarity but I've been a paid subscriber for a long time), you have an amazing story developing, I don't think anyone else is tracking this.
Thank you!