The uncertainty surrounding the availability of live-fire training
and testing ranges has fueled a lobbying effort to convince the
military services that they should take advantage of the large span
of water, land and airspace along the Florida Panhandle and the
Eastern Gulf of Mexico.
The growing needs for joint training makes the Gulf range complex
a valuable resource, which currently is underused, said range officials.
The commanders of the Air Force Air Armaments Center, the Naval
Surface Warfare Center and the Army Aviation and Missile Command
recently put together a so-called “Joint Gulf Range Complex
Strategic Plan,” which explains why they view the area as
an ideal venue for modern military training.
The Joint Gulf Coast Ranges initiative started three years ago,
to “tie together the assets of the services on the Gulf Coast,”
said Donald F. Roswell, program engineer at the 46th Test Wing,
Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.
The Army, Navy and Air Force all are having difficulties getting
enough live-fire training, as a result of “encroachment,”
said Roswell during a conference on testing and training, sponsored
by the National Defense Industrial Association. Encroachment is
a term used frequently by Defense Department officials to describe
restrictive measures that limit the scope of military live-fire
training.
Encroachment refers to, for example, environmental regulations,
airspace restrictions, radio-frequency spectrum, urban growth and
airborne noise, said Michael Parmentier, director of defense readiness
and training policy.
A case in point is the Navy’s live-fire target range on Vieques
Island, in Puerto Rico. The local population wants the range closed,
arguing that firing exercises pose safety risks to the residents
and cause harm to the environment. The Bush administration agreed
to cease training operations at Vieques by 2003.
The Marine Corps could perform amphibious landings on the Gulf
Coast ranges, like they do at Vieques, even though it would be on
a “very limited basis,” with no live fire, said Roswell.
“We have conducted live-fire operations, across barrier islands.
We can fire south, into the Gulf of Mexico.”
The Gulf Coast ranges include the Pensacola Naval Air Station,
the Navy’s Coastal Systems Station, Eglin and Tyndall Air
Force bases and the Army’s Fort Rucker.
“We are trying to make our capability for testing and training
more attractive to the services,” said Robert Arnold, 46th
Test Wing technical director.
Range engineers are in the process of developing an over-water
target area, to be able to score weapon impacts in the Gulf, Roswell
said. “We can’t live fire across the land into the range,
[but] we can score impact angles for testing and training. ... We
are trying to come up with an arrangement of towers and platforms
in the Gulf, perhaps a floating island.”
Scoring weapons is a method used for testing the accuracy of munitions.
Currently, the Navy scores weapons at Vieques, but Roswell believes
that, in the future, the same could be done in the Gulf.
“We have very accurate cameras on the range that we can score
weapon impacts down to a meter,” he said.
George C. Betz Jr., U.S. Navy liaison at the 46th Test Wing, explained
that the advent of standoff weapons has altered testing and training
requirements significantly. “The safety footprint has changed
over time,” he said. “In the 50s it was the size of
a quarter. In the 60s, with the standoff of the weapons growing,
the safety footprint keeps getting larger.” The upshot is
the need to continually move offshore to do the scoring.
Fifty years ago, explained Arnold, “we could drop iron bombs,
measure wind effects.” Now, “once we start adding guidance
systems and propulsion, we have footprints that are far greater
than the land range.”
In the 1980s, he said, “we started dealing with environmental
regulations and encroachment.” These restrictions “could
be show stoppers in the future.”
Occasionally, there are unexpected cases of encroachment, said
Arnold. In the early 1990s, the Drug Enforcement Agency wanted to
put up aerostat balloons on the edge of the Eglin Reservation. The
balloons intruded into the range’s air space. “We sent
a letter signed by general and flag officers, so the aerostats went
away.”
Some officials fear that pressures to close or curtail live-fire
ranges increasingly will grow. “Vieques is the first domino
in a chain of dominoes,” said David Velez, technical director
at the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Facility, in Roosevelt Roads,
Puerto Rico.
“I fear for the future,” he said at the conference.
A study by the Center for Naval Analyses proposed alternative training
sites to Vieques, but did not mention the Gulf Ranges. It said that
Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina, could accommodate 75 percent of
the training currently being conducted at Vieques. The remaining
25 percent, said the study, could be accomplished at Fort Bragg
and other nearby ranges in North Carolina.—