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filed under | military | history
Tonopah Test Range Airport is located near the center of the Tonopah Test Range, 27 NM southeast of Tonopah, Nevada and 140 mi northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. It is a major airfield with a 12,000 ft × 150 ft runway, instrument approach facilities, and nighttime illumination. The facility boasts over fifty hangars and an extensive support infrastructure. Tonopah is owned by the USAF Air Combat Command. The known primary use of this airport is to shuttle government employees to the weapons test range from McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. The primary access to the facility is off of U.S. Route 6 at the north end of the airport. Dirt road access points also exist on the south and east sides of the range. The site is plainly visible from commercial airliners, which pass 17 NM north of the base on transcontinental flights. The Tonopah range first opened in 1957, supporting operations on the Test Range itself, which was used for United States Atomic Energy Commission, funded weapon programs. It was apparently not a World War II era field, as it is not listed in the 1944 US Army/Navy Directory of Airfields. It was apparently established as an Air Force facility at some point in the late 1950s, as Tonopah Air Force Station was the location of a radar site operated by the 866th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron to provide active surveillance over the area. During the Cold War, one of the missions carried out at Tonopah was the test and evaluation of captured Soviet fighter aircraft. This was not a new mission, as testing of foreign technology by the USAF began during World War II. After the war, testing of acquired foreign technology was performed by the Air Technical Intelligence Center, under the direct command of the Air Materiel Control Department. In 1961 ATIC became the Foreign Technology Division, and was reassigned to Air Force Systems Command. ATIC personnel were sent anywhere where foreign aircraft could be found. In August 1966 an Iraqi Air Force fighter pilot, Captain Munir Redfa, flew his shiny new MiG-21 to Israel after being ordered to attack Iraqi Kurd villages with napalm. This fighter found itself in Nevada within a month. In 1968 the US Air Force and Navy jointly formed a project known as Have Donut in which they flew this 'acquired' Soviet made MiG-21 aircraft in simulated air combat training at a top secret facility in Nevada known as Detachment 3, Air Force Flight Test Center, also known as Groom Lake and Area-51. That facility was the birthplace of the SR-71 as well as other projects that remain to be discussed. May 1982, Tonopah Test Range became the home of the Air Force F-117 fleet. At the time the F-117 project was still highly classified, and Tonopah Test Range became a black project facility. Air Force personnel were shuttled from Las Vegas to TTR on contract Boeing 727 aircraft. The new F-117 fleet was considered for several high-profile military operations during the mid 1980s, but operations remained largely confined to nighttime flights around Nevada and California for a number of years. In November 1988 the Air Force publicly revealed its F-117 activities at Tonopah, and decreased security brought the program into "gray world" status. [READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE]
