You may hear – and even feel – the boom as airmen test mettle in high-tech training exercises
ST. GEORGE — Residents in Southern Utah and southern Nevada can rest assured that the booming, shaking and rattling they may experience in the coming days are not the result of active warfare but rather high-tech military training exercises.
The Red Flag training exercises are organized at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada north of Las Vegas on the Nevada Test and Training Range. The range includes a training area with more than 12,000 square miles of airspace and 2.9 million acres of land.
Aircraft are scheduled to depart Nellis twice a day at various times for the duration of the exercises through Aug. 3, including night launches for nighttime combat operations training.
Aircraft have been known to fly over Southern Utah during the training exercises, often creating loud booms during flyovers and munitions testing.
Homes have been known to rattle as a result of the sonic booms created by such aircraft as F-16 Fighting Falcons reaching speeds of Mach 2.
During a Red Flag exercise in 2016, a SunRiver resident said his home’s windows cracked when an aircraft flew overhead.
Read more: SunRiver residents report cracked windows after Air Force training exercises
“Red Flag gives aircrews an opportunity to experience advanced, relevant, and realistic combat-like situations in a controlled environment to increase their ability to complete missions,” Nellis Air Force Base stated in a news release.
The exercises are also designed to prepare maintenance personnel, ground controllers and space and cyber operators to support missions in a tactical environment.
The training range includes approximately 2,200 targets, providing realistic threat systems that mimic an opposing enemy force that the Air Force says “cannot be replicated anywhere else in the world.”
The Red Flag exercises are executed by the 414th Combat Training Squadron. The training simulation is just one of a series of advanced training programs administered at Nellis.
“Nellis and the Nevada Test and Training Range provide combat air forces with the ability to train to fight together, survive together and win together,” the news release states.
Email: jwitham@stgnews.com
Twitter: @STGnews
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2018, all rights reserved.