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Defense: Avon Park
Home on the (bombing) range
A 106,034-acre site in rural central Florida is routinely bombed, blasted and shot to pieces. Naturally resplendent, it's a unique asset for both the military and environmentalists.
» For a photo gallery, go to FloridaTrend.com/AvonPark
A slideshow of the Avon Park Air Force Range
Targets
Old shipping containers are used to form the buildings in a dummy village, airfeld control towers and a store. Units train to avoid hitting culturally significant structures, like a mosque, or friendly forces and innocents.
Worn-out jets and retired M113 armored personnel carriers are stripped of glass and fuids. To mimic an armored rocket launcher, a crate that held missiles is put on top of a personnel carrier, its fake missile tubes pointing skyward.
The props and vehicles take a beating. Concrete is pockmarked from small-arms fire and blast effects, as are containers and vehicles.
The range also has “conventional” target areas where aircraft, working without ground troops, conduct target practice. Cameras on observation towers provide feedback on accuracy. An acoustic-sensor area can count gunnery accuracy.
BOMBS AWAY
Other places where bombs are dropped in Florida:
Eglin Air Force Base: Eglin’s primary mission for years has been to research, develop, test and evaluate new weapons and munitions on its 464,000 acres in the Panhandle, but in recent years with the addition of other missions and units — the 7th Special Forces Group, for instance — it also has come to offer training with established munitions. Of its total land acreage, 36,514 are designated “impact areas” for live and inert munitions, gunnery, high explosives and so on. It operates every day with users as diverse as the Alabama National Guard and U.S. Special Forces. Even with 724 square miles, Eglin’s pinched for space. With so many units and so much testing and with the advent of long-range, standoff weapons, which require a bigger buffer in case something goes amiss, it’s a challenge for the Air Force to schedule everything.
Eglin Gulf Test and Training Complex: Eglin also oversees 116,449 square nautical miles of controlled air space over the Gulf — roughly from the Panhandle south to Key West and west to the Alabama-Mississippi state line designated as the Eglin Gulf Test and Training Complex. It’s used for the same manner of training as the Eglin land area and includes designated live fire areas where a barge, for example, might be used for target practice.
Pinecastle Bombing Range: A 5,698-acre area within the Ocala National Forest, it’s the Navy’s only live-impact site on the U.S. East Coast. Its primary user is the Navy, but Pinecastle also sees Marine, Army and Air Force units. Annual totals have less than 1,300 bombs, about half of which are live explosives. The Defense Department has used the site since 1941, and the Navy’s used it since 1951. Most of the range is a buffer zone for a small area where planes target bombs, missiles and gunnery on vehicle hulks, concentric circles, simulated convoys and other targets.
Jacksonville Range Complex: Some 150,000 square miles of surface and subsurface sea space and special use airspace that runs from Port Canaveral to just north of Wilmington, N.C., and 250 nautical miles out to sea. It sees limited bombing use — about 75 to 100 bombs per year. The whole thing is controlled by the Navy’s Jacksonville-based Fleet Area Control and Surveillance Facility.
Most of the range’s acreage is buffer land, home to unspoiled scrub and prairie habitat and 14 endangered or threatened species. The Air Force has funded 20 years of ecological research by Archbold Biological Station and employs four environmental researchers. The Air Force also helped organize the only conference devoted to Florida’s dry prairie ecosystem. There are cultural and historical resources too, protected and researched with Air Force money.
