Dogfight over development: New homes infringe on base, threaten training

Jace Radke

Monday, Dec. 16, 2002 | 11:03 a.m.

While Air Force pilots test their mettle in the skies over Nevada in preparation for a possible conflict with Iraq, Nellis Air Force Base commander Col. Del Eulberg finds himself fighting an ongoing battle on the ground.

Eulberg is charged with keeping residential and business developments from spreading under flight paths -- making it too dangerous for bomb-laden planes headed to train at the 3 million-acre Nevada Test and Training Range in the desert north of Las Vegas.

"What may seem like a simple housing tract going up in the northeast part of town may impact our ability to complete our mission," Eulberg said.

"Nellis is a unique facility that serves as the center of gravity for the Air Force's air combat training."

That gravity also seems to be pulling at developers, as retail and residential areas continue to crop up around the base. Nellis has been left with a northwesterly flight path as the only safe route to the nation's largest and most sophisticated training range.

That path is continually threatened by new housing developments. The latest threat came to an end two weeks ago, when a developer withdrew plans to build 36,000 homes northwest of the base.

Getting pilots and planes to the range is crucial, because the training experience over Nevada's desert is as close to a real life combat situation as pilots are going to get, said Col. Jim Callahan, a pilot who heads the 98th Air Operations Group.

"I've flown just about every range there is and none can compare to (the Nevada Test and Training Range) -- and we guard it jealously," Callahan said. "It's the most realistic training there is, whether you're going to be flying over the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq or anywhere else."

Over the range, pilots face the most advanced radar and "attacks" by simulated surface-to-air missiles. Broken down tanks with heating elements in them to represent the thermal signature of an active tank dot the desert.

Trainers can ask pilots to destroy specific targets hidden in a puzzle of desert terrain, buildings and runways.

About 50 percent of the Air Force's live ordnance training is done at the Nellis range, and 92 percent of the pilots who flew missions in Desert Shield and Desert Storm trained at Nellis. Pilots fly more than 55,000 missions a year, carrying more than 1.3 million pounds of live ordnance.

Taking off from one of the base's two runways, pilots headed to the range with live munitions must fly northwest over a clear zone at the end of the runways and over two areas called "accident potential zones."

The zones are 4,000 feet wide and a total of 15,000 feet in length, and are made up mostly of desert areas and industrial developments. Interstate 15 crosses the northwest corner of the second accident potential zone.

The danger of a crash, dropped ordnance or another accident decreases the farther the plane gets from the runway, Nellis officials said.

The Air Force is spending nearly $40 million of federally appropriated funds to buy more than 400 acres of privately owned desert land in the accident potential zones northwest of the runways. Fifteen of 27 parcels have already been purchased.

"We're buying them from the center out so that in a worst-case scenario we'd still have a path," Eulberg said. "The Air Force does not usually buy private property, but we felt we needed to take this unique approach to ensure our mission."

McCarran International Airport airspace brackets Nellis to the east, and the sprawl of homes and businesses around the southern and western edges of the base effectively ended southern takeoffs of planes carrying live munitions in the early 1990s.

Farther northwest, the 21,000-acre Apex industrial park sits directly under the base's flight path and could effectively shut down the base if developers are given the OK to build homes there. The park, which sits about 15 miles northeast of Las Vegas, but is northwest of Nellis, may now be divided into parcels and sold off after developers withdrew the plans for the 36,000 homes.

There is nothing to stop the developers or future owners of the parcels from making similar proposals for housing in the future.

"It's obvious that land is a precious commodity, when you realize that 6,000 new people a month are moving here," Eulberg said. "We don't want to hinder the growth, but at the same time we don't want houses under planes (that are) carrying ordnance."

Commissioner Mary Kincaid-Chauncey, whose district includes areas around Nellis, said that it has been a challenge to balance the needs of the base with the requests of developers.

"It's hard for people to pay for land and then find that they can't develop it," Kincaid-Chauncey said. "The Apex land is zoned for industrial, but there is too much industrial land available in other parts of the county, and no one has wanted to move out there yet.

"If housing were built out there, it would in effect force the moving of the base."

That's not going to happen, Eulberg said.

"I've heard rumors that Nellis will pick up and move out to Indian Springs, but Indian Springs doesn't have the capacity to handle what we can here," Eulberg said. "The infrastructure isn't there.

Indian Springs, about 45 miles northwest of Las Vegas, houses Nellis' small arms range and is home base for the RQ-1 Predator, the air force's unmanned aircraft.

"Having the base in Las Vegas benefits the personnel stationed here and the county," Eulberg said. "About 100,000 people rely on Nellis and the O'Callaghan Federal Hospital, and we bring about $2 billion a year to the local economy."

Eulberg said base officials rely on a good working relationship with developers and the various municipalities and an early warning system to make sure that housing developments don't end up under flight lanes.

"We have a representative from Nellis who sits on the county's comprehensive planning steering committee," Eulberg said. "It's a non-voting member, but we get a warning of any impending encroachment."

Once he has the warning, Eulberg mobilizes, preparing Power Point displays and meeting individually with county commissioners to inform them of what a simple housing development could mean to the Air Force's capability to wage war.

Eulberg only needs to look to the southern end of the base to see what can happen if development is given free rein. Near Hollywood Boulevard and Carey Avenue, houses sit only a few hundred yards from areas where the Air Force stores bombs.

Residents in the area, such as 24-year-old Ross Pearman, say they don't mind being close to the storage areas.

"My dad was in the Air Force for 16 years, so it's not a big deal to me," Pearman said. "I don't really think about it, and you get used to the noise."

Depending on wind conditions, Nellis is sometimes forced to shut down flight operations involving live ordnance because aircraft can no longer take off to the south.

New technology and weapons systems, such as the F-22 stealth fighter, require tactics to be adjusted, created and incorporated into training, and the best place to do that is the Nellis range, Eulberg said.

"We have to keep the northwest open," Eulberg said. "That's our focus, and it will become even more important in the future, when we begin training with the F-22 next year."

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