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(Image: Google Earth; the dusty expanses of Eastman Airfield Target, Nevada)
Nestled amid 625 square miles of the most restricted desert land in the free world, Tonopah Test Range sits on the northern fringes of the much larger Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR), some 70 miles from Groom Lake, more popularly known as Area 51.
It’s here that, since the mid-1950s when the Cold War was heating up, the United States government has tested its most exotic and highly classified military programmes, from the top secret U-2 spyplane to the game-changing A-12 Oxcart and a plethora of other aircraft and weapons systems both acknowledged and rumoured.
Tonopah Test Range Airport
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(Image: Google; Nevada’s top secret Tonopah Test Range Airport)
At the heart of this vast restricted area is the Tonopah Test Range Airport, a shadowy military installation second only to Groom Lake in terms of the levels of secrecy within its double-fenced flightline and twin rows of hangars, known to those based there as the Canyon.
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(Image: USAF; F-117 test pilots of the 4450th Tactical Group while the Nighthawk was a black project at TTR Airport, 1986)
It was at Tonopah that the highly classified Lockheed F-117 Stealth Fighter was based for several years before the aircraft was publicly unveiled in the late 1980s. The Nighthawk had been developed as a black project at nearby Groom Lake under the Senior Trend programme – following the success of the innovative Have Blue technology demonstrators, which served as proof-of-concept aircraft for the groundbreaking Stealth Fighters that followed – and moved to the Tonopah Test Range (TTR) Airport to fly in secret after becoming operational. And it was to the remote site that the jets returned for retirement, quietly stored in their original hangars within the Canyon, far from prying eyes, as newer top secret aircraft (most likely unmanned) operate around them.
As a proving ground for experimental aircraft, Russian-built jets, top secret technology demonstrators and other classified prototypes over the years, not to mention major international military exercises such as Red Flag, it’s not surprising that the facilities within and around the Nellis Range are extensive. Some 12,000 targets are thought to sit out in the desert, some of them on innocuous, dusty runways used to simulate enemy airfields.
Decoy Airfields Inside the Tonopah Test Range
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(Image: Google Earth; Eastman Airfield Target / Target 76-14)
Among these is the so-called Eastman Airfield Target, or Target 76-14, a decoy airfield designed on the now-abandoned Soviet air base north of Jüterbog, in the former East Germany. Carved out of the desert, the ghostly Cold War form of the typical Soviet base is clearly visible from above. Around its dusty perimeter, several dozen abandoned aircraft sit, completing the effect of Soviet-built jets that in some cases still haunt the long-disused aprons of Russian bases today.
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(Image: Google Maps; second decoy airfield north of Eastman Airfield Target)
Several miles to the north lies another decoy airfield installation. Seemingly newer and less cluttered than nearby Eastman Target, the old hulks of several withdrawn US jets nevertheless grace its rudimentary ‘runways’ and dispersals.
Mellan Airstrip
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(Image: Google Earth)
Meanwhile, roughly 11 miles southeast of Tonopah Test Range Airport lies an old World War Two runway once used for training by units based at Tonopah Army Air Field. Known as Mellan Airstrip, it’s the last of these wartime runways to remain in use. The remainder had been closed by 1960 and now lie abandoned across the range. Mellan’s rudimentary 5,000ft concrete runway is understood to be used by C-17 Globemasters and C-130 Hercules transport aircraft today.
KENO Airfield
Almost due east of Mellan, across the plain and mountain range, is another isolated airstrip northeast of Cedar Pass. Officially known as KENO Airfield, the dusty landing strip was completed in 2003 after – according to Dreamland Resort – expanding to three times the size that was originally proposed.
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(Image: Google Earth; KENO Airstrip east of TTR Airport)
KENO Airfield is suitable for planes like the C-17s and C-130, and is regularly used to train US troops in airdrops amid mountainous terrain. The video below shows A-10 Thunderbolts and C-17s operating on and around the airstrip, along with over 100 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, during the Joint Forcible Entry Exercise held within the restricted area of the Tonopah Test Range during December 2014.
Perhaps the best kept (despite its apparent closure) landing strip in the area lies immediately adjacent to Highway 6 north-east of Warm Springs, Nevada – a mysterious runway understood to have been built by the Atomic Energy Commission back in the 1960s, at a time when numerous top secret nuclear tests were underway in the remote expanses of the Nevada desert. Known as Basecamp Airfield, the facility remains intriguing, despite two large yellow crosses at the end of the tarmac strip which reveal it to be closed.
Basecamp Airfield
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(Image: Bing Maps; the long runway of Basecamp Airfield near Warm Springs, Nevada)
Over the years it’s been speculated that the abandoned runway had been used during clandestine flight tests, perhaps as an emergency landing ground for top secret aircraft operating out of the Tonopah Test Range Airport or classified prototypes and other black projects undergoing testing at Groom Lake.
While its proximity to the highway probably makes this unlikely, even fanciful, there’s no doubt that highly classified aircraft continue to operate within this remote region of the western United States. And it seems safe to say that types we don’t yet know about have been forced to make emergency landings away from their home bases.
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(Image: Bing Maps; yellow crosses signal that Basecamp’s runway is officially closed)
What’s more, this article has merely touched on the mysterious desert runways of the Nevada Test and Training Range. For those interested in aviation in general and black project aircraft in particular, this harsh terrain is at the epicenter of American secret American programmes, but won’t be giving up its secrets any time soon.
Related – Top Secret Tombs: The Classified Stealth Aircraft Burial Grounds of Area 51
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