Red Flag exercises at Nellis AFB account for loud booms

ST. GEORGE – Southern Utah residents may have noticed loud booms and experience shaking of their homes midday and early evenings since Monday. These area disturbances can be expected to continue over the next two and a half weeks as Nellis Air Force Base in southern Nevada conducts its Red Flag 13-3 exercises.

The increased military aircraft activity out of Nellis is scheduled to run Feb. 25 – March 15.

More than 125 aircraft are scheduled to depart Nellis AFB twice a day around noon and again around 6 p.m. Aircraft may remain in the air for up to five hours.

Flying times are scheduled to accommodate other flying missions at Nellis AFB and provide Red Flag participants with valuable training in planning and executing a wide-variety of combat missions in coordination with the local Federal Aviation Administration.

Red Flag 13-3 will have a larger amount of night flying than in some previous Red Flags.

Red Flag is a realistic combat training exercise involving the air forces of the United States and its allies. The exercise is hosted north of Las Vegas on the Nevada Test and Training Range – the U.S. Air Force’s premier military training area with more than 12,000 square miles of airspace and 2.9 million acres of land. With 1,900 possible targets, realistic threat systems and an opposing enemy force that cannot be replicated anywhere else in the world, Nellis AFB and the NTTR are the home of a “peacetime battlefield,” providing combat air forces with the ability to train to fight together, survive together and win together.

The 414th Combat Training Squadron is responsible for executing Red Flag. The exercise is one out of a series of advanced training programs administered at Nellis AFB and on the NTTR by organizations assigned to the U.S. Air Force Warfare Center.

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Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2013, all rights reserved.

 

Air Force exercises

 

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2 Comments

  • Red Harmony February 28, 2013 at 8:04 am

    This is a big open country, and while I appreciate the need for our military to train, I can’t see why they needed to fly within a couple hundred feet of the ground (3 of them) around New Harmony town and over to Kolob Fingers and back last week. Is deafening the residents and scaring Hell out of pets and livestock in a small town a crucial part of our National Security? You can call Nellis and complain, but they always deny it and blame Hill AFB, so what’s the point?

  • Bigger Bob February 28, 2013 at 4:05 pm

    I think the sounds and sights are awe amazing!!

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