ST. GEORGE — Residents in Southern Nevada and Southern Utah may notice increased noise from military aircraft as the Air Force conducts Red Flag 21-1 from Jan. 25 through Feb. 12.
According to a press release from Nellis Air Force Base, more than 80 aircraft are scheduled to depart from the base twice a day and may remain in the air for up to five hours during Red Flag. There may be night launches as well to allow air crews to train for nighttime combat operations.
The Red Flag exercise is organized at Nellis Air Force Base and 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 and the NTTR are the home of a “peacetime battlefield,” the press release stated, providing combat air forces with the ability to train to fight together, survive together and win together.
Red Flag gives aircrew an opportunity to experience advanced, relevant and realistic combat-like situations in a controlled environment to increase their ability to complete missions and safely return home. It also prepares maintenance personnel, ground controllers, space and cyber operators to support those missions within the same tactical environment.
The 414th Combat Training Squadron is responsible for executing Red Flag, and this exercise is just one of a series of advanced training programs administered at Nellis and on the NTTR by organizations assigned to the U.S. Air Force Warfare Center.
For more information about Red Flag, contact the Nellis Air Force Base Public Affairs Office at 702-652-2719 or by email at [email protected].
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2021, all rights reserved.