Message posted by Richard on August 22, 2000 at 07:18:44 EST:
The US navy is present on several islands around the Socal coast. The inner Pacific ranges around Socal are used for Edwards testing aswell as the inland ranges, and to a certain extent Groom operations are out there too as its an unlimited range, with no land based prying eyes.... Richard
San Clemente island is used for Cruise missile impact tests, most notibly the Tomahawk and this is carried out with Pnt Mugu and China Lake.
San Nicolas is also a Naval facility as you mentioned.
Channel Islands have also got a naval facility that is part of Pnt Mugu naval weapons centre.
All these are inside the Pacific testing Ranges and are restricted areas all the way from LA to up near Salinas.
Vandenberg also use these ranges in conjunction with the other Pacific Test Range(the big one) out at Kwajelien Atoll where they use this to impact MIRV's.
B1Bs and other bombers also use this atoll for live weapon global power sorties.
Aswell as Kwaj, theres Bikini Atoll there aswell.
These were where the largest Nukes were detonated and so they are the perfect place for operations.
They do have runways and a small airfield, enough for Transports such as C130s and larger.
At one point the range around the atolls took up quite some percentage of the worlds surface area, mainly due to the radioactivty of the largest american bomb detonated ever, which was by accident anyway, but that accident turned into a major disaster for the surrounding islands.
Read my NTS article, to know more about this.
In Reply to: Re: Islands posted by Gary Sellani on August 21, 2000 at 21:47:26 EST:
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