Barry M. Goldwater Range Visit 12-Apr-2011

[John B.]

Great stuff, Bill.  The low pass (no strafe) that 0939 made was really awesome.  The A-10 was banked almost perfectly for the light!

The F-16s were fun, too.  The first F-16 strafe of the day definitely caught my full attention!  This one is was later:


DSC_2103 by John Bezosky Jr., on Flickr

[Ned Harris]

A-10 strafing pass. Goldwater Gunnery Range 4/12/11.


_MG_4802 A-10 (s/n 80-0146) by Ned Harris, on Flickr

[bilwor]

After one of these runs and I was standing at the target they would not have enough to cremate. These Warthogs are deadly.

[Chuck Mitchell]

Teresa Walker of Public Affairs gave a very informative talk about the Barry Goldwater Bomb and Gunnery Ranges. There
are 4 manned ranges and 3 tactical ranges. The area they cover is immense, 1.3 million acres.

The manned ranges have a Range Control Officer in the main tower. He is the overall safety watchman and has a huge
responsibility. A couple of things to remember if you get to go to the range. If allowed to be in the tower when a flight
is on the range, please be quiet. Also, when shooting photos on the catwalk try and stay out of the Range Officer's line
of sight to the aircraft. If in a large group with folks from Sun City, or wherever, try and help things run smoothly. Your help
will be greatly appreciated by the range personnel.

Once the pilots gain enough experience they leave the manned ranges and go to the tactics ranges. There are airfields,
SAM sites, convoys,caves, etc...  Pilots plan attacks low level, 100' above ground level, up to altitudes around 25,000'.
They also do close air support operations where a ground forward air controller shoots a laser beam to mark a target.

I used to do part time duty as a Range Control Officer for 12 years. Now all controllers are contract civilians. If you have the
opportunity to go to the range, by all means go! You will never forget the experience.

Chuck Mitchell
Tucson

[Chuck Mitchell]

Each manned range is situated like a baseball diamond. I took this photo from the main range tower, kind of like home plate, looking
at the flank tower, second base. At the first and third base positions are bombing circles. Bombs dropped on the bomb circles used
scored by triangulation, people looking through tiny low budget telescopes at the blue buff of smoke when a BDU-33 detonates.
(you will learn about training ordnance in the briefing at the range). Now bombs are scored electronically and the scores automatically sent to Luke AFB.

The aircraft fly either a box pattern (for new guys) or pop up patterns. Ingress airspeeds for pops and all weapons delivery on
a manned range for the F-16 is between 500-550 mph that is almost 3 football fields per second.  I don't know what speeds the
A-10's fly but I think they push the power up to 100% for take off and leave it there till they put the gear down to land. ha.

I think the best place for photos is from the range tower. James suggested to me to use AV priority at 7.1 aperture, 200 ISO or less,
and that got me 1/2000sec on a sunny day. I did and got good results. The fighters call the range tower a few minutes prior to their arrival and tell what events they are going to do. I think that the flank tower to be a good place to get shots of the fighters if they
were going to do pop up patterns. Fighters will be ingressing at 100' AGL then do a pull up, steep climb to get some dive angle to
deliver their ordnance.  I wouldn't be surprised if you got a nice shot looking down at an incoming fighter if he forgot to set his radar altimeter.

I hope all this jibberish helps you with understanding what goes on at the bombing range. Hopefully, you can now tell somebody
what the heck the guy was doing when you took the photo.

Chuck MItchell
Tucson

[Ned Harris]

Chuck: Thanks for sharing all your knowledge of the range with us.

Here is another A-10 image from the Goldwater visit.


_MG_4809 A-10  (s/n 80-0146) by Ned Harris, on Flickr

[Chuck Mitchell]

The strafe foul line on manned ranges is a row of white tires 2000' short of the targets.  The minimum altitude over that foul line
is 75'. Normal training bursts are 1/4 to 1 second long, so you need to start shooting before they do.

The F-16 with the M-61 canon pours out 20mm lead at the astonishing rate of 100 rounds per second. WIth luck you might be
able to photograph a muzzle flash, normally hidden within the smoke. The gun is canted up slightly so the airplane is actually
pointed to impact short of the target. The gun is canted up for shooting air-to-air, so you don't have to pull quite as much lead in a
close in turning engagement.

The A-10 with the Gau-8 canon pours out 30mm lead at the rate of 65 rounds per second. The canon is about 40% more accurate
than the F-16. The muzzle velocity for both a/c is the same, 3250fps. But, the bigger bullets don't slow down as quickly and fly to the
target at 1/2 the time, and are accurate at twice as far out. On normal training flights both a/c plan on making 3 hot strafe passes.

Chuck Mitchell
Tucson

[Joe Copalman]

Thanks Chuck!  On the few shots I have in which the 20mm rounds from a Viper are visible, they seem to be moving in a line that's slightly elevated from the aircraft's direction of travel.  I figured it was some slight canting of the gun, but it's good to have it explained in detail.

[Chuck Mitchell]

This is the strafe pit for Range #2, Gila Bend Bomb and Gunnery Range. The bullseye square is 8'x8'. In comparison, a Soviet
T-72 tank is about 7' tall and23' long. Scoring is done acoustically. A microphone counts the total number of supersonic rounds
that fly past, and accurately counts those that go through the bullseye.

This strafe pass was flown by an A-10C, 354th Ftr Sq, the Bulldogs, from Davis Monthan AFB. He shot a total of 49 rounds
(3/4 sec. burst) and 41 went through the bullseye. That is about 84%, which is better than average and about twice as accurate
as an F-16. These were target practice (TP) rounds, just lead bullets, they don't go bang. Imagine though what 49 rounds of
high explosive depleted uranium bullets would do to a Soviet T-72. 

So why the 2000' foul line and minimum alt. of 75' over the foul line? Why do the pilots always make an aggressive 6G pull up
after shooting? Check the big puffs of dust past the pit from a couple of bullets that are ricocheting down range. They also
ricochet straight up! Both bullets and bombs do this and bombs can also broach. Broaching is a bomb that literally went
underground and spit out skyward, 'ricocheting' back into the air. This is spectacular to see, though rare.

Chuck Mitchell
Tucson

[CJPalmer]

Finally got around to processing my images from the range.

Inbound
The GAU-8 speaks
Moon over my Hammie?