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Nov. 06, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Teams train to thwart terror

'Gotham City' on Nellis range used for training by elite military personnel

By KEITH ROGERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
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Air Force Col. John P. Montgomery, commander of the Nellis Air Force Base 98th Range Wing, walks through a mock town at the Nellis Test and Training Range. The venue allows special operations teams from across the country to practice military maneuvers.
Photos by John Locher.



A wooden cutout dog is part of the landscape at "Gotham City," the mock community where military drills take place 40 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The skyline of "Gotham City" appeared in stark contrast Thursday to chiseled mountains and desolate valleys that surround this mock Mojave Desert town.

Black, plywood silhouettes of men, women, children and at least one dog stood between bombed-out trucks and buildings made of Sea-Land shipping containers stacked two and three stories high.

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    • Batman was nowhere in sight.

    Instead, the heroes were a ground controller named Staff Sgt. James Spreter and pilots in two A-10 Thunderbolt II jets that swooped in with their Gatling guns rumbling to unleash a barrage of cannon fire at imaginary terrorists in trucks on the city's north end.

    Since it was built in 2005, this was the first time the range commander had granted a throng of nonmilitary visitors a glimpse of the place where warplanes and ground troops rehearse for missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    "It's like a big sandbox in your back yard," said Col. John P. Montgomery, commander of the Nellis Air Force Base 98th Range Wing. "Our job is to figure out what our customers want in that sand box."

    For the most part, the "customers" are special operations teams from all branches of the U.S. military.

    When asked why the place formally known as the Urban Operations Complex made its public debut Thursday after having been kept so low key, he said, "This is a success story for the Air Force. There was no need to hide it. We just didn't think about it."

    The complex, or Gotham City as airmen call it, juts from the desert floor amid Joshua trees and yucca plants along a bumpy, 20-mile-long gravel road off U.S. 95, some 40 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

    It is used by Army Special Forces soldiers, Navy SEALs and other military personnel. The city was built so they could hone their skills on searching buildings, confronting enemy combatants and coordinating with air power.

    "This is not just about the Air Force," Montgomery said. "It's about combat forces and preservation of national integrity."

    The 2.9 million-acre Nellis range, officially dubbed the Nevada Test and Training Range, is a "national treasure," he said, because it offers fighter pilots room to conduct combat exercises in an air space that's 150 miles long and 100 miles wide over a setting that resembles Afghanistan and Iraq.

    Because it is so remote, the Urban Operations Complex is "incredibly electronically quiet. It provides us a laboratory where we can experiment."

    In the global war on terrorism, one of the so-called experiments is to try to intercept e-mail and electronic communications that terrorists might use.

    "We'll put up an Internet café and work on a computer program," he said. "The program either will not allow him (a would-be terrorist) to send e-mail, or we make him think he sent an e-mail."

    Larry Prince, the range's civilian target manager, said it cost about $16 million to build Gotham City, counting materials and labor. More than 2,000 sea-land containers were used in its construction. The city includes a river of painted blue rocks with small boats and an airstrip complete with F-4 jets parked in hangars and mock surface-to-air missile sites.

    On this day, Spreter, the ground controller clad in camouflage and a Kevlar helmet, was positioned in view of a "bad guy" neighborhood. Occasionally, he glanced at a computer in the cab of a truck. The screen showed real-time footage of the targets taken by video cameras looking down from a remote-controlled Predator spy plane that circled high above, out of sight.

    With a radio in hand, he called in the attack by the A-10s and then confirmed the damage.

    "Four Gator. Mission successful. Vehicles destroyed," he told one of the pilots.

    Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.

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    An American Citizen wrote on November 06, 2009 10:29 PM: TOP 3 THREATS TO AMERICA:

    1) MUSLIMS
    2) CONSERVATIVES
    3) THE POLICE


    Fair and off Balnced Fred wrote on November 06, 2009 08:52 PM: Top Three Sets to America
    Musloms
    Mexicans
    Blacks


    Joe the Plumber wrote on November 06, 2009 05:11 PM: Excellent.

    We need these kinds of programs to thwart the lunatic right-wing domestic terrorists, and right-wing domestic terrorist sympathizers, in our midst.

    You know, the Fox "News" watchers and AM radio listeners.

    You never know when one of them is going to snap like McVeigh or Glenn Beck.


    fljohngalt wrote on November 06, 2009 03:03 PM: Is there any surprise that the # of terrorist attacks that are planned, attempted, or carried out have risen since Pres. Obama was elected? He is a friend of domestic terrorists, an apologizer to Islamic nations, he loathes the U.S. military and shows this by ignoring his top military advisor's requests for more troops in Afghanistan, he refuses to allow us to interrogate/torture terrorists, and wants to prosecute those intelligence agents who kept us safe in the past.


    NOBAMA wrote on November 06, 2009 02:47 PM: Your president was too busy at an Indian conference to mention the tragedy in TX, maybe b/c Indians and Muslims both have dark skin.


    Joachim Jacob wrote on November 06, 2009 01:26 PM: Thanks for your very interesting news article, Keith. I already posted it on Warthog News (http://warthognews.blogspot.com)

    See: http://warthognews.blogspot.com/2009/11/teams-train-to-thwart-terror.html


    Reality wrote on November 06, 2009 11:21 AM: Frank,

    Muslims do not have souls, and therefore aren't human. I'll go out on a limb here...you've never been over to the middle east. There's no such thing as a moderate Muslim.


    Frank wrote on November 06, 2009 11:16 AM: Yes, blowing up phony towns in order to murder more Muslims (which the RJ has the audacity to call "thwarting terror"), plenty of money for that, but affordable health care for all and a new school for your kid...That'll have to wait.


    muslim wrote on November 06, 2009 09:11 AM: leave he mslims in peace please,they are not really what you think...terrorists are everywhere,,,just look arround you.


    Ken wrote on November 06, 2009 08:29 AM: Nothing wrong with money being spent for this. I am sure with the typical government waste built in, it could have been done for less than half the cost but still, our troops need places to train.

    The problem is that even with all of the training available to them, the p.c. military leadership allows renegade muslims to hang around long enough to do real damage on our soldiers.


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