Silverbell Army Heliport

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FAA Identifier: 02AZ

The Western Army National Guard Aviation Training Site, (WAATS) is located at the Silverbell Army Heliport Marana, Arizona, in the heart of the beautiful Sonoran desert.

The heliport is about 30 miles Northwest of historic Tucson and about 86 miles South of Arizona's capital city Phoenix. Co-located at the heliport is the 1st/285th Apache Helicopter Attack Battalion, a unit of the Arizona Army National Guard.

The pre-mobilization mission of the Western Army National Guard Aviation Training Site is to conduct National Guard Bureau directed aviation training for the Attack and Aero-Scout mission as approved and directed by the US Army Training & Doctrine Command. The post mobilization mission is to augment the TRADOC as an activity under the command and control of US Army Aviation Center.

The WAATS is the premier training site for attack and aero-scout helicopter training for the Army National Guard. The training site also serves both active duty and National Guard aviators with simulation support, utilizing the AH-1 Flight Weapons Simulator or the AH-64 Combat Mission Simulator. Helicopter emergency procedures training is being conducted at the Picacho Stage field, which has a control tower, crash fire rescue and four emergency procedure-training lanes. In addition, Picacho Stage field is able to bivouac an entire Apache battalion.

The training environment of the WAATS is second to none. Weather and flying conditions allow for 360 training days per year. The sparsely populated low level and tactical training area has 3600 square miles, 2/3 of which has been approved for tactical landing zones. In addition, the training area has 8 commercial instrumented airports.

Aerial gunnery training is conducted on the Barry M. Goldwater Gunnery range utilizing the 2.5 million-acre joint use ranges. Staging from Gila Bend Auxiliary Field, the armed helicopters proceed to East Tac Target Range to complete their gunnery mission.