Target circle

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  Bill (guest)

  Still under use as some fresh craters are present. In the old days this may have been used for bomber training, particularly level high altitude and delivery system "bomb site" testing, but I am just speculating. However, this looks more like a technical test area, not so much for training crews as more for accuracy testing of PGM's, GPS guided weapons and such. The large and obvious test circles are to permit the pilots to release the test weapon as accurately as possible wherein they can access the effect of guidance, wind and so on on accuracy. Also, since one of the trends is in high altitude delivery via GPS it would be import to demark the area as very obvious to the pilots delivering the test weapons, for reasons of safety. In such situations the bombs being tested are often tested with a dummy warhead as the purpose is to test the accuracy of the weapon itself (guided or unguided) and not the blast effect. As such the area is not chewed up by too many large impact craters. In fact some of the craters present may be from the physical impact of the test bomb...and not a blast.

  18 years ago | reply | hide comment