Servicemembers save money by clearing Alaskan bombing range

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Jonathan Snyder
  • 354th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska (AFNS) --  American servicemembers cleared 10,000 acres of land of old ordnance and munitions at the Joint Pacific Alaskan Range Complex Yukon training area in May to make the area safe and to save money. 

Last year, 354th Fighter Wing officials spent more than $1 million on a contracted team to clear ordnance and munitions on the JPARC Yukon training area, but this year members of the 354th Civil Engineer Squadron Explosive Ordnance Disposal Flight here did the task for only $100,000.

If this task is not accomplished, any old unexploded ordnance and munitions on the range could cause a sympathetic detonation creating an unsafe environment for pilots during their training missions.

"Our mission is to remove hazardous ordnance and munitions residue from bombing and gunnery ranges, which allows target maintenance personnel to perform upkeep and reorganize target arrays," said Tech. Sgt. Heath Tempel, assigned to the 354th CES EOD at Eielson Air Force Base.

The JPARC provides 67,000 square miles of airspace containing one conventional bombing range and two tactical bombing ranges. The range also contains more than 400 different types of targets and more than 30 threat simulators, both manned and unmanned. The size of the JPARC enables the military to have the largest air-ground training complex in America.

"The bottom line for clearing the range is to keep our pilots well trained," Sergeant Tempel said.

The JPARC is used year round to support exercises and for Eielson and Elmendorf Air Force base routine training missions for F-16 Fighting Falcons, F-15 Eagles and F-22 Raptors dropping inert and live ordnances on the range.

The path to get to these targets is narrow and steep, and at the bottom is a rugged, tundra terrain. To overcome this obstacle, EOD personnel use a small unit support vehicle and all-terrain vehicles to gain access to the target areas. They then walk within close proximity around each target by foot looking for inert or live ordnance and the remaining personnel will search the land further away from the targets using ATVs' to cover more land quicker. All inert ordnance is collected while any live ordnance is flagged and will require onsite detonation.

"This opportunity provides the necessary training on an active bombing range for our new Airmen to fulfill their five- and seven-level upgrade training requirement before a deployment," said Senior Master Sgt. Albert Schneider, the 354th CES EOD flight chief.

The window of opportunity to accomplish this task is small between major exercises conducted on the range and with current Air Force operation tempo of deploying EOD Airmen to support overseas contingency operations. This leaves EOD manning as a limited resource to complete this project within a little over a month. To meet this shortfall, Eielson AFB EOD requested aid from EOD experts from Travis AFB, Calif., Whiteman AFB, Mo., and Marines from the 1st EOD Company, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

"Since the EOD career field shares the same technical school and occupational badge for all four services, we knew they would arrive well trained and ready to jump in," Sergeant Tempel said.