Eglin Air Force Base
Eglin Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base in western Florida, located about three miles southwest of Valparaiso in Okaloosa County. The host unit at Eglin is the 96th Test Wing; the 96 TW is the test and evaluation center for Air Force air-delivered weapons and guidance systems and Control systems, Air Force Special Operations Command systems. Eglin AFB was established 84 years ago in 1935 as the Valparaiso Gunnery Base, it is named in honor of Lt. Col. Frederick I. Eglin, killed in a crash of his Northrop A-17 attack aircraft on a flight from Langley to Maxwell Field, Alabama. Eglin is an Air Force Materiel Command base serving as the focal point for all Air Force armaments. Eglin is responsible for the development, testing and sustainment of all air-delivered non-nuclear weapons; the base plans and conducts test and evaluation of U. S. and allied air armament and guidance systems, command and control systems. Severe-weather testing of aircraft and other equipment is carried out here at the McKinley Climatic Laboratory.
The residential portion of the base is a census-designated place. Eglin Air Force Base has 2,359 military family housing units. Unmarried junior enlisted members live in one of Eglin’s seven dormitories located near the dining hall, base gym, enlisted club, bus lines on base; each individual unit handles dormitory assignments. Bachelor officer quarters are not available. Several units and one dormitory were being renovated in 2011; the base covers 463,128 acres. Eglin is one of the few military air bases in the U. S. to have scheduled passenger airline service as the Destin–Fort Walton Beach Airport is co-located on the base property. The 96 TW is the test and evaluation wing for Air Force air-delivered weapons and guidance systems and Control systems, Air Force Special Operations Command systems; the Eglin Gulf Test Range provides 130,000 square miles of over water airspace. The 96 TW supports other tenant units on the installation with traditional military services as well as all the services of a small city, to include civil engineering, logistics, computer, security.
The 96 TW reports to the Air Force Test Center at Edwards AFB. The 33d FW "Nomads" is the largest tenant unit at Eglin; the 33 FW is a joint graduate flying and maintenance training wing for the F-35 Lightning II, organized under Air Education and Training Command's 19th Air Force. First established as the 33d Pursuit Group, the wing’s contribution to tactical airpower during its 50-year history has been significant with participation in campaigns around the world, while flying various fighter aircraft. Reactivated at Eglin on 1 April 1965 with F-4C Phantom IIs, the wing operated, successively, F-4D and E models into the 1970s before transitioning to the F-15 Eagle; as of 1 October 2009, the 33d FW transitioned to a training wing for the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The final F-15s assigned to the 33d departed the base in September 2009; as the first of its kind in the Department of Defense, the joint wing is responsible for F-35 JSF pilot and maintainer training for the Air Force, Marine Corps and the Navy.
The first of 59 F-35s arrived from Fort Worth, Texas on 14 July 2011. The 58th FS "Mighty Gorillas" are authorized to operate 24 assigned F-35A aircraft and executing a training curriculum in support of Air Force and international partner pilot training requirements; the F-35A is a conventional-takeoff-and-landing low-observable multi-role fighter aircraft, designed with 5th-generation sensors and weapons, is able to perform air superiority, air interdiction and close air support missions. The F-35A made its first flight on 15 December 2006; the VFA-101 "Grim Reapers" are authorized to operate 15 assigned F-35C aircraft and executing a training curriculum in support of Navy aviator training requirements. The F-35C is a carrier-capable low-observable multi-role fighter aircraft; the F-35C bears structural modifications from the other variants, necessitated by the increased resiliency required for carrier operations. The 53 WG is headquartered at Eglin and serves as the Air Force’s focal point for operational test and evaluation of armament and avionics, aircrew training devices, chemical defense, aerial reconnaissance improvements, electronic warfare systems, is responsible for the QF-4 Phantom II Full Scale Aerial Target program and subscale drone programs.
The wing tests every fighter, unmanned aerial vehicle, associated weapon system in the Air Force inventory. The wing reports to the USAF Air Warfare Center at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, a Direct Reporting Unit to Headquarters, Air Combat Command. Squadron attached to the 53d Wing but located at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana)The squadron plans and reports ACC's weapon system evaluation programs for bombers and nuclear-capable fighters; these evaluations include operational effectiveness and suitability and control, performance of aircraft hardware and software systems, employment tactics, accuracy and reliability of associated precision weapons. These weapons include air-launched cruise missiles, standoff missiles, gravity bombs. Results and conclusions support acquisition decisions and development of war plans; the unit performs operational testing on new systems and tactics development for the B-52. The Armament Directorate, located
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War known as the Second Indochina War, in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America or the American War, was an undeclared war in Vietnam and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and other communist allies; the war is considered a Cold War-era proxy war from some US perspectives. It lasted some 19 years with direct U. S. involvement ending in 1973 following the Paris Peace Accords, included the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, resulting in all three countries becoming communist states in 1975. American military advisors began arriving in what was French Indochina in 1950 to support the French in the First Indochina War against the communist-led Viet Minh. Most of the funding for the French war effort was provided by the U. S. After the French quit Indochina in 1954, the US assumed financial and military responsibility for the South Vietnamese state.
The Việt Cộng known as Front national de libération du Sud-Viêt Nam or NLF, a South Vietnamese communist common front aided by the North, initiated a guerrilla war against the South Vietnamese government in 1959. U. S. involvement escalated in 1960, continued in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy, with troop levels surging under the MAAG program from just under a thousand in 1959 to 16,000 in 1963. By 1964, there were 23,000 U. S. troops in Vietnam, but this escalated further following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which a U. S. destroyer was alleged to have clashed with North Vietnamese fast attack craft. In response, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave President Lyndon B. Johnson broad authorization to increase U. S. military presence, deploying ground combat units for the first time and increasing troop levels to 184,000. Past this point, the People's Army of Vietnam known as the North Vietnamese Army engaged in more conventional warfare with US and South Vietnamese forces; every year onward there was significant build-up of US forces despite little progress, with Robert McNamara, one of the principal architects of the war, beginning to express doubts of victory by the end of 1966.
U. S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces and airstrikes. The U. S. conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam. The Tet Offensive of 1968, proved to be the turning point of the war; the Tet Offensive showed that the end of US involvement was not in sight, increasing domestic skepticism of the war. The unconventional and conventional capabilities of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam increased following a period of neglect and became modeled on heavy firepower-focused doctrines like US forces. Operations crossed international borders. S. forces. Gradual withdrawal of U. S. ground forces began as part of "Vietnamization", which aimed to end American involvement in the war while transferring the task of fighting the communists to the South Vietnamese themselves and began the task of modernizing their armed forces. Direct U. S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973 as a result of the Case–Church Amendment passed by the U.
S. Congress; the capture of Saigon by the NVA in April 1975 marked the end of the war, North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities. Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 to 3.8 million. Some 275,000–310,000 Cambodians, 20,000–62,000 Laotians, 58,220 U. S. service members died in the conflict, a further 1,626 remain missing in action. The Sino-Soviet split re-emerged following the lull during the Vietnam War and confllict between North Vietnam and its Cambodian allies in the Royal Government of the National Union of Kampuchea, the newly-formed Democratic Kampuchea begun immediately in a series of border raids by the Khmer Rouge and erupted into the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, with Chinese forces directly intervening in the Sino-Vietnamese War; the end of the war and resumption of the Third Indochina War would precipitate the Vietnamese boat people and the bigger Indochina refugee crisis, which saw an estimated 250,000 people perish at sea.
Within the US the war gave rise to what was referred to as Vietnam Syndrome, a public aversion to American overseas military involvements, which together with Watergate contributed to the crisis of confidence that affected America throughout the 1970s. Various names have been applied to the conflict. Vietnam War is the most used name in English, it has been called the Second Indochina War and the Vietnam Conflict. As there have been several conflicts in Indochina, this particular conflict is known by the names of its primary protagonists to distinguish it from others. In Vietnamese, the war is known as Kháng chiến chống Mỹ, but less formally as'Cuộc chiến tranh Mỹ', it is called Chiến tranh Việt Nam. The primary military organizations involved in the war were as follows: One side consisted of th
Cheyenne Mountain Complex
The Cheyenne Mountain Complex is a military installation and defensive bunker located in unincorporated El Paso County, next to the city of Colorado Springs, at the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, which hosts the activities of several tenant units. Located in Colorado Springs is Peterson Air Force Base, where the North American Aerospace Defense Command and United States Northern Command headquarters are located; the center for the United States Space Command and NORAD, the Complex monitored the air space of Canada and the United States for missiles, space systems, foreign aircraft through its worldwide early-warning system. Since 2008, NORAD and the United States Space Command have been based at Peterson Air Force Base and the complex, re-designated as an air force station, is used for flight crew training and as a back-up command center if required; the military complex has included, in the past, many units of NORAD, U. S. Space Command, Aerospace Defense Command, Air Force Systems Command, Air Weather Service, Federal Emergency Management.
The complex's communication center is used by the nearby U. S. Civil Defense Warning Center; the complex was built under 2,000 feet of granite on 2 hectares. Fifteen three-story buildings are protected from movement, e.g. earthquake or explosion, by a system of giant springs that the buildings sit on and flexible pipe connectors to limit the operational effect of movement. A total of more than 1,000 springs are designed to prevent any of the 15 buildings from shifting more than one inch; the complex is the only high-altitude Department of Defense facility certified to be able to sustain an electromagnetic pulse. There is a large quantity of cots for most of the personnel, including suites for high-ranking officers within the bunker. Amenities include a medical facility, store and fitness centers inside and outside the mountain; the bunker is built to deflect a 30 megaton nuclear explosion as close as 2 kilometers. Within a mountain tunnel are sets of 25-ton blast doors and another for the civil engineering department.
The doors were built. Should a nuclear blast hit the building, they are designed to withstand a blast wave. There is a network of blast valves with unique filters to capture airborne chemical, biological and nuclear contaminants. Outside of the military complex are the parking lots, a heliport, a fire station, outdoor recreational facilities; the recreational amenities include Mountain Man Park, picnic areas, a racquetball facility, softball field, sand volleyball court, basketball court, a putting green, horseshoe area. A military gate limits NORAD Road usage from the State Highway 115 interchange; the complex has its own power plant and cooling system, water supply and it is the job of the 21st Mission Support Group to ensure that there is a 99.999% degree of reliability of its electricity, air conditioning and other support systems. The threats, in descending order of likelihood, that the complex may face are "medical emergencies, natural disasters, civil disorder, a conventional attack, an electromagnetic pulse attack, a cyber or information attack, chemical or biological or radiological attack, an improvised nuclear attack, a limited nuclear attack, a general nuclear attack."
The least events are the most hazardous. There is more water produced by mountain springs than the base needs, a 1.5-million-gallon reservoir ensures that in event of fire, there is enough water to meet the facility's needs. A reservoir of 4.5 million gallons of water is used as a heat sink. There is a "massive" reservoir for diesel fuel and a "huge" battery bank with redundant power generators; the North American Air Defense Command was established and activated at the Ent Air Force Base on September 12, 1957. This command is a bi-national organization, of Canadian and United States Air Defense Command units, in accordance with NORAD Agreements first made on May 12, 1958. In the late 1950s, a plan was developed to construct a command and control center in a hardened facility as a Cold War defensive strategy against long-range Soviet bombers, ballistic missiles, a nuclear attack. In 1957, the Strategic Air Command began construction in New England inside Bare Mountain for a hardened bunker to contain the command post for the 8th Air Force, located at nearby Westover Air Force Base, Massachusetts.
This underground facility was nicknamed "The Notch" and was hardened to protect it from the effects of a nearby nuclear blast and designed so that the senior military staff could facilitate further military operations. Four years construction at Cheyenne Mountain was started to create a similar protection for the NORAD command post. Cheyenne Mountain was excavated under the supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers for the construction of the NORAD Combat Operations Center beginning on May 18, 1961, by Utah Construction & Mining Company; the Space Defense Center and the Combat Operations Center achieved full operational capability on February 6, 1967. The total cost was $142.4 million. Its systems included a control system developed by Burroughs Corporation; the electronics and communications system centralized and automated the instantaneous evaluation of aerospace surveillance data. The Space Defense Center moved from Ent AFB to the complex in 1965; the NORAD Combat Operations Center was operational April 20, 1966 and The Space Defense Command's 1st Aerospace Control Squadron moved to Cheyenne Mountain that month.
The following systems or commands became operat
Air Force Research Laboratory
The Air Force Research Laboratory is a scientific research organization operated by the United States Air Force Materiel Command dedicated to leading the discovery and integration of affordable aerospace warfighting technologies and executing the Air Force science and technology program, providing warfighting capabilities to United States air and cyberspace forces. It controls the entire Air Force science and technology research budget, $2.4 billion in 2006. The Laboratory was formed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio on 31 October 1997 as a consolidation of four Air Force laboratory facilities and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under a unified command; the Laboratory is composed of seven technical directorates, one wing, the Office of Scientific Research. Each technical directorate emphasizes a particular area of research within the AFRL mission which it specializes in performing experiments in conjunction with universities and contractors. Since the Laboratory's formation in 1997, it has conducted numerous experiments and technical demonstrations in conjunction with NASA, Department of Energy National Laboratories, DARPA, other research organizations within the Department of Defense.
Notable projects include the X-37, X-40, X-53, HTV-3X, YAL-1A, Advanced Tactical Laser, the Tactical Satellite Program. The Laboratory may face problems in the future as 40 percent of its workers are slated to retire over the next two decades while since 1980 the United States has not produced enough science and engineering degrees to keep up with demand. In 1945 the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories were established; these laboratories were active from 1945 to 2011, following consolidation to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Kirtland Air Force Base under the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission. The labs were founded as the Air Force Cambridge Research Center, a Cold War systems development organization which developed telephone modem communications for a Digital Radar Relay in 1949. Created by General Henry H. Arnold in 1945, AFCRC participated in Project Space Track and Semi-Automatic Ground Environment development; the path to a consolidated Air Force Research Laboratory began with the passage of the Goldwater–Nichols Act, designed to streamline the use of resources by the Department of Defense.
In addition to this Act, the end of the Cold War began a period of budgetary and personnel reductions within the armed forces in preparation for a "stand-down" transition out of readiness for a global war with the Soviet Union. Prior to 1990, the Air Force laboratory system spread research out into 13 different laboratories and the Rome Air Development Center which each reported up two separate chains of command: a product center for personnel, the Air Force Systems Command Director of Science & Technology for budgetary purposes. Bowing to the constraints of a reduced budget and personnel, the Air Force merged the existing research laboratories into four "superlabs" in December 1990. During this same time period, the Air Force Systems Command and Air Force Logistics Command merged to form Air Force Materiel Command in July 1992. While the initial consolidation of Air Force laboratories reduced overhead and budgetary pressure, another push towards a unified laboratory structure came in the form of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1996, Section 277.
This section instructed the Department of Defense to produce a five-year plan for consolidation and restructuring of all defense laboratories. The existing laboratory structure was created in October 1997 through the consolidation of Phillips Laboratory headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Rome Laboratory in Rome, New York, Armstrong Laboratory in San Antonio and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research; the single laboratory concept was developed and championed by Maj Gen Richard Paul, Director of Science & Technology for AFMC and Gen Henry Viccellio Jr, became the first Commander of AFRL. With the merger of the laboratories into a single entity, the history offices at each site ceased to maintain independent histories and all history functions were transferred to a central History Office located at AFRL HQ at Wright-Patterson AFB. In homage to the predecessor laboratories, the new organization named four of the research sites after the laboratories and assured that each laboratory's history would be preserved as inactivated units.
The laboratory is divided into 8 Technical Directorates, one wing, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research based on different areas of research. AFOSR is a funding body for external research while the other directorates perform research in-house or under contract to external entities. A directorate is equivalent to a military wing; each directorate is composed of a number of divisions and has at least three support divisions in addition to its research divisions. The Operations and Integration Division provides the directorate with well-conceived and executed business computing, human resource management, business development services while the Financial Management Division manages the financial resources and the Procurement Division provides an in-house contracting capability; the support divisions at any given location work together to minimize overhead at any given research site. Each division is further broken down into branches equivalent to a military squadron. Superimposed on the overall AFRL structure are the eight detachments.
Each detachment is composed of the AFRL military personnel at any given geographical location. For example, the personnel
Norden bombsight
The Norden Mk. XV, known as the Norden M series in US Army service, was a bombsight used by the United States Army Air Forces and the United States Navy during World War II, the United States Air Force in the Korean and the Vietnam Wars, it was the canonical tachometric design, a system that allowed it to directly measure the aircraft's ground speed and direction, which older bombsights could only estimate with lengthy in-flight procedures. The Norden further improved on older designs by using an analog computer that calculated the bomb's impact point based on current flight conditions, an autopilot that let it react and to changes in the wind or other effects. Together, these features seemed to promise unprecedented accuracy in day bombing from high altitudes; this accuracy would allow direct attacks on ships and other point targets. Both the Navy and the USAAF saw this as a means to achieve war aims through high-altitude bombing. To achieve these aims, the Norden was granted the utmost secrecy well into the war, was part of a then-unprecedented production effort on the same scale as the Manhattan Project.
Carl L. Norden, Inc. ranked 46th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts. In practice it was not possible to achieve the expected accuracy in combat conditions, with the average CEP in 1943 of 370 metres being similar to Allied and German results. Both the Navy and Air Forces had to give up on the idea of pinpoint attacks during the war; the Navy turned to dive bombing and skip bombing to attack ships, while the Air Forces developed the lead bomber concept to improve accuracy, while adopting area bombing techniques by larger groups of aircraft. The Norden's reputation as a pin-point device lived on, due in no small part to Norden's own advertising of the device after secrecy was reduced late in the war; the Norden saw some use in the post-World War II era during the Korean War. Post-war use was reduced due to the introduction of radar-based systems, but the need for accurate daytime attacks kept it in service for some time; the last combat use of the Norden was in the US Navy's VO-67 squadron, which used them to drop sensors onto the Ho Chi Minh Trail as late as 1967.
The Norden remains one of the best-known bombsights of all time. The Norden sight was designed by Carl Norden, a Dutch engineer educated in Switzerland who emigrated to the U. S. in 1904. In 1911, Norden joined Sperry Gyroscope to work on ship gyrostabilizers, moved to work directly for the US Navy as a consultant. At the Navy, Norden worked on a catapult system for a proposed flying bomb, never developed, but this work introduced various Navy personnel to Norden's expertise with gyro stabilization. World War I bomb sight designs had improved with the ultimate development being the Course Setting Bomb Sight, or CSBS; this was a large mechanical calculator that directly represented the wind triangle using three long pieces of metal in a triangular arrangement. The hypotenuse of the triangle was the line the aircraft needed to fly along in order to arrive over the target in the presence of wind, before the CSBS, was an intractable problem. All air forces adopted some variation of the CSBS as their standard inter-war bomb sight, including the US Navy and US Army, who used a version designed by Georges Estoppey, the D-series.
It was realized that one major source of error in bombing was leveling the aircraft enough so the bombsight pointed straight down. Small errors in leveling could produce dramatic errors in bombing, so the Navy began a series of developments to add a gyroscopic stabilizer to various bomb sight designs; this led to orders for such designs from Estoppey and Seversky. Norden was asked to provide an external stabilizer for the Navy's existing Mark III designs. Although the CSBS and similar designs allowed the calculation of the proper flight angle needed to correct for windage, it was not visible to the pilot. In early bombers, the bomb aimer was positioned in front of the pilot and could indicate corrections using hand signals, but as aircraft grew larger it became common for the pilot and bomb aimer to be separated; this led to the introduction of the pilot direction indicator, or PDI. These consisted of a pair of electrical pointers mounted in a 3.5 inches diameter instrument panel mount. The bombardier used switches to move the pointer on his unit to indicate the direction of the target, duplicated on the unit in front of the pilot so he could maneuver the aircraft to follow suit.
Norden's first attempt at an improved bombsight was an advance in PDI design. His idea was to remove the manual electrical switches used to move the pointer and use the entire bombsight itself as the indicator, he proposed attaching a low-power sighting telescope to a gyro platform that would keep the telescope pointed at the same azimuth, correcting for the aircraft's movements. The bombardier would rotate the telescope left or right to follow the target; this motion would cause the gyros to precess, this signal would drive the PDI automatically. The pilot would follow his PDI as before. To time the drop, Norden used an idea in use on other bombsights, the "equal distance" concept; this was based on the observation that the time needed to travel a certain distance over the ground would remain constant during the bomb run, as the wind would not be expected to chang
Combat Skyspot
Combat Skyspot was the ground-directed bombing operation of the Vietnam War by the United States Air Force using Bomb Directing Centrals and by the United States Marine Corps using Course Directing Centrals. Combat Skyspot's command guidance of B-52s and tactical fighters and bombers—"chiefly flown by F-100's"—at night and poor weather was used for aerial bombing of strategic, close air support and other targets. Using a combination radar/computer/communications system at operating location in Southeast Asia, a typical bombing mission had an air command post turn over control of the mission to the radar station, the station provided bomb run corrections and designated when to release bombs. Planning of Vietnam GDB missions included providing coordinates with 10 m accuracy to the radar sites, handoff of the bomber from air controllers to the site, tracking the aircraft by radiating the bomber, radioing of technical data from the aircrew to the radar site such as the airspeed/heading for the central to estimate wind speed on the bomb.
With the bomber near a designated "Initial Point" the GDB site would begin a radar track For B-52 missions the site personnel verbally transmitted guidance commands to the aircraft crew by radio to adjust the flight path toward an eventual release point for the actual bomb. Site personnel verbally directed release of the ordnance from the aircraft by voice countdown; this was a manual process requiring training and adherence to procedure. Both the site and aircrew were authorized to "withhold" release at any point. All communications were tape recorded by the aircrew for post strike debriefing. Similar to World War II GDB and Korean War GDB, Combat Skyspot was planned during 1965 development of the Reeves AN/MSQ-77 Bomb Directing Central with a new integrating ballistic computer using vacuum tubes to continually compute the bomb release point during the bomb run. Planning for the USAF vacuum-tube trajectory computer/radar system began in early 1965 and in October 1965, F-100s tested the AN/MSQ-77 at Matagorda Island General Bombing and Gunnery Range on the Texas Gulf Coast.
In 1967 a helicopter-transportable variant of the AN/MSQ-77 in rigid shelters was developed for Commando Club bombing of northern North Vietnam targets, in 1969 training for an additional transportable variant with tower-mounted antenna and digital computer was being conducted at the Reeves Instrument Corporation in New York. "In March 1966 the first MSQ-77 arrived at Bien Hoa" Air Base Combat Skyspot was first used "to support fighting ground troops" on July 2, 1966. Similar to the lead bomber for 3-ship B-52 missions, a North American F-100 Super Sabres could use Skyspot to act as a pathfinder for Republic F-105 Thunderchiefs. On July 3, 1966, "24-hour all-weather bombing authorized against targets in Laos MSQ-77 ground director bombing system" and on July 5, "Quick Run" began with Skyspot airstrikes where "MACV could request priority targeting resulting in B-52D missions diverted from their primary targets prior to take off or after takeoff". In addition to Arc Light B-52 airstrikes, Skyspot was used against Cambodia targets of Operation Menu from Bien Hoa Air Base and by Operation Niagara.
The Combat Skyspot "Operations Order 439–67" was published March 10, 1967. 1968 Battle of Khe Sanh: a "B-52 from U Tapao carrying 108 500-pound bombs ran a test mission on 26 February, guided by Skyspot…and four missions were run close to the defenders at Khe Sanh. During March, 44 close-support sorties were run." 1971 battle at Tchepone: supporting a helicopter evacuation from a gunship crash site at Tchepone, Laos. Another Skyspot mission of the operation, "Yankee 37, struck some 1400 yards from Marine lines and touched off secondary explosions" lasting over 2 hrs. 1972 First Battle of Quảng Trị: c. April 2, "ARVN…57th Regiment retreated across the Dong Ha bridge the north end of the vehicular bridge was struck with a Skyspot airstrike and destroyed still passable." 1972 Linebacker 1: April 9 raid on the Petroleum, Lubrication "stores and railyard at Vinh, North Vietnam". Skyspot supported Lockheed AC-130 gunships, BLU-82/B drops from MC-130 Commando Vault aircraft to clear landing zones, at least 1 helicopter evacuation of wounded on August 13, 1966, "since many maps of South Vietnam contained distance errors of up to 300 meters", target surveying by tracking an observation aircraft flying circles around a target for plotting its coordinates.
As with "loran-controlled photography" for target geolocation, Skyspot was used for surveying during'recce escort' missions, e.g. for Commando Club calibration with an RF-4C reconn
Fort Monmouth
Fort Monmouth is a former installation of the Department of the Army in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The post is surrounded by the communities of Eatontown, Tinton Falls and Oceanport, New Jersey, is located about five miles from the Atlantic Ocean; the post covers nearly 1,126 acres of land, from the Shrewsbury River on the east, to Route 35 on the west. A separate area to the west includes post housing, a golf course, additional office and laboratory facilities. A rail line, owned by Conrail, runs through Camp Charles Wood and out to Naval Weapons Station Earle; the post is like a small town, including a Post Exchange, health clinic, gas station and other amenities. Until the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks the post was open to the public to drive through; the main road through the fort was reopened to the public in 2017. The post was home to several units of the U. S. Army Materiel Command and offices of the Army Acquisition Executive that research and manage Command and Control, Computing, Intelligence and Reconnaissance capabilities and related technology, as well as an interservice organization designed to coordinate C4ISR, an academic preparatory school, an explosive ordnance disposal unit, a garrison services unit, an Army health clinic, a Veterans Administration health clinic.
Other agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Security Agency, have presences on the post. The post was selected for closure by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 2005. Most Army functions and personnel were required to be moved to Army facilities in Maryland—such as Aberdeen Proving Ground—and Ohio by 2011; the post closed on September 15, 2011. However, it was temporarily reopened on December 2, 2012, for the evacuation of the borough of Paulsboro's residents to be temporarily resettled to the former Fort Monmouth until it is deemed safe for them to move back to Paulsboro, following a freight train derailment on November 30, 2012. For more information, see the official U. S. Army CECOM Life Cycle Management Command / Fort Monmouth Historical Office website or Fort Monmouth Timeline The installation began with the lease of a defunct Monmouth Park Racecourse by the Army for a training site for officers; the location near Eatontown, with rail sidings out of Hoboken and proximity to the port of Little Silver, was ideal.
Known temporarily as Camp Little Silver, it was renamed Camp Alfred Vail shortly after in September 1917. The Chief Signal Officer authorized the purchase of Camp Vail in 1919; the Signal Corps School relocated to Camp Vail from Fort Leavenworth that year. The Signal Corps Board followed in 1924. In August 1925 the installation was renamed Fort Monmouth, it was named in honor of the soldiers of the American Revolutionary War who died in the Battle of Monmouth. The first permanent building was built in 1928. Other structures were built to house units the Army consolidated at Fort Monmouth. In 1928 the first radio-equipped meteorological balloon reached the upper atmosphere, a forerunner of weather sounding techniques universally used today. In 1938 the U. S. Army's first radio-based aircraft detection and ranging system was developed on post. A production model of this equipment detected the oncoming Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor, but the warning it provided was discounted. In 1946 celestial communication was proved feasible, when the radar developed by the Project Diana team was used to bounce radio signals off the moon.
During the late 20th century Fort Monmouth was home to School. Enlisted soldiers, non-commissioned officers and officers training to become Chaplain Assistants and Chaplains were trained at Fort Monmouth. Additional property was purchased in 1941 for Camp Coles near Red Bank, Camp Charles Wood in Tinton Falls, Camp Evans in Wall Township. At its peak during World War II, Fort Monmouth measured 1,713 acres, had billeting space for 1,559 officers and 19,786 enlisted personnel; the Eastern Signal Corps Training Center consisted of the Eastern Signal Corps Schools and the Replacement Training Center at Camp Charles Wood. The Signal Corps Officer Candidate School, the major activity on the main post, graduated 21,033 new Signal Corps second lieutenants between 1941 and 1946. More communications units, including the Pigeon Breeding and Training Center, were consolidated into Fort Monmouth after the war ended; the pigeon service was discontinued in 1957. Special effects artist Harry Redmond, Jr. designed and constructed a new film studio for the Army Film Training Lab at Fort Monmouth during World War II.
Julius Rosenberg had worked as a radar inspector at Fort Monmouth in 1942 and 1943. It is from the fort that he was accused and convicted of stealing proximity fuze plans and passing them on to the Soviet Union. Documents released by Russia. Joseph McCarthy claimed in October 1953 that Julius Rosenberg had set up a wartime spy ring at Fort Monmouth, that the ring might still be in operation. Two Fort Monmouth scientists, Joel Barr and Alfred Sarant, fled to the Soviet Union; the hysteria surrounding Fort Monmouth and the Rosenbergs was not limited to Ethel.
Rome Laboratory
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This article incorporates public domain material from the United States Air Force document "Air Force Research Laboratory".
This article incorporates