Departure
91%
vs 95% ▼ 4
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Nellis Air Force Base sits some eight miles northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada, and is one of the United States Air Force's premier fighter and weapons-training installations, home to Red Flag and Green Flag-West exercises and the USAF Thunderbirds. For the simulator pilot it offers a huge, tightly controlled military airfield with twin ten-thousand-foot concrete runways set amid the vast restricted airspace of the Nevada Test and Training Range.
Nellis Air Force Base is a major United States Air Force installation on the northeastern edge of Las Vegas, operated by Air Combat Command with the 99th Air Base Wing as host unit and the United States Air Force Warfare Center as the principal tenant organisation. It is best known to aviation enthusiasts as the home of Exercise Red Flag, Green Flag-West, and the USAF Thunderbirds display team, and its scale and constant fast-jet activity make it a distinctive and demanding destination for a simulator pilot exploring military aviation in the Las Vegas area.
The base lies approximately eight miles northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada, within Clark County, and is surrounded by extensive military-controlled airspace associated with the Nevada Test and Training Range, including the Desert MOA and its subdivided training areas, the Reveille North and South MOAs, and a number of restricted areas such as R-4806, R-4807, R-4808 and R-4809. Nellis is an active military airfield and is not open to civil traffic; access to the airspace and airfield is tightly restricted and controlled by the base and its associated range control organisations.
Nellis has two parallel hard-surfaced runways aligned 03/21. Runway 03L/21R is 10,111 feet long, has a hard surface and is lit. Runway 03R/21L is 10,040/10,039 feet long, also hard-surfaced and lit, with an instrument landing system serving runway 21L. Field elevation is 1,847 feet.
Nellis operates a full military air traffic control service. Published frequencies include ATIS on 27.01 MHz, Approach on 118.125 MHz, Departure on 135.1 MHz, Tower on 132.55 MHz, Ground on 121.8 MHz, and Clearance Delivery on 120.9 MHz. Additional discrete frequencies are published for airfield support functions, including 25.735 MHz (ACP), 30.56 MHz (SOF), 32.39 MHz (PMSV/Metro), 32 MHz (Command Post) and 139.3 MHz (PTD). Runway 21L is served by an instrument landing system.
The airfield's origins trace to a 1929 dirt airstrip north of Las Vegas used by Western Air Express for airmail service and later by Army Air Corps training flights. In January 1941 the City of Las Vegas purchased the field, splitting it between civilian use as McCarran Field and a portion leased to the Army; construction of the military airfield began in March 1941 under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Martinus Stenseth. Las Vegas Army Airfield was activated and began flying training on 20 December 1941, and it quickly became a major aerial gunnery school: the first B-17 Flying Fortresses arrived in 1942, and at the height of the war the base trained 600 gunnery students and 215 co-pilots every five weeks, with more than 45,000 B-17 gunners trained overall. The 82d Flying Training Wing (Flexible Gunnery) was activated there in August 1943, and by 1944 students were training on B-17, B-24 Liberator and gunship variants before the base switched to B-29 gunnery training in March 1945. The installation was renamed Las Vegas Air Force Base and later, on 30 April 1950, became Nellis Air Force Base in honour of 1st Lieutenant William Harrell Nellis, a P-47 pilot from southern Nevada killed in action in the European Theater in December 1944. The base subsequently trained pilots for the Korean War on F-51 Mustangs and later F-80s and F-86 Sabres, and went on to host fighter testing, tactics development and combat training programmes, including the Green Flag-West exercise, which moved to Nellis in 1990.
Nellis remains an active front-line USAF installation under Air Combat Command, hosting the United States Air Force Warfare Center along with units including the 57th Wing, 53rd Test and Evaluation Group, 505th Command and Control Wing, 563rd Rescue Group, 926th Wing and the USAF Thunderbirds. It is the venue for large-scale combat training exercises such as Red Flag and Green Flag-West, drawing composite strike forces from across the US armed forces and allied nations, supported by the Combined Air and Space Operations Center-Nellis and the adjoining Nevada Test and Training Range. As a military base, Nellis is not open to general civil access and prior permission is required for any visit; limited public access exists only for organised tours such as those of the Thunderbirds facilities.
