SAVANNAH, Ga. - Soldiers at Fort Bragg, N.C., will hone their battle skills on a new combat-realistic firing range to be completed in March 2013, courtesy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Savannah district.
Construction began recently on a $5.9 million automated, multipurpose machine gun range with six firing points, 12 stationary armor targets, 108 stationary infantry targets and 24 moving infantry targets. Computer-assisted combat scenarios and scoring add realism to the training, according to Bill Edwards, installation range officer at Fort Bragg.
Trend Construction Inc., of Orlando, Fla., was the contractor selected to build the project that will be located in the existing training area of the inactive, more than 20 year-old Range 66A, which minimized developmental costs. This location proved ideal because it provides the least impact to the existing range training areas while minimizing environmental impacts to adjoining wetlands.
Designers had to limit impacts to less than a half acre of wetlands, according to Richard Weeks, Department of Public Works master planning at Fort Bragg. “To get the disturbance under a half acre continues to be a big challenge,” Works said. “It involves coordination among several departments to ensure we don’t go beyond the limits of the wetlands during construction. We had the same issues with erosion control measures going in – they had to be designed to present the least amount of disturbance to the environment.”
“They will be using the M249 squad automatic weapon [SAW], M110 semi-automatic sniper system and the M2 MG,” Edwards said.
“All targets are fully automated and the event-specific target scenario is computer-driven and scored from the tower,” said Edwards. “The range operating system is fully capable of providing immediate performance feedback to the using participants.”
Other facilities will include a range operations tower, general instruction building, operations and storage building, bleacher enclosure, covered mess facility, ammunition breakdown building and vault latrine. Site improvements and associate range power and communications will be included in the project.
The project will comply with Sustainable Design and Development and Energy Policy Act of 2005.
| Date Taken: | 12.08.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 12.08.2011 08:48 |
| Story ID: | 81079 |
| Location: | SAVANNAH, GEORGIA, US |
| Web Views: | 236 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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