Electric power to the Nevada Test and Training Range and the danger of a moderatedly armed Boy Scout

Pahrump Valley Times on Valley Electric

“Creech Air Force Base had the ground control stations, during my tenure as base commander, we covered all 65 combat air patrols of Predator and Reaper drones over Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia,” Belote said.

Engineers said there were backup diesel generators that would provide backup power if they really needed them, he said.

“I had a sneaking suspicion that a moderately armed Boy Scout troop with baseball bats and Leatherman tools, if they knew exactly where to jump the fence close to the Indian Springs casino, they could’ve brought down the entire air war.”

You can see the new power lines by route 95 by using the time feature of Google Earth. I haven't spotted where the enter the range, and possibly the imagery isn't recent enough to see that.

a reply to: gariac

why would anyone in their right mind say that at a public event ??

a reply to: ignorant_ape

Really? You have to ask?

Either the person who spoke those words was simply a moron, or they have a specific agenda which requires people to know about this security lapse. My thinking is, that publicly announcing such a total failure would force that hole to be closed with all due rapidity, something that the individual who spoke those words, may well have been aiming at by so saying.

All too often, matters of vast importance and sensitivity, are secretly dealt with in an offhanded fashion by governments and government agencies. From the behavior of individual officers of the law, and the state, toward the people they are meant to protect and serve, whether we are talking about brutal police personnel, or agents who infringe the rights of masses of citizens on a daily basis, or allowing a security gap to exist for as long as it remains uncommon knowledge, rather than widely known, these problems are often left under a rug.

Even when people inside the systems involved, speak out in defense of their fellow man, or indeed in order to address a security concern, the cost of fixing a little known problem appears to the higher ups as if it is beneath notice, or not as important as some other political bauble, or some other project which needs funding. When people blow the whistle on police who beat innocent people half to death, or contractors in intelligence let the world know that someone is watching them remotely all the damned time, or when someone alerts the nation to the lapses in security which might see their force projection collapse militarily, these statements are made with a specific purpose in mind.

Whether we are speaking of cleaning up policing, awakening the people to the fact of their rights being eroded and trampled on, or whether we are talking about a person FORCING changes to be made to the security applied to key military intelligence infrastructure by making public such a thing, the motivations are largely the same.

The chances are that this is not the first time this individual has raised this point, but it is probable that he was rebuffed or ignored when he did it through official channels. In such a position, being aware of a security risk of that scale and import, I can understand why he might have felt compelled to do something about it. Now, you might argue that giving that information to everyone and their mother might be a somewhat haphazard way of going about things, but can you honestly think of a way to make the people in charge move faster to put it right?

I cannot. Considering the possible risk to himself, that making that announcement presents, I think it was a brave thing to do. I also think that we should congratulate the fellow for having significant enough respect for his own convictions, to stand by them. That is a rare enough trait in the times in which we live, and ought to be supported.

Creech AFB has slowly been increasing base protection. The base was kind of an afterthought. The Thunderbirds practiced there. The base maintained the scoring system for weapons school. Then they decided to control drones there.

Creech is in the process of buying the land on "their' side of the highway, so the boy scout would have less of a head start. They are also bidding a perimeter control system to make it harder to penetrate the base. They will have a cable system to snag vehicles trying to drive through the fence.

So I view this as an air force official trying to spice up a boring speech. But you shouldn't comment on how poor your security is until you have actually completed all the upgrades.

Note that Nellis AFB has had two vehicles in recent years just crash through the gate.

The government believes in the outdated principal of security through obscurity. Revealing security holes forces them for fix it.

originally posted by: gariac
Creech AFB has slowly been increasing base protection. The base was kind of an afterthought. The Thunderbirds practiced there. The base maintained the scoring system for weapons school. Then they decided to control drones there.

Creech is in the process of buying the land on "their' side of the highway, so the boy scout would have less of a head start. They are also bidding a perimeter control system to make it harder to penetrate the base. They will have a cable system to snag vehicles trying to drive through the fence.

So I view this as an air force official trying to spice up a boring speech. But you shouldn't comment on how poor your security is until you have actually completed all the upgrades.

Note that Nellis AFB has had two vehicles in recent years just crash through the gate.

The "Casino" is still open, I camped behind it in my holiday trailer, along with a couple of motorhomes.
EDITED TO ADD: I did notice the original main entry gate is now blocked off, you have to enter/exit through the much more secure east gate.

Nellis.... you should see the traffic at rush hour(s) coming in and out of there. I have no clue how security even keeps track. RFID somehow???

a reply to: FosterVS

The government is working on buying all that civilian land bordering Creech. This stuff takes time if you obey the law, which the government does, contrary to hillbilly militia opinion. If you dig through fbo.gov, you can find all the contracts involved in the process of buying the land. They have to determine the value of the private land in a manner where they are not ripping off the owner, nor paying too much, and a value to withstand a legal challenge. In the meantime, you can still get a Predator burger at the casino.

The DoD does use active RFID, though I can't say that any of the NTTR bases use it. They just check a sticker on the window, and that sticker isn't all that hard to get. The DoD/feds use the Lockheed Savi Technology active RFID. You can dig up the exact frequency if you are curious, but it is around 430MHz plus minus a few MHz. It isn't the low frequency passive RFID like you get for use with your smartphone (well excluding the iphone, which is less "smart"). Nellis badges do have low frequency RFID in them, easily verified since the contracts are not secret. But I don't think you can read those reliably from a distance. [Yes, I have seen the defcon videos.]

Those of us who have parked their arses at the Groom Lake front gate and watched the comings and goings have often wondered how the camo dudes know which car to pounce on and which car to just let drive to the front gate.