Home of the UAV's: Creech AFB

Nestled away in the desert mountains of Nevada just northwest of Las Vegas (about 1 hours drive from Vegas) and nearly due south of Tonopah is Creech AFB.


Looking north-northwest towards Groom Lake


Creech is the home of the Predators, Reapers, and dozens of other lesser known UAV's. It serves as the control center for most of the Predator flights over Iraq and Afghanistan although some are controlled in-theater.


One of the lesser known UAV's, The Mobius.

Units

The UAV Battlab and the Joint UAV Center of Excellence are two of the most prominent units at Creech but there are others.


Predator/Reaper control consoles.



Note that there is a pilot and a sensor operator at the consoles. All Predator/Reaper pilots for the Air Force have to be certified pilots. that is not the case for the UAV pilots in the other branches of service.


The 98th Southern Ranges Support Squadron is responsible for all airfield operations and management, civil engineering, food services, lodging, transportation, logistics, communications and base and range security.


Looks like Iraq but it isn't, Creech Security trainling at another southwestern AFB.


The 11th, 15th & 17th Reconnaissance Squadron operates the RQ-1/MQ-1 Predator systems.


Pictured above is the first operational Reaper - note the two rails on the wing for carrying ordinance



The 757th Maintenance Squadron maintains the RQ-1/MQ-1 Predator systems, including ground control stations, and Predator satellite and fiber links.

The 99th Ground Combat Training Squadron provides combat skills training for security forces and combat support elements at Creech AFB.

Life @ Creech

Living off base at Creech is a challenge as the nearby town of Indian Springs, NV only has a population of 1,200 and does not have the services and infrastructure to support the rapidly increasing number of personnel working at Creech.

Many airmen live in and around Las Vegas and commute the 1hr drive to Creech.

There are many aerospace companies and government entities represented by contract workers at Creech, some of these companies are, Boeing, Northrop, Lockheed, SAIC, Raytheon, General Atomics, Eaton, Vickers, Scaled Composites, Honeywell, etc.









[edit on 7-24-2007 by intelgurl]

Great pics. Wish you could shot a pic of the new Predator armed fully with Hellfires and JDAMs.

Wow! Creech is quite a base. They have UAV's there now, boy what an Irony. An Air Force Base with no manned aircraft.

B.T.W. Isn't Creech also known as Indian Springs? If so, don't/didn't the Thunderbirds use it sometine for practice?

Tim

Actually there are manned aircraft at Creech all the time, just no manned squadrons that call Creech home.
There is also another not so well known Predator/Reaper squadron that uses Creech resources a lot, the 30th Reconnaissance Squadron from the Tonopah Test Range. The operations are classified and that's all I know about that.


Creech used to be called Indian Springs Auxillary AFB but as Indian Springs began to get more and more involved in UAVs the Air Force decided to go ahead and rename it. The name change officially happened on June 20th, 2005.

As for the Thunderbirds, yes - they practice over Creech every now an then - it's quite a show too.

intelgurl,

Thanks for the great reply! You just taugh me more with one post than I ever really know about Creech AFB. So the base does have manned aircraft, just no manned squadrons. I would guess from that, that the manned aircraft probably support UAV operations in some way.

So Creech used to be an Auxillary AFB. Quite intresting in deed!

Tim

Food services?
So I guess those must the pizza delivery guys then?


Any other UAV AFBs in the US?
Any in NJ?
I just got back from there and all I got to see was KC-135s out of McGuire AFB..

The Intrepid Museum was also closed till Summer 08..

The "Reaper" story was featured on CBC Radio Canada's The Current this morning... and Creech AFB was prominent in the discussion. A Brookings Institue "talking head" with a book to sell next spring,"Wired For War" was also featured. Not too much "news"... a smallish "look" at the ethics.

One item I did find of interest, as claimed by Singer, was the "best UAV pilot" in Iraq was an Army cook... second best was a young enlisted man without a high school education (described as a drop-out) who was painted as something of a video-game "enthusiast".

The Brookings fellow made much of how the "enemy" would perceive the reliance on UAV tech as a strategic and tactical weakness... I would suggest "time will tell".

They seemed to try and bring forward the concept of rivalry between the Army and Air Force in regard to UAV's. I will post a link to the audio and transcript within 24 hours.

Cheers,

Vic

[edit on 1-8-2007 by V Kaminski]

A follow up to post the August 1st story links to The Current feature "Unmanned Aerial Vehicles"... scroll down to "Part 2" on the page and there is an audio link that will require RAM format capability, the CBC Current link. I will post a transcript as soon as it's available.

Cheers,

Vic

Things at March Air Reserve Base will get real busy soon a lot and I mean a lot is in the works for the 163rd Recon Wing. Look to SCLA (Southern California Logistics Airport) for things to ramp up too.

Yes, it isn't surprising at all that most of the guys who catch on the quickest to UAV piloting or sensor ops have a solid background in first-person shooter games and flight sims.
Umm... Nerds in other words.


A middle eastern or south central asian low tech enemy would definitely see UAV's as a sign of weakness - as much of their mindset is built on testerone bravado. They already think the western nations have no resolve and no ability to stay in a fight because of public opinion back home.


I tend to agree with this last statement. At least from my personal observation.

Hey.. Its all about good hand-eye afterall!
Now if they have a good health condition, then send em' off to flight school I say!

Times change. Time was CBC used to handle their own transcripting within Radio-Canada. Not any more. They have a "shiney fancy outside-source" for that now... and the price has jumped up an order of magnitude... so I apologize for not posting a link to the transcript.

One other thing that was brought out in the radio interview was the exponential growth in all aspects of this general sort of unmanned platform. This has occurred over a relatively short length of time... and shows no signs of slowing.

The communication systems and integrative-real time command and control "drill down" access must give the commanders a level of "data now" situational awareness and perhaps a better predictive capability... that many folks may not appreciate or take for granted. Some, as intelgurl points out, are welcome to explore other mindsets.

Back to Creech AFB. A question for intelgurl: I'd never heard of Creech AFB except peripherally until I read your piece (which I really enjoyed) and now with other bits of media are popping up and being you know, sort of, "not hidden"; is this a message of sorts from the PTB? If you don't feel comfortable, or for whatever reason, feel uncompelled to answer - no problemo.

Like, Hi! Our primary C&C is at Creech, we have spares too, portable - want some? 'Lots in the warehouse. I would expect those of a mindset to "want some" may see their worldview altered in the light of these sorts of technologies being deployed in effective number... I rather think they'll be looking up. Cognition will change.

It would seem apt that those adept at the hand-eye thing and gaming-cultured are the natural current high-ground "foot soldier". I wonder what's coming with advances in input devices like Hitachi and Honda's skull-cap, BrainGate, etc.... perhaps the next "next-gen" iteration of human warrior will be "fast and disciplined of mind". I guess it really is the 21st century...

Cheers,

Vic

[edit on 2-8-2007 by V Kaminski]

Those nations ironically are actually interested in using UAVs and even developed them. Even the terrorist group Hezbollah has been using them against Israel. So much for the myth about dying to win.

Hello there everyone, thanks Intelgurl for posting nice pics and good info in this thread as I am a fellow intel airman who might be headed out for training soon and its hard to find unclass info on the web speaking on training locations/times, even a nice .pdf unclass brief would be good. So are you a 1n1 or?? Its going to be different going from f16c blk 30 to the MQ-1...but I think it looks interesting plus the fact of what it can do for our folks in the middle east. Looks like the MQ-9 is going to be a beast..

Word is that the first Reaper squadron headquartered and piloted at Creech AFB, will be deployed later this month (Sept 07) to an unknown location somewhere in southwest asia.

reply to post by intelgurl

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By JDAMS you mean the "baby" ones that only weigh 500lb.

P.S I lived about 45 miles from there

Could someone please disable them damned UAVs, they're taking my (hopefully future ) Job!!! I'm sure most of you agree with me.

I didn't say anything about JDAMs in my post. But yes, you are correct in assuming the JDAM's are 500 pounders - GBU-38's to be specific.