OVERSWEEPThe Interactive Flight Reference

Naval Air Station Fallon

Black-and-white aerial photograph of a long main runway with a parallel runway and taxiways on a flat desert plain, surrounded by irrigated fields
Naval Air Station Fallon from the air, 2 June 1988.Photo: Bob Lawson, US Navy. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (accessed 2026-10-28).

Drafted — not technically validated

Record revision 1 · The Navy's air combat school in the Nevada desert: home of TOPGUN and of the ranges where carrier air wings train before deploying.

A real-world airfield as described in public sources, and how sim maps represent it. Units, facilities and names change; each is dated where the sources allow, and the charts are not for navigation. Use current official publications for flight planning.

Location and identity

Location
Fallon, Nevada [1] [2]
Country or territory
United States
Coordinates
39.4166° N, 118.7010° W [5]
Elevation
3,935 ft (1,199 m) [2]
Identifiers
ICAO KNFL · FAA NFL
Other names
  • Van Voorhis Field [1] [2]
  • Naval Auxiliary Air Station Fallon (former name, until 1 Jan 1972) [1]
Opened
1942; a Naval Auxiliary Air Station until it became a full naval air station on 1 January 1972 [1]

Role and operators

Status
Active · Military
Roles today
Weapons and tactics school · Search and rescue
Operators
  • US Navy · United States, navy · current; start date not given [1] [2]

Units

Permanently based units belong to the airfield; rotational and temporarily deployed units are there for a period or an operation. Dates are when the sources place each unit there; "as of" is when a source described it as current.

Current

  • Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center: the Navy Fighter Weapons School (TOPGUN), the Carrier Airborne Early Warning Weapons School and the Navy Rotary Wing Weapons School [1]

    Service
    United States, navy
    Basing
    Permanently based
    When
    as of Oct 2026

  • Fighter Squadron Composite 13 (VFC-13), a Navy Reserve adversary squadron [1]

    Service
    United States, navy
    Basing
    Permanently based
    When
    since 1996

  • Carrier air wings training before they deploy [1]

    Service
    United States, navy
    Basing
    Temporarily deployed
    When
    date not given

Runways and facilities

From data effective Oct 2026. Facilities not listed here are not documented in the sources cited, which does not mean the airfield lacks them.

RunwayLengthWidthSurface
13R/31L [2]14,001 ft (4,268 m)201 ft (61 m)asphalt
13L/31R [2]11,076 ft (3,376 m)200 ft (61 m)concrete
07/25 [2]7,003 ft (2,135 m)152 ft (46 m)asphalt
Arresting gear
  • E-28 at both ends of each runway [3]; on the parallel runways the approach-end gear is normally derigged [2]
Navaids
  • TACANTACAN GlossaryAirfield and ATC: Tactical air navigation. An ultra-high frequency electronic rho-theta air navigation aid which provides suitably equipped aircraft a continuous indication of bearing and distance to the TACAN station. NFL, on the field [2]
Other
  • The Fallon Range Training Complex, some 240,000 acres in the Lahontan and Dixie valleys, with a simulated air defence network of about 20 radar sites [1]
FAA airport diagram of NAS Fallon: two long parallel runways running from north-west to south-east, a shorter east-west runway crossing near their southern ends, and the hangars and fuel pits along the western side
Figure 1. Parallel runways 13R/31L and 13L/31R, crosswind runway 07/25, and E-28 arresting gear marked near each runway end.FAA Airport Diagram, Fallon NAS (Van Voorhis Fld) (KNFL), d-TPP cycle 2610, effective 1–29 October 2026. Federal Aviation Administration; public domain, via aeronav.faa.gov (accessed 2026-10-27). Not for navigation.

Sim maps

Represented in: no map checked so far

DCS: Nevada Test and Training Range DCS World · Present day

Confirmed absent · checked 2026-10-27 [4]

Only the maps marked represented or confirmed absent have been checked. Any other map may or may not represent this airfield.

Role today

Fallon is the Navy’s main school for air-to-air and air-to-ground combat. [1] It is home to the Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center, whose schools include the Navy Fighter Weapons School, better known as TOPGUN, and visiting carrier air wingsWing GlossaryJoint terms: 1. An Air Force unit composed normally of one primary mission group and the necessary supporting organizations. 2. A fleet air wing is the basic organizational and administrative unit for naval-, land-, and tender-based… train there before they deploy. [1] The ranges of the Fallon Range Training Complex spread across the Lahontan and Dixie valleys and cover some 240,000 acres; Dixie Valley holds a simulated air defenceAir defense GlossaryJoint terms: Defensive measures designed to destroy attacking enemy aircraft or missiles in the atmosphere, or to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of such attack. network of about 20 radar sites. [1]

History

The airfield was built in 1942 as part of the defences of the West Coast, and the Navy soon took it over for training. [1] Apart from 1946 to 1951, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs used it, it has trained naval aviators ever since. [1] Through the Vietnam War, squadrons rotated through what was then a Naval Auxiliary Air Station before joining their carriers, and on 1 January 1972 the Navy made it a full naval air station. [1] TOPGUN moved here from NAS Miramar in 1996, when Miramar passed to the Marine Corps, and the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center formed that year from TOPGUN, Strike University and the airborne early warningEarly warning GlossaryJoint terms: Early notification of the launch or approach of unknown weapons or weapons carriers. school TOPDOME. [1] The Navy Reserve adversary squadron VFC-13 came from Miramar at the same time. [1] The field is named Van Voorhis Field for Commander Bruce Van Voorhis (1908–1943), who was awarded the Medal of Honor after his death. [1] The base kept its own search and rescueSAR GlossaryJoint terms: Search and rescue. The use of aircraft, surface craft, submarines, and specialized rescue teams and equipment to search for and rescue distressed persons on land or at sea in a permissive environment. helicopter team from 1972; since 2022 the Navy Rotary Wing Weapons School has taken over the role. [1]

A US Navy F-16A in grey camouflage parked on a ramp with its canopy open, seen from the front, with a control tower behind
A Navy F-16A of the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center, the predecessor of today's Warfighting Development Center, at Fallon in the 2000s.Photo: US Navy. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (accessed 2026-10-27).

Sources

  1. Naval Air Station Fallon. Wikipedia (secondary source). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Air_Station_Fallon (accessed 2026-10-27).
  2. Airport data: NFL (KNFL), Fallon NAS (Van Voorhis Fld). Federal Aviation Administration, Aeronautical Information Services, data effective 1–29 October 2026. https://nfdc.faa.gov/nfdcApps/services/ajv5/airportDisplay.jsp?airportId=NFL (accessed 2026-10-27).
  3. Airport Diagram, Fallon NAS (Van Voorhis Fld) (KNFL). Federal Aviation Administration, digital Terminal Procedures Publication, cycle 2610, 1–29 October 2026. https://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/2610/00143AD.PDF (accessed 2026-10-27).
  4. pydcs terrain data: Nevada airports (airports.py). pydcs, an open-source Python library for building DCS World missions, whose terrain data mirrors the game's. https://github.com/pydcs/dcs/blob/5ddcc63a2dcd661e16b14f7aa43219b93044855d/dcs/terrain/nevada/airports.py (accessed 2026-10-27). The Nevada map lists 17 airfields; Fallon is not among them.
  5. Airport data, KNFL. OurAirports open data (public domain, community-maintained). https://davidmegginson.github.io/ourairports-data/airports.csv (accessed 2026-10-28). Row for KNFL: latitude, longitude and identifiers.

Wikipedia articles are secondary sources and can change; they are cited with the date they were read. FAA airport data and diagrams are official but are reissued every 28 or 56 days; each is cited with the edition read. pydcs mirrors the DCS terrain data at the commit linked.