Drafted — not technically validated
Record revision 1 · The remote range airfield that hid Constant Peg's MiGs and the first F-117 wing, and now stores the F-117 fleet.
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
- Country or territory
- United States
- Coordinates
- 37.7989° N, 116.7807° W [2]
- Elevation
- 5,550 ft (1,692 m) [2]
- Identifiers
- ICAO KTNX · FAA TNX
- Other names
- None recorded
- Opened
- 1957, supporting Atomic Energy Commission nuclear weapons programmes on the test range [1]
- Theatre
- North America
Role and operators
- Status
- Active · Joint military and civil
- Roles today
- Flight test
- Operators
- US Air Force, Air Combat Command, the owner the FAA lists; the airport manager is at Sandia National Laboratories · United States, air force · current; start date not given [1] [2]
- US Department of Energy, about 15 flights a week for its work on the Tonopah Test Range · United States, government (non-military) · current; start date not given [1]
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
Stored F-117A fleet, kept with wings removed in its original hangars [1]
- Service
- United States, air force
- Basing
- Not stated in the sources
- Aircraft
- F-117A
- When
- since 2008
Earlier
30th Reconnaissance Squadron, 57th Operations Group [1]
- Service
- United States, air force
- Basing
- Permanently based
- Aircraft
- Predator
- When
- Aug 2005 – 1 Jul 2012
4450th Tactical Group, then the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing [1]
- Service
- United States, air force
- Basing
- Permanently based
- Aircraft
- F-117A, A-7D, T-38A
- When
- May 1982 – Jul 1992
4477th Test and Evaluation Squadron, flying Soviet-designed MiGs in the Constant Peg programme [1]
- Service
- United States, air force
- Basing
- Permanently based
- Aircraft
- MiG-17, MiG-21, MiG-23
- When
- until Mar 1988
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.
| Runway | Length | Width | Surface |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15/33 [2]ALSF-1 approach lights and a PAPI on runway 15; PAPI on runway 33 | 11,998 ft (3,657 m) | 150 ft (46 m) | concrete |
- Arresting gear
- None documented in the sources cited
- Navaids
Figure 1 — Airfield map of Tonopah Test Range Airport (to scale)
- Runway
- Taxiway, with its name
- Apron
- Hangar or terminal
- Airfield boundary
Runways, taxiways, aprons and buildings inside the airfield boundary, true north up, drawn from OpenStreetMap data retrieved 2026-11-01. Widths come from the map data or, where it gives none, a typical 45 m runway and 18 m taxiway. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the ODbL 1.0. Community-mapped, not an official aerodrome chart, and not for navigation.
Sim maps
Represented in: DCS: Nevada Test and Training Range
DCS: Nevada Test and Training Range DCS World · Present day
Represented as “Tonopah Test Range” · checked 2026-11-01 [3]
- Runway 14/32 [3]
- Tower 124.75 MHz VHF and 257.95 MHz UHF, callsign Silverbow [3]
- VORTAC TQQ on channel 77X (113.0 MHz), and ILS approaches I-RVP (108.3 MHz) to runway 14 and I-UVV (111.7 MHz) to runway 32 [3]
Differences from the real airfield
Only the maps marked represented or confirmed absent have been checked. Any other map may or may not represent this airfield.
Role today
Tonopah Test Range Airport is an Air Combat Command airfield on the Tonopah Test Range, at the north-west of the Nellis ranges. [1] [2] Its main known use is shuttling government workers to the range from Las Vegas, and the Department of Energy runs about 15 flights a week from it. [1] The surviving F-117A fleet has been stored in its hangars since 2008, and a detachment of the 53rd Test and Evaluation Group may use it for foreign aircraft testing. [1]
History
The airfield opened in 1957 for the Atomic Energy Commission’s nuclear weapons work on the range. [1] In the late 1970s, as the collection of Soviet aircraft at Groom LakeHomey Airport (Groom Lake, Area 51) AirfieldThe classified Air Force test site beside Groom Lake, where the U-2, A-12 and F-117 were tested. outgrew that base, the Air Force moved it here. [1] The 4477th Test and Evaluation Squadron flew MiG-17s, MiG-21sMiG-21 AircraftThe small delta-wing Mach 2 fighter: the most-produced supersonic jet in history., MiG-23s and other foreign types against US aircrew in the Constant Peg programme: more than 15,000 sortiesSortie GlossaryJoint terms: In air operations, an operational flight by one aircraft. between 1980 and the end of flying in March 1988. [1] The base was not publicly reported as an Air Force airfield until 1985. [1]
From October 1979 the field was rebuilt for the F-117A, with a longer runway, a control tower, arresting gear, new navigation aids and the first 24 aircraft hangars, at a cost of over $100 million. [1] The 4450th Tactical Group moved here from Groom Lake from May 1982 and flew the jets only at night until the Air Force acknowledged them in November 1988. [1] The 37th Tactical Fighter Wing took over in October 1989 and sent F-117s from here to Panama in December 1989 and to Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War in August 1990. [1] The wing moved to Holloman AFB in 1992, and by August that year the airfield was largely in caretaker status. [1]
The airfield
One 11,998 ft concrete runway, 15/33, with ILS approaches to both ends and approach lights on runway 15. [2] The FAA notes heavy military operations in the surrounding restricted area and a migratory bird hazard from October to March. [2]
Sources
- Tonopah Test Range Airport. Wikipedia (secondary source). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonopah_Test_Range_Airport (accessed 2026-11-01).
- Airport data: TNX (KTNX), Tonopah Test Range. Federal Aviation Administration, Aeronautical Information Services, data effective 29 October – 26 November 2026. https://nfdc.faa.gov/nfdcApps/services/ajv5/airportDisplay.jsp?airportId=TNX (accessed 2026-11-01).
- dcs-world-schema reference data: Nevada airbases (Tonopah Test Range.json). dcs-world-schema, open-source data extracted by running DCS World 2.9.30.28536. https://github.com/YoloWingPixie/dcs-world-schema/blob/c3091e6c08fb8167e26145d0e33c10e4140c6fe7/dcs-world-reference/latest/airbases/Nevada/Tonopah%20Test%20Range.json (accessed 2026-11-01). With its beacon files, as tabled on the DCS: Nevada map page.
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.