Range Operations

What has the Army done? What does the Army have planned? Why is this important? Read more about it.

What is it?

The Army's mission is to protect and serve the nation by providing the best in trained Soldiers and finest tested equipment to keep the nation secure. To effectively prepare, the Army uses training ranges for Soldiers to participate in live-fire exercises, and equipment and weapon testing ranges to ensure that Soldiers have access to the best and latest proven, tested equipment and weapon systems.

USAEC's mission is to enable Soldier readiness and sustainable military communities while ensuring compliance with Federal Laws and Army Regulations that protect our environment.

What has the Army done?

Range support compliance has been broken into three critical areas: Demilitarization Program Compliance, Munitions Rule Compliance, and Range Environmental Management Compliance.

The Demilitarization Program Compliance area focuses on the Open Burning/Open Detonation (OB/OD) Operations. This initiative provides optimization of OB/OD Units; management strategies and protocols for site-specific technical baselines; management decision documents to determine the need for OB/OD Units; and technical closure guidance documents. Efforts in support of the Demilitarization Program Compliance include:

Munitions Rule Compliance is based upon the Improvement Plan for Military Munitions Rule Implementation. The critical elements of the Plan include development and implementation of policy and regulatory guidance; provisions for training and information sharing; along with compliance monitoring and continuous improvement.

Range Environmental Management Compliance emphasizes developing range environmental management strategies, developing model plans for range management, and identifying compliance and technology requirements to meet range sustainability objectives.

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What does the Army have planned?

The Army will continue to look for ways to improve Range Support through the sharing of best management practices and lessons learned. These will be used to develop policies, guidance, training, management strategies, model plans and compliance monitoring designed to keep Army ranges environmentally compliant and operational.

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Why is this important?

There are more than 200 threatened or endangered species onsite or contiguous to Army lands. In addition, more than 3,500 historic buildings and 130,000 cultural resources are located on Army land. Without a sound environmental strategy and careful planning, protecting those resources would severely limit training opportunities.

Army training is also often hard on our lands; tracked vehicles, exploding ordnance, small- and large-bore weapons ranges, and even infantry bivouacs can take a toll on our environment, and potentially limit future training.

The Range Operations Support provided by USAEC mitigates these factors and strikes a working balance between training needs and environmental responsibility.

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Range Operations