Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico

Kirtland Air Force Base is one of the most vital and active military facilities in the country, with over 23,000 people working within its secured perimeter, at the south end of Albuquerque. The heavily built up part of the base, generally north and east of the runways (that also serve as the main civilian airport for Albuquerque) has labs, aircraft support, and administration areas. South of (and underneath) the runways is a munition storage area, including what is said to the one of the largest nuclear weapons depots in the country. Southeast of the main base at Kirtland is the R&D field test area for the Air Force Research Lab and Sandia National Lab. One of the most unusual and diversified field test sites in the nation, the 25 square mile zone is littered with unusual and singular test structures related to weapons and nuclear technologies. Sandia's Technical Areas 3 and 5 cover a rectangular area on the west side, where facilities include a 10,000 foot long rocket test track for studying accidents involving nuclear weapons and enclosures. The northeast area is dominated by the former nuclear weapons storage and work site inside the Manzano Mountains. The Air Force's satellite surveillance facility at the Starfire Optical Range is at the south east end, and the southern end includes Sandia's Solar energy research area, a small radar cross section range, and a biological lab for Lovelace Respiratory Research institute (which began at this site as the Fission Product Inhalation Lab). The Air Force Research Lab's Space Vehicles Directorate and Directed Energy Directorate is based at Kirtland. The lab is one of the Air Force's primary research and development labs for space and missile related research and technology, including geophysics, propulsion, satellites, and directed-energy weapons, such as lasers. The effects of electromagnetic radiation on military equipment such as aircraft are studied at the Trestle and ARES, adjacent sites connected to the runways at Kirtland. The Trestle is built of wood to limit the interference that a metallic structure would produce, and is the largest such structure in the world. Over 10 million volts of electromagnetic radiation can be generated here, simulating the effect of the pulse produced by a nuclear explosion.