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Corps expanding, upgrading small-arms ranges

PU’ULOA RANGE, Hawaii — The Marines, mostly noncommissioned officers, try to steady their M16A2 rifles as their bellies stretch across the scrubby berm that serves as a firing line on this known-distance range.

The firing lines on Alpha Range had been covered by blacktop, but the asphalt didn’t quite maintain its hardened exterior, and it doesn’t make for the friendliest surface for the shooters.

Soon, though, the range will sport softer grass growing from sprays of “hydro mulch,” or hydro seeding, a spray mixture of mulch and grass seed designed to hold water and promote faster growth. The grassy mulch is an easier, short-term fix to improve the 137-acre range east of Ewa Beach, just west of the mouth of Pearl Harbor at Iroquois Point.

“It’s better than grass seed, because the birds will eat the grass seed,” said Chief Warrant Officer 3 James Herman, the officer in charge of the range complex, glancing across the range as students in a coaches’ course aimed at targets 300 yards away.

The upgrades here are part of the Marine Corps’ larger effort to expand and modernize training ranges and facilities. As many bases expand with small observation posts, larger forward-operating bases and larger clusters of urban-style villages or combat towns, the Corps is moving along with improving and modifying its small-arms ranges.

The new surface for the firing lines at Alpha, which stretches 600 yards deep, is just one of the changes planned for the Pu’uloa Rifle Range. On the adjacent Bravo Range, work crews were installing an irrigation system that range officials will count on to maintain the grass and improve the scenery.

Officials want to realign and reset the firing lines and targets at Pu’uloa so that rounds land in the impact berms — which will be revamped with improved bullet traps — instead of missing and hitting the concrete wall or, worse, continuing into the Pacific Ocean just on the other side of the impact berm. Protective berms also would be beefed up to guard against ricochets, especially at closer distances, Herman said.

Pu’uloa, with its two known-distance ranges for rifle and pistol qualifications, is the busiest marksmanship facility in Hawaii, providing weapons training for 3rd Marine Regiment and other units, schools and commands, as well as reservists, Navy security forces, sailors from the Navy’s Afloat Training Group and federal agencies.

Alpha and Bravo ranges enable shooters to fire from 200-, 300-, 500- and 600-yard distances. Four smaller bays — C, D, E and F ranges — allow small-arms firing at 3 yards to 50 yards. Officials are weighing extending one of these ranges to 100 yards, “because some of the firing that you do, and missions you do, happen up to 100, but you don’t need the K-D feedback,” Herman said.

He pointed to a wooded area, across a concertina wire-topped fence and Cormorant Road. The property, which abuts a golf course and residential area to the west, will house a 1,000-yard KD range that’s planned to be built under a military construction project in 2010.

The Pu’uloa Range sits on Oahu’s southeastern shore, at the far end of a road about 30 miles across the island from Kaneohe Bay, the headquarters for Marine Corps Base Hawaii and home to 3rd Marine Regiment, other units and an air station.

As range facilities go, the facilities here — well used since World War II — are bare bones, however.

A set of barracks can hold about a company’s worth of Marines, which allows small units and course members that come here to settle in for the duration, if needed. But there is no mess hall. Food has to be trucked in or carried in by the shooters.

The high-tech modifications planned at the Pu’uloa ranges include multi-use targeting systems that have pneumatic turning targets, easily controlled and managed by computer.

“It’s all computer operated, where you can punch different target scenarios,” Herman said.

The upgrades and automation are designed to expand the variety of marksmanship training available at Pu’uloa and ease the burden on the range and pit crew. Until then, he said, “now it’s just guys putting stickers on targets.”