Phantom West

摘要

Despite its age, the F-4 Phantom continues to fulfil an important mission with the United States Air Force. Located at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, just outside the small town of Alamogordo, Detachment 1 of the 82nd Aerial Targets Squadron (ATRS) maintains a busy ramp of active F-4s. Their mission: to provide manned and unmanned aerial target support for numerous US Air Force and Department of Defense (DOD) programmes. It fulfils the same mission as at the unit's headquarters atTyndall AFB in Florida from where QF-4s are also flown. The Phantoms used by the 82nd ATRS and its Detachment 1 are retired airframes that were sent to Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, in the early 1990s. These airframes were stored in the desert for many years until they were chosen for the full-scale aerial targets (FSAT) programme for conversion into target drones.