Military

R-6312 McMullen Target Site/Range

The Navy's mission of training aviators uses the range in McMullen County, variously known as the McMullen County Range or the McMullen Target Site/Range. In 1966 the Padre Island ranges were decommissioned, and crews are dispatched to remove remaining ordnance. Later that year, bombing operations were moved to McMullen County. The Navy, Air Force and Texas National Guard continue to use the facility.

NAS Kingsville manages the McMullen County Range, (often referred to as Yankee/Dixie range, identifying its Yankee and Dixie target complexes). This range and its restricted airspace R-6312 lie approximately 65 miles northwest of NAS Kingsville. The range offers scored training for air to surface gunnery and inert weapons drops. The range serves NAS Kingsville's assigned training wing (TRAWING 2) and also the Texas ANG 149 th Fighter Wing from Kelly Field, San Antonio, TX.

NAS Kingsville is located 30 miles southwest of Corpus Christi. It is surrounded primarily by ranch land, much of which is the King Ranch. Its unencumbered air space is supported by four 8,000-ft runways at the Air Station, two 8,000-ft runways at Naval Air Landing Field Orange Grove, and the McMullen Target Complex. The ceiling of R-6312, associated with the McMullen Range Complex, has been increased to FL230. The increase will permit high-altitude bomb drops at the range. In recognition of a requirement to support High Altitude Radar Bombing practice a proposal has been submitted to raise the ceiling of R-6312 to FL 240.

McMullen County is located in Southern Texas and is surrounded by Atascosa, Live Oak, Duval, and La Salle Counties. The county was formed in 1858 from Bear, Live Oak and Atascosa Counties and was named for John McMullen, the Irish Impresario. McMullen County was named for John McMullen, the Irish empresario. From the Great Depression and World War II to the 1990s the population of McMullen County dropped slowly but steadily. At the same time, virtually all of the small towns established before the depression disappeared or shrank. In 1940 1,374 people lived in McMullen County; in 1950, however, the census counted only 1,187 people, and by 1970 the number had dropped to 1,095. Crude oil production in 1982 totalled 899,661 barrels; 20,209,632,000 cubic feet of gas well gas, 693,355,000 cubic feet of casinghead gas, and 56,627 barrels of condensate were also produced.