A Town at Your Disposal!

Playas is a complete surburban setting in a 640-acre township with more than 300 homes and buildings, a classroom complex, a small grocery store, bowling alley, parks, day care, and community center. There are 400,000 acres of operational space, within and surrounding the town; high mountainous desert, rural and third world test and training venues, live fire and driving ranges, and a four square mile high explosives range.

The facility houses multiple classrooms and control rooms with state of the art equipment, live video streaming, and secure high speed interaction. Camera systems capture activity in all venues, which can be shared live remotely and recorded for review. Customers can rent about 90 three-bedroom houses, fully furnished and with laundry service. There is a shooting range and an extensive driving range that simulates rough terrain, water traps, boulder and log obstruction fields, and incline and slant hazards for ATV’s and off-road vehicles. A small-aircraft airport, which offers convenient access and possible training base, will be enlarged this coming year to accommodate larger aircraft.

Residential Range Training

The Playas Training and Research Center has an extensive residential (urban) range, consisting of about 100 three-bedroom, two-bath houses on multiple streets.

Some streets are used mainly for law enforcement training; houses are fully staged with furniture, decorations, kitchenware, and clothing and bedding. There are toys in the yards, cars in the driveways, and curtains in the windows. This "surburban" range is used for hostage situations, explosive breaches, terrorist activity, tracking, search and seizure, evasive driving, and traffic stops. At the end of one street, a bus is used to simulate IED explosions. An innocent vehicle on another street harbors a homemade bomb.

Some of the range is used for military or security exercises--search and rescue, emergency preparedness, infrastructure protection. A driver learns evasive driving to protect the dignitary in his charge from a van of terrorists . A soldier practices infiltration on a dark night. A helicoptor lands to extract a downed pilot or brings a team to search rubble for survivors. An agent tracks a fugitive across two neighborhoods and into a house filled with explosives.

Infinite possibilities and scenarios. One purpose: Engage knowledge and decision-making in a sensory-rich environment to create practice in situational reaction.

A World 7,000 Miles Away, Right Here

In the past year, six Other Than American (OTA) venues have been completed, four pressed earth block, which can represent any of the structures used for shelter in one-third of the world, and two nomadic encampments.

The marketplace, located within the town site, contains storefront spaces and encompasses eighteen houses (114 rooms) in two miles of walled compounds. It can accommodate about 100 people. The large village, able to house 200 people, is located four miles away in mountainous terrain that closely resembles parts of Afghanistan. It consists of 120 rooms within a mile of walls. Two smaller earth block venues represent family settlements of about 30 people, containing 17 rooms and 1000 feet of wall. Two yurt camps depict nomad camps of up to 30 inhabitants each.

Driving Training

Playas Training and Research Center (PTRC) has a number of security driving training ranges.

Our desert dirt track incorporates water traps, boulder fields, modest and steep inclines, obstructions, winching and vehicle recovery, drive-and-shoot range, increasing and decreasing radius corners, and cambered, level and off camber turns with elevation changes.

The urban tracks (paved) offer options such as counter terrorist or counter criminal tactical training, threat-recognition and protective response, evasive driving, law enforcement, protective motorcades or convoy operations, anti-ambush and car-jack drills, and single vehicle training for the unsupported agent or operator.

Live Fire Weapons Training

Fortunately, Playas has wide open spaces surrounding the town site. Our current shooting range is being expanded to include longer distances and multiple lanes.

The live-fire weapons training complex includes:

PTRC has a secure explosives magazine compound sited an appropriate distance from our urban training range, but still close enough to be readily accessible to your ordnance technicians and breachers.  We have a separate weapons armory compound sited within our urban training range close to the client residential housing and Tactical Operations Center so that client weapons are readily accessible.

PTRC can provide secure and fully certified Arms, Ammunition & Explosives storage for our military and LE clients.  Our Type 2 magazines meet or exceed ATF specs 27 CFR 555.11 and US Military specs, including DoD 5100.76M, AR 190-11, and OPNAVINST 5530.13C.

Playas Airport

PTRC owns a small airfield (NM86) with a 4,865' by 50' paved, pilot-controlled lighted runway with available hangar space. It is a perfect place for landing small planes, UAV development and testing, or in conjunction with exercises.

31 deg, 55 min, 30 sec north

108 deg, 32 min west

Elevation 4500'

135' turn around

Prevailing winds: S-SE

Lights: Frequency 121.125 (set to receive at 15 miles, press mike twice)