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2.3.4 Military

Military use of Cardigan Bay (Figure 13) is largely coordinated and controlled by the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) base at Aberporth. DERA Aberporth is an amalgamation of three separate sites developed in the late 1930s and now includes the main base, the Rangehead area (just outside the perimeter fence) and the airfield at Blaenannerch two miles away.

From its earliest days, a number of Observation Posts (OPs) were commissioned on small pockets of land along the coast from which the trajectory of projectiles fired into the Cardigan Bay Range Danger Area could be observed (see Figure 12). Over the years, these OPs have been developed to accommodate optical, electro-optical, radar and radio equipment. A number of these OPs remain in use to this day.

The RAF airfield was formally "closed" and handed over to care and maintenance in 1946 and was not used for some 5 years thereafter. It was reopened in 1951 as the RAE Aberporth airfield site and equipped with a hard surface in 1956. Its use from 1951 has been confined to the flying of (manned) trials and communication aircraft; the flying of targets for the Range having been transferred initially to RAF Valley (manned aircraft and towed drogues) and eventually (by 1951) to RAF (later RAE) Llanbedr, which now provided for the flying of drone targets also.

Over the years, the primary task at Aberporth has concentrated on antiaircraft weapons, be they ground, sea or air-launched. Its role in the development of other weapons (guided bombs, anti-ship missiles, lasers etc.) should not however be overlooked. Whereas during the early years the greater majority of trials undertaken at Aberporth involved ground-launched firing with few aircraft trials, the current situation is quite the reverse. Nowadays as much as 95% of trials carried out on the Range involve aircraft and only a very small number of ground firings are undertaken.

The Aberporth Range has played a major part in the development, evaluation and service practice of virtually every guided weapon to enter service with the United Kingdom (UK) Armed Forces, and for an equally large number of projects that never saw service. The Range now constitutes a facility within DERA, which is an Executive Agency of the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) responsible to the Secretary of State for Defence. On behalf of the UK MoD and its contractors the establishment continues to provide a safe and controlled environment for the conduct of guided weapons and aircraft system trials, together with the instrumentation required to control and monitor these trials activities in accordance with both customer needs and the maintenance of safety.