Custom Designed Shooting Ranges for Extreme Environments

Each shooting range project presents a unique combination of operational needs and environmental challenges. However, some conditions are exceptionally demanding. MILO Live provides custom, state-of-the-art live-fire shooting ranges for clients worldwide, addressing extreme environmental and weather conditions to create a safe, healthy, and enjoyable shooting experience.

Our team of experts designed, built, and installed a custom standalone shooting range at a military installation near Qaanaaq, Greenland. This area, formerly known as “Thule” or “New Thule,” is one of the northernmost human outposts on Earth. It is renowned for its extreme conditions: a desert that remains below freezing most of the year, with perpetual darkness from November to January and continuous daylight from May to August. The shooting range had to meet exceptional HVAC requirements and withstand +200 mph winds while providing a safe, secure, healthy, and comfortable training environment.

 

Greenland: Designing for Challenging Environmental Conditions

Air handling is a critical component of any shooting range installation, essential for maintaining a safe training environment. Ranges must provide constant airflow to prevent lead particulate from bullets and partially combusted powder from accumulating to unhealthy levels.

This process typically involves:

• Bringing in a constant supply of fresh air
• Heating or cooling it to a comfortable temperature
• Sending it downrange
• Exhausting it from the building

In Qaanaaq, where the outdoor air temperature can drop to -46 degrees Fahrenheit, we had to bring in -46º air, heat it to 68º, send it downrange, push it through HEPA filters, and purge it from the building within a few dozen feet.

Simply pumping this air down the range can create eddies and back-currents that carry lead particles back to the shooters and trainees. MILO Live designed an HVAC system that creates a reliable laminar flow, where fresh air enters the facility from behind shooters and flows downrange in a single body. This ensures that fresh air enters, flows downrange as a single cube of 68º air moving at a constant rate, carries lead and particulates away from occupants, and reliably delivers it to a filtration system. Potential hazardous toxins are captured and contained, never vented outside or allowed to build up in the air that instructors, trainees, and workers breathe.

 

Complete and Comprehensive Custom Shooting Range Design

MILO Live offers the design expertise and HVAC engineering needed to custom-design ranges of any scale for any setting. Our experience includes:

• Large-scale training ranges over 100 yards
• Compact, self-contained function fire and testing ranges for gun manufacturers and law enforcement agencies

Many design elements—such as sound baffling, bullet trap design, and even paint and flooring choices—can impact good laminar flow. MILO Live not only has the expertise to design a system that delivers optimal laminar airflow but also the capability to verify its performance and provide monitoring tools to ensure ongoing effectiveness.MILO Live has a proven track record of delivering state-of-the-art shooting ranges, live-fire training systems, and solutions. Every solution is custom, but our goal remains consistent: to balance your training objectives with your budget to craft the safest and most effective solution possible. Contact us today to discuss your needs, and let us put our expertise to work for you.