NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nevada—A 20-minute drive from the Las Vegas Strip is a repository for some of the most coveted secrets of the Cold War, accumulated over the years from forgotten battles, arms dealers and foreign governments hungry for hard cash.
The Threat Training Facility on Nellis Air Force Base houses the collection of Soviet weapons, many lying idle in the desert heat. It offers visitors a close-up look at the MiG-29 jet fighter, once one of the Soviet Union’s most feared aircraft because of its air-to-air combat capabilities. Visitors can also crawl into an SA-13, a mobile Soviet surface-to-air missile system that menaced Western aircraft in the first Gulf War. And then there’s the Mi-24 Hind, an attack helicopter the Soviets used extensively in their war in Afghanistan, where it became a target of CIA-supplied Stinger missiles.
