In 1983, Dave Crete graduated from technical school bound for one of the Air Force’s most unusual postings for security forces Airmen: the Nevada Test and Training Range.
Protecting the NTTR, home to some of America’s most secretive weapons testing and Red Flag, the Air Force’s premier combat training exercise, was a dream.
Four decades later, Crete says the assignment exposed him and others to radiation and toxins that cause cancer and other medical ailments. He’s pressed Congress to make it easier for vets like him to gain disability compensation and VA treatment for illnesses he believes were caused by their time at NTTR.
“You believed that the government wasn’t going to send you somewhere that simply being there was going to be harmful,” he told Air & Space Forces Magazine. “There was absolutely no understanding.”
The Nevada Test and Training Range—a remote swath of land the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined, considered part of the Nellis Air Force Base complex outside Las Vegas—conducted hundreds of nuclear weapons tests at its Nevada Test Site and Tonopah Test Range over four decades, irradiating the surrounding environment. Airmen have rotated through jobs on the range for decades.
Legislation in the Senate’s version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act would require the Pentagon to classify the range as a contaminated site and identify people who have worked there. That would make it easier for those vets to seek disability benefits and free health care through the Department of Veterans Affairs to cover illnesses that could be tied to radiation exposure at NTTR.
The provision, if it makes it into the final bill, would direct the Air Force to identify all troops stationed at the range since Jan. 27, 1951, when the U.S. government conducted its first atmospheric nuclear test there almost 75 years ago.
Crete, who now runs The Invisible Enemy, a nonprofit advocating for NTTR veterans, estimates thousands of security forces, aircraft maintainers, and other Airmen suffered exposure during that time.
Some veterans have encountered difficulty trying to convince VA of service-connected illnesses they link to NTTR, Crete said, because so much of the work there is classified, limiting what they can share about the assignment. Portions of the range have already been designated as contaminated. The Department of Energy grants compensation to affected civilian staff, but has withheld that help from military veterans, who must go through the VA system.
“Veterans have been exposed to radiation and toxic chemicals as a result of their selfless service to our nation, and the least we can do is ensure they get the treatment they need,” said Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) in a release last month.
Rosen and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) introduced a bill in July to grant DOD employees the presumption of exposure if they served at DOE facilities that, like the Tonopah Test Range, have already been deemed toxic. Their bill, dubbed the FORGOTTEN Veterans Act, would have added lipomas (non-cancerous growths of fatty tissue) and other tumor-related conditions to the list of medical issues the VA automatically links to service-related toxic exposure. Veterans who have served on or above the range would be presumed exposed, meaning they wouldn’t have to prove that their military service put them in harm’s way.
Scaled-down language in the draft defense policy bill, if enacted, would not go quite so far, but would still be a step toward broader protections for NTTR veterans and their families.
Secret Missions
Like many brand-new Airmen, Crete hoped to snag an overseas job when he got his first Air Force assignment. Instead, he was assigned to NTTR.
“You would fly up there on your Monday, and you’d fly home on your Friday … in a civilian chartered airliner out of Nellis,” he said. “The first day up, they sit you down in the cockpit of a stealth fighter that … basically nobody’s ever seen.”
And then there were the Russian MiG fighters on the flightline.
“We’re all looking out the window … ‘Where the hell did we end up?” he said.
Crete spent almost four years with the 4461st Security Police Squadron, guarding the then-deeply secret F-117 program, America’s first stealth jet. He patrolled the grounds on foot, just miles from areas deemed too contaminated for humans to enter.
“You never thought about it,” Crete said. “We didn’t wear dosimetry. … We wore military-grade fatigues.”
Because Tonopah is so remote, the federal government used it for field tests of “greater hazard” than it would run at Department of Energy facilities in New Mexico and California, according to a 1975 report from the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration, two years before it was folded into DOE. Those there were exposed to tests using plutonium, depleted uranium, and beryllium, a nonradioactive element linked to lung disease. The report noted that the government disposed some explosive waste in open burn pits.
A 1993 radiological survey of the Tonopah Test Range conducted by the Energy Department found that “substantial [americium-241, a byproduct of plutonium] contamination was found around the Clean Slates sites … extending several miles southeast of the fence boundaries.”
The Clean Slate tests were part of the “Roller Coaster” series of four joint U.S.-British nuclear experiments in 1963 that studied plutonium fallout. Detonations took place just east of the Tonopah runway, where Airmen, federal civilians and contractors worked, government maps show.
Americium-241 can stay in the human body for decades, causing cancer in bones, muscles, and the liver, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The 1975 report argued there was no indication that plutonium from the “Roller Coaster” tests had spread past the fence line or “entered significantly into local biological systems or food chains.”
“Discontinuing the work done at the Range would be against the national interest,” the report said. “As long as the nation chooses to maintain an up-to-date nuclear weapon stockpile, some facility such as the Tonopah Test Range must continue to exist. … The environmental costs inherent in the work are small and reasonable for the benefits received.”
In 2014, 31 years after first reporting to the NTTR, Crete reconnected with friends and discovered that many in the group had lung problems, tumors, children with birth defects and more. Crete, who has suffered from lipomas and chronic bronchitis among other ailments, contends radiation and toxins on the range has sickened NTTR vets at a higher rate than the general public.
“We started finding out about more people that have died and people that are seriously screwed up from working out there,” he said.
Crete estimates he’s spoken to about 1,000 people with similar concerns about their time at NTTR. The VA doesn’t track data on illnesses by location, so there is no way to determine how many NTTR vets have made claims, said VA spokesperson Gary Kunich in an email response to questions.
Crete believes Airmen at NTTR may still be at risk. Col. Shaun Loomis, who took over as the range’s commander in June, declined to answer questions from Air & Space Forces Magazine on the topic.
While veterans don’t need a presumption of toxic exposure to get VA benefits, the designation allows them to enroll in VA health care without needing to apply for disability benefits first. Other claims are handled on a case-by-case basis to determine if they’re connected to military service—a process requiring a paper trail that may stretch back decades. For service-connected ailments, VA benefits can include tax-free disability payments, free or subsidized health care at VA facilities, and survivor benefits.
The push to cover NTTR vets echoes the efforts of other Air Force veterans groups, including of fighter pilots and missileers, that seek coverage for certain ailments they see as service-connected.
Crete sees their fight as collective, where progress for any can be a win for all.
“There’s still people working out there,” Crete said. “Their future is my reality today.”