The ballistic range has long been employed in a variety of engineering fields such as high-velocity impact engineering, projectile aerodynamics and aeroballistics, since it can create an extremely high-pressure state in very short time. Since the operation of the ballistic range includes many complicated phenomena, each process should be understood in detail for the performance enhancement of the device. One of the main processes which have significant influence on the device performance is the compression process of the driver gas. Most of the studies available in this field hardly discuss this phenomenon in detail and thus lack a proper understanding of its effect on the whole system performance. In the present study, a computational analysis has been made to investigate the fluid dynamic aspects of the compression process in the pump tube of a ballistic range and to assess how it affects the performance of the ballistic range. The results obtained are validated with the available experimental data. In order to evaluate the system performance, several performance parameters are defined. Effect of a shock tube added in between the pump tube and launch tube on the performance of the ballistic range is also studied analytically. Performance of the ballistic range could be significantly improved by the proper selection of the pump tube and high-pressure tube parameters and the addition of the shock tube. © 2007 Science Press.