Edwards Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located in California, USA. It was named after US Air Force test pilot Glen Edwards.
Among other facilities, the airbase has a runway, which is the longest runway in the world, with a length of 11.92 km; however, due to its military status and unpaved surface, it is not intended to receive civilian ships. The base was built to land a test model of the Enterprise (OV-101) spacecraft, which in the late 1970s was used only for testing landing techniques and did not fly into space.
Near the runway, on the ground, there is a huge compass about a mile in diameter.
The airbase was used to land "shuttles", being a reserve airfield for them, along with the main one in Florida.
Edwards Base was founded in 1932 by Lieutenant Colonel Henry Arnold as a training ground for bombing. For this, an area was chosen far from settlements, next to the dried up Rogers Lake. When Arnold became commander of the Air Force Corps (the name of the United States Air Force in the 1920s-1930s) in 1938, he transferred the base to the tasks of a training and test complex. This was facilitated by the relief of the dried-up bottom of Rogers Lake (Arnold said that it was flat, like a billiard table) - it could be used as a huge natural runway for aircraft testing. The base became known as a test facility in 1942, when tests of the first US Air Force jet, the P-59Airacomet, began on its territory.
Bell P-59 Airacomet
During the 1940s, over $ 120 million (in 1940s prices) was spent on building and improving the base and expanding its territory. After World War II, the base began testing the latest aerospace technology. In June 1951, Edwards Base was officially named The U. S. Air Force Flight Test Center and is today the largest aviation test center in the world. Almost all experimental and adopted aircraft were tested here, except for the "blackest" ones. As well as testing and practicing the combat use of advanced weapons. It has its own divisions of fighters, transport aircraft and flying tankers, as well as several B-52N and B-1B bombers.
The airbase today has the widest range of aircraft, including unmanned aerial vehicles.
Some of them are in the memorial exhibition complex, in the "eternal" parking lot.
Satellite photo of Google Earth. At the "eternal" parking lot in the memorial complex, among others: experimental Kh-29, high-speed reconnaissance aircraft SR-71
But many of the officially decommissioned or experimental prototypes are maintained in flight condition.
There is also a special structure - a "crane", for loading the Shuttle onto a special Boeing 747 transport aircraft, equipped with attachment points on the upper fuselage.
Google Earth Satellite Photo: Boeing 747 Special Transport Aircraft
For research in the field of improving the flight performance of the 4th generation fighters being produced, the F-16XL with a deltoid wing and the F-15STOL were created with a take-off and run length reduced by more than 50%.
F-16XL - General Dynamics designation for the future development of the F-16 aircraft with a new double deltoid wing, which had an area of 1, 2 more than the standard version.
The aircraft had an elongated fuselage to increase the internal fuel reserve by 82% and underwing hardpoints, armament twice as heavy.
F-15STOL - F-15S / MTD - F-15 ACTIVE - experimental flying laboratory with PGO, UVT.
The prototype received a new digital fly-by-wire control system that combines traditional executive controls with control of the PGO, engine, swivel nozzles, nose wheel and main wheel brakes. A characteristic feature of the F-15S / MTD was the reconfigurability of the control system: in case of loss or failure of any executive control surface, as well as the failure of one of the engines, the functions of the other controls were automatically redefined in such a way as to preserve, as much as possible, the stability and controllability of the aircraft. Due to the use of flat nozzles and PGO, the roll angular velocity increased by 24%, and pitch - by 27%. The possibility of landing on a dry strip 425 m long and 985 m wet was demonstrated (for the serial F-15C fighter, 2300 m of wet strip are required). The technologies tested on the F-15S / MTD have found wide application in the development of the fifth generation F / A-22A Raptor fighter, as well as in a number of other programs.
Satellite photo of Google Earth: TCB T-38, F-16XL and F-15STOL
A line of experimental apparatus of the "X" series was developed and tested.
The first manned vehicle with LPRE was launched from the B-29 X-1, which exceeded the speed of sound. At the end of 1947, the plane was able to overcome the speed of sound.
Over the next year and a half, about 80 more sorties were flown. The last one was carried out at the beginning of 1949. The maximum speed reached for the entire time is 1.5 thousand km / s, and the maximum height is 21.3 thousand meters.
The X-15, the second known aircraft from the X series, reached a record altitude of 100 km for 1960 and a speed of Mach 6. The main task of the Kh-15 is to study the conditions of flight at hypersonic speeds and the entry into the atmosphere of winged vehicles, to evaluate new design solutions, heat-shielding coatings, and psychophysiological aspects of control in the upper atmosphere.
It was launched using the "air launch" technology from the B-52 strategic bomber (suspended under the wing), uncoupling from the carrier was carried out at an altitude of about 15 km, and landed on its own at the airbase.
All aircraft in the X series are prototypes, so only a few were built.
The only known exception is the Lockheed Martin X-35, which was transformed into the F-35 Lightning II, and it is mass-produced. Boeing X-32 and Lockheed Martin X-35 participated in the competition for this US Air Force order.
Research in the field of aerodynamics led to the creation of aircraft such as the X-29, with a forward swept wing.
X-29
Currently, research is underway in the field of cryogenic engines, with the aim of obtaining hypersonic speeds.
The X-51A is a US-developed hypersonic cruise missile.
The development is carried out within the framework of the concept of "rapid global strike", the main goal is to reduce the flight time of high-precision cruise missiles. According to the project, the X-51A should develop a maximum speed of about 6-7 M (6, 5-7, 5 thousand km / h).
On May 26, 2010, the first flight of the X-51A hypersonic missile took place in the United States. The tests were found to be successful. It is known that the engine ran for about three and a half minutes out of the planned five, which is currently the record for the duration of the flight of an aircraft with a ramjet hypersonic jet engine. During this time, the rocket managed to accelerate to 5 M.
Platforms with combat lasers are also not overlooked.
This experimental Boeing 747-based YAL-1 flying laser cannon is capable of destroying ballistic missiles.
Much attention is paid to unmanned aerial vehicles, both reconnaissance and strike. At Edwards airbase, full-scale tests of the RQ-4 Global Hawk strategic reconnaissance UAV were carried out.
By mid-June 2011, 12 complexes were delivered to the US Air Force. In total, it is planned to purchase 31 in the "block 30" version.
Google Earth Satellite Photo: RQ-4 Global Hawk
On June 1, 2012, the Boeing Phantom Eye UAV made its maiden flight at Edwards Air Force Base. The drone took off at 06:22 local time and lasted almost half an hour. The unique unmanned aerial vehicle "Phantom Eye", powered by hydrogen fuel, has a wingspan of 76, 25 m (more than that of the "Ruslan"!), Payload - 203 kg. The ceiling of the big reconnaissance giant reaches 20 km, and the cruising speed is 278 km / h.
Instead of petroleum products, Phantom Eye uses liquid hydrogen as fuel. This is twice as efficient as oil, which allows the device to stay aloft for up to 96 hours, instead of 36, as is possible, say, in the RQ-4 Global Hawk from rival Lockheed Martin. The empty weight of the vehicle is equal to 3 390 kilograms, which is the minimum record, thanks to the use of carbon fiber and lightweight chassis, consisting of a front wheel and side supports.
On Google Earth satellite photo: Phantom Eye UAV
In the United States, much attention is paid to the development of promising models of aviation weapons, which is supported by the allocation of significant material and intellectual resources; the Flight Test Center continues to research and fine-tune advanced models of aviation and rocket technology.
