Centre prepares revised strategy to support rapid fielding of capabilities and network-centric warfare plans
The US Air Force's flight test centre at Edwards AFB, California is to give priority to quick reaction testing that supports rapid fielding of new combat capabilities as part of a revised flight-test roadmap now being prepared.
The roadmap will also emphasise support for USAF and US Joint Forces Command network centric warfare (NCW) plans.
"The systems have become more advanced and a lot of the testing that we are doing at Edwards is starting to evolve into new areas," says John Minor, technical director of the USAF Test Pilot School at Edwards.
Speaking at the Aerospace Testing Expo 2005 in Hamburg, Germany last week, Minor said that the roadmap anticipates NCW-related work will form the largest single non-airframe testing activity being carried out at Edwards in the medium to long term.
"All of the intercommunications between the aeroplane and the ground stations, the combined air operations centres, the whole way that we prosecute the war now through information exchange has become a large area that we have to focus on.
"Somebody has to integrate it on to the aeroplane and flight test it and we will be doing a lot of that," he says.
Significant growth is also expected in testing of unmanned air vehicles, led initially by the Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) and Global Hawk programmes.
However, UAV work is likely to be matched in volume by a major increase in requirements for flight testing of directed energy weapons and ongoing work testing electronic-warfare systems.
"What we are seeing in the future is an evolution to where the manned systems work will continue to be the core of our business, but our work [expands] in electronic warfare survivability, UAV flight test, directed energy flight test – not only the high- energy lasers, but also high-powered microwave directed energy devices," says Minor.
The flight-test roadmap "will take us from where our niche is today…but we have a need to be more agile, more responsive, and more competitive for smaller, quick reaction type programmes. This roadmap… is going to help us to be able to do that."
Major facilities investment projects include the renovation of the main 4,830m (15,800ft) -long runway.
"We are putting in a 12,000ft temporary runway while that runway undergoes renovation," says Minor.
That project is expected to cost about $20 million.
PETER LA FRANCHI/HAMBURG
Source: Flight International
