WHERE: 
California’s 
Mojave Desert

WHAT
: Tour A Restricted 
Air Force Base

In a hangar at Edwards Air Force Base, a Global Hawk drone is subjected to strong electromagnetic fields to assess its durability.

Chad Bellay/Air Force Photo

Aviation Vacation 


I’ve been fascinated with Edwards Air Force Base ever since I saw Sam Shepard play Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. The legendary pilot took off from Edwards, situated deep in California’s Mojave Desert, when he first broke the sound barrier in 1947. The base has played a vital role in the space age ever since. Edwards test pilots were the first to fly high enough to see the curvature of Earth, and NASA used the base’s runways for 57 of the 135 space shuttle landings.

The shuttle will never touch down there again and Yeager’s flying days are long past, but Edwards remains the nation’s premier aerospace testing facility. As a travel destination, it’s a must-see for aviation buffs and for people like me who are simply curious about the history and future of the country’s military and civilian aerospace programs. The vast majority of U.S. military planes must prove their worth at Edwards. The base is also home to NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Test Center, a civilian research station established in 1946 to develop new aerospace designs, including the X-1, the craft Yeager piloted. Today NASA maintains a fleet of aircraft there with a decidedly nonmilitary focus, investigating the science of climate change, atmospheric chemistry, and astronomy.


The base is just two hours northeast of my home in Los Angeles, close enough that from my patio I could hear the sonic boom of the space shuttle as it re-entered the atmosphere. This spring, using the “enrichment” of my 5-year-old stepson as added motivation, I signed up online to attend one of the free, twice-monthly tours of Edwards. Short of enlisting with the Air Force or becoming a crack NASA engineer, these tightly controlled visits are the only way to access the base.

The tour began at 0900 hours at Century Circle, a small park right outside the western gates of the base, where six 1950s-era Century-series jets sit on display. The jets were the first planes capable of flying faster than the speed of sound in level flight and are, as I learned, the direct descendants of the X-1.

Joining 30 other tourists, my stepson and I hopped on a tour bus at the gate and proceeded past the headquarters of the 412th Test Wing, a building shaped like the triangular B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. The officers inside coordinate all the planning, reporting, and analysis of the Air Force’s test flights. After a security inspection and camera check (photography is strictly forbidden for many parts of the tour), we drove to a series of hangars and runways to see some of those planes. Yeager’s legacy was everywhere: The tour guide pointed out the runway from which he took off to break the sound barrier.

On a nearby runway we spotted a pair of Global Hawks. The $37.6 million surveillance craft is the unmanned successor to the venerable U-2 spy plane made famous in 1960 when one was shot down over the Soviet Union. An operator can sit in a comfortable swivel chair hundreds of miles from a hostile target and pilot the drone to an altitude of 60,000 feet for a bird’s-eye view of enemy terrain. But it’s not just for war zones: The Global Hawk flies humanitarian missions as well, most recently in Japan, where it was used to help coordinate post-quake rescue efforts.

The Pentagon has increased its fleet of remotely piloted aircraft from 127 in 2002 to an estimated 1,400 today, but manned planes still loom large. Our tour included a glimpse of the famous F-22 Raptor, one of the latest generation of stealth fighter jets, screaming off a runway. In a push toward greener fuels, the Air Force has modified some of these jets to fly on a biofuel derived from camelina, a relative of the mustard plant.

Moving on from the F-22, our guide pointed out two test parachutists walking along the runway. The Air Force is ditching its nearly five-decade-old parachute design and replacing it with a new one called the Guardian Angel Advance Parachute System. The new chutes are intended to make landings safer at higher altitudes, such as in the mountains of Afghanistan. As with any new piece of gear, it must be thoroughly tested before it goes into service. I do not envy the job of the test parachutist.