PLANES TESTED LOCALLY NOW ON IRAQ DUTY.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - Among the U.S. warplanes that have begun bombing Iraqi targets, nearly all the Air Force planes first saw duty in the Antelope Valley.

Virtually every front-line Air Force aircraft - from F-16 fighters to C-17 transports to the new Global Hawk robot spy planes - was tested at Edwards Air Force Base over the past three decades.

``Just about everything that is over there was tested here,'' Edwards spokesman 1st Lt. Dan Bernath said. ``We take feedback from the war- fighters. They tell us what they need and we respond to that.''

Some 11,500 people work at Edwards, with about half of them employees of the Air Force Flight Test Center, the main unit. Others work for aerospace contractors, for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or for the Marine Corps helicopter wings stationed there.

Edwards' squadrons are organized for testing aircraft rather than combat, and base jets are fitted with test instruments rather than standard weapons, so they are not slated to be sent overseas, officials say.

But an undisclosed number of Edwards airmen - particularly security police troopers - are already deployed at undisclosed locations overseas, and one test unit got orders in early March to travel to the Mideast.

That is the unit testing Global Hawk robot spy planes, computer-controlled craft able to fly nearly twice as high as a jetliner and survey an area the size of Indiana in 24 hours.

Only seven test craft have been made and they have not yet been approved for production, but Global Hawks were pressed into duty in Afghanistan after the 9-11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

In recent weeks Edwards has accelerated certain test programs and in some cases sent personnel to combat units, to help fix problems with planes or equipment.

``It's mainly detecting and fixing problems in the operational force,'' Edwards commander Maj. Gen. Doug Pearson said last month of the stepped-up work.

In February, an Edwards flight test squadron condensed into 3 1/2 days' work that would have normally taken six weeks in testing a software upgrade and new targeting pod for dropping laser-guided bombs from F-16 fighters.

Squadron personnel drove a truck to Nevada to fetch the targeting pod at Nellis Air Force Base, then worked around the clock to hook up and check it out and fly two test missions, officials said.

Military planes started using the base's dry lake beds in the 1930s for training. When the United States needed to test in secret its first jet fighter plane during World War II, the vast hard expanse of the dry lake beds provided a ready-made emergency landing strip.

After the war, the lake beds provided landing grounds for experimental rocket planes, like the X-1, in which Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947.

Among the planes undergoing tests now are all three Air Force bombers: the B-2 stealth bomber; the B-1B, built in the 1980s in Palmdale; and the B-52, built in the 1950s and 1960s.

The service's two top-line fighters, the F-16 and F-15, have been tested at Edwards since the 1970s. Stealth fighters, the F-117 Nighthawks, fly out of nearby Air Force Plant 42. Testing is also going on at Edwards for the newest fighter, the F-22, of which only a few have been made and which has not yet been assigned to combat units.

Edwards' test units are also testing unconventional next-generation aircraft: Besides the Global Hawk robot spy plane, there is an Air Force version of the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor - which can take off like a helicopter, then swivel its giant rotors and fly like an airplane.

The Osprey is controversial because of the fatal crashes of versions being tested by the Marines, who want it to replace slower-moving helicopters for airborne assaults.

Edwards is also testing the world's first aircraft armed with a laser weapon. A converted Boeing 747 freighter carries a laser in a turret in its nose. The craft, called the Airborne Laser, is being tested to shoot down enemy missiles as they rise from their launchers.

But many of the planes undergoing tests at Edwards have been flying for decades. The testing now involves modifications, like improvements to their radar, engines or aviation electronics, or trying them out with new types of bombs or missiles.

``A lot of what we do is improving what we already have,'' Bernath said.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- color -- ran in AV edition only) A U.S. Air Force F-117 stealth fighter flies high above California's Sierra Nevada mountains.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer

(2 -- ran in AV edition only) A Global Hawk is towed after arriving at Edwards Air Force Base's Plant 42 in Palmdale in this file photo.

U.S. Air Force

Box:

(ran in Valley edition only) U.S. MILITARY ARSENAL: THE TOOLS OF WAR

Jon Gerung/Staff Artist