Commander Eric Mitchell takes a test hop, with graduate Bret Davenport as wingman. Photo: Liz Goettee/ Navy Photo Lab

The 31 members of Class 136, U.S. Navy Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland, which graduated last December, pitched in on a deluxe jet plane kiddie ride, wearing Test Pilot School livery and signed by each student. Says Damon Carson of Kiddie Rides USA, “The commanding officer and other staff have touted the kiddie ride as the best graduation gift ever.” Generous too, at just under $3,000. “While these rides generally operate with coins or tokens, the test pilots wanted a ‘free play’ button.” Music? What else but the “Top Gun” anthem, “Danger Zone.” The ride has been installed in the students’ break area.

Last week, a third Lockheed Martin F-35B—the coolest variant of the F-35, with its ability to take off vertically then go supersonic—joined two others already undergoing flight tests at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland. (It’s shown here leaving the Lockheed facility in Fort Worth, Texas.)

The F-35B, which will eventually replace the Marines’ AV-8B Harriers andF/A-18s, has been racking up the test milestones lately. Last month it engaged its STOVL (short takeoff/vertical landing) propulsion system in flight for the first time, and will now move on to demonstrate actual vertical takeoffs and landings.

The LiftFan system that produces the Lightning II’s vertical thrust may look a little Rube Goldberg, but it’s a marvel of engineering. Inventor Paul Bevilaqua explains how he came up with it in this Lockheed video:

Russia’s first “fifth-generation” fighter made its debut today on a snowy airfield in the country’s far east.

Sukhoi test pilot Sergey Bogdan took the company’s PAK FA prototype aircraft on a 47-minute flight before returning to the factory runway at Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Bogdan reported that the new fighter was “easy and comfortable to pilot,” according to a company press release.

Exactly what constitutes a fifth-generation fighter is open to some interpretation, but the PAK FA now appears to join the U.S. F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter at the forefront of modern military aviation.

Russia Today has video of the first flight, which, despite the title, could hardly have been “Top Secret” if it’s on YouTube.

Today’s offering is a post-Thanksgiving smorgasbord of stories (okay, I’ll stop with the alliteration).

• First, a lovely NASA video of an aurora shimmering above Saturn, with commentary by Caltech planetary scientist Andy Ingersoll, who’s been exploring the outer solar system since the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions of the 1970s:

• Next, a Russian team enters the Google Lunar X-Prize race with a rover called Selenokhod. The robot’s much larger ancestor, Lunokhod-3 (below), is now in a museum at NPO Lavochkin, the company that built it back in the 1960s.

• Finally, a fascinating Associated Press story about the long, involved search for the remains of U.S. Navy pilot Scott Speicher, who was shot down during the Gulf War, and whose remains were only recovered last summer.

Concept courtesy of Lockheed Martin.

Size matters. (Well, at least in the surveillance world.)

And three projects under way take dimensions to whole new lengths. The LEMV (it stands for Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle) is a mammoth hybrid airship championed by the U.S. Army as part of a future fleet of reconnaissance vehicles. As required in the U.S. Army’s LEMV proposal request, the non-rigid autonomous airship must be able to operate at 20,000 feet above sea level, have a 2,000-mile radius, and remain deployed for 21 days.

The 250-foot-long airship will be able to house a 5,000-pound payload of radar and motion-imagery sensors, in addition to other spyware. While the LEMV has yet to be built—Lockheed Martin is one possible airframe supplier—the buoyant behemoth is expected to deploy to Afghanistan within 18 months.

Photograph courtesy AeroVironment, Inc.

On the other end of the spectrum is AeroVironment’s NAV (Nano Air Vehicle) “Mercury,” which weighs less than an ounce. Mercury mimics a bird in flight with its ability to climb and descend vertically—as well as fly sideways and backwards—and is part of a new class of small remote-controlled gadgets able to fly indoors and gather intelligence in urban settings.

Lockheed Martin’s NAV, based on a maple seed, is in the second stage of testing. As we reported in 2006, Lockheed Martin hopes that soldiers will be able to carry the NAV in their pockets, and use the technology to photograph cave interiors, or to see what’s lurking down a blind alley.

Photograph courtesy Lockheed Martin.

According to Jill Krugman, a public affairs officer with Lockheed Martin, DARPA stopped funding the project at the conclusion of phase one. But the company felt development should continue, and the corporation has been funding the project through Independent Research and Design (IRAD). “Through IRAD,” says Krugman, “the team developed the approximately 30″ SAMARAI as a technology demonstrator.” (View a YouTube video of the 30″ prototype here.) As the project progresses, the team will build increasingly smaller versions, based upon what they learn during testing.

According to a report in Flight International, India’s defense ministry is buying Russian-built MiG-29K fighters as “part of a 2004 order…that was incorporated into a deal for the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov.”

Wait—India has an aircraft carrier?

That navy workhorse, the aircraft carrier, has been around for 100 years. (Ok, nearly. While the concept was presented in 1909, the first ship, the Royal Navy’s HMS Furious, didn’t make its debut until 1917.) But after a century, very few countries still have carriers as part of their arsenal. The United States has the most by far, with a whopping 11. The United Kingdom, with its long naval history, has just two. Italy and Spain also have two carriers, while France, Russia, Brazil, India, and Thailand each have one.

The Admiral Gorshkov

That list doesn’t include the number of carriers in development, however, nor does it say anything about the history of each ship. For instance, India’s active carrier, the Viraat, is a Centaur-class carrier that started life as the HMS Hermes with the Royal Navy (and was built during 1944-1953). The Hermes, sold to India in 1987, was retrofitted from 1999-2000, and returned to the fleet in 2001.

In 2004 the Indian government purchased the Russian-built, Kiev-class Admiral Gorshkov, which was built in 1978 and commissioned in 1987. (It was put up for sale in 1996, but didn’t find a taker until 2004.) Currently being upgraded, the Gorshkov (which will become the Vikramaditya, named for an ancient Indian king) won’t be ready for service until 2014.

And, as reported by the Government of India’s Press Information Bureau in February 2009, India has begun building its first indigenous aircraft carrier, making it one of only four nations with the capability to do so.

They wouldn’t be allowed to do it today, but back in 1959, experienced military pilots would sometimes buzz the Grand Canyon when flying out of nearby Nellis AFB. At the time, RAF pilot Ron Dick was an exchange officer with the US Air Force, training students in a Lockheed T-33. Fellow instructor Bud Pratt recalls that during these Canyon flights, the pilots would fly low enough that spray would be thrown up from the river.

Ron Dick rose to the rank of Air Vice Marshal and later became a fellow of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and a popular writer and lecturer on military history. He died in 2008. His son Gary Dick, who put together this video from Ron’s footage, says, “As a lifelong supporter of the National Parks and a man with a keen interest in bird watching, Ron would definitely endorse the flight restrictions that ensure natural quiet in the parks today.”

Last Wednesday, an as-yet-unnamed joyrider in a South African Air Force Pilatus PC-7 Mk. II turboprop inadvertently triggered his ejection seat while over Langebaanweg Air Force Base in the Western Cape Province. The passenger was blasted through the canopy within seconds, much to the astonishment of G. P. Lourens, an SAAF Silver Falcons demonstration team pilot. The ejection system functioned flawlessly; the parachute deployed, and the stunned passenger was retrieved by a helicopter.

Commenter no. 1: “Was this perhaps Julius Malema [a controversial South African politician]?”

Commenter no. 2: “If it WAS Malema, can ejection  seats be triggered by the pilot?”

Frederick Humphreys (NY State Military Museum)

A hundred years ago today, the U.S. military got its first pilot. On October 26, 1909, Frederick E. Humphreys, a 26-year-old Lieutenant with the Army Signal Corps, soloed for the first time in a Wright Flyer at College Park, Maryland, under the watchful eye of no less an instructor than Wilbur Wright. That same day Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm also soloed, winning Pilot Certificate No. 2 from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.

Both had been in training since October 8, only weeks after the Army purchased its flying machine from the Wrights. By November 5, the airplane was out of commission, its wing damaged during a low-altitude turn, which left the country’s fledgling air force temporarily without a vehicle.

Boeing and the U.S. Air Force have been busy this summer testing the Advanced Tactical Laser, a high-power directed energy weapon mounted on a C-130H Hercules transport.

In this August 30 test at New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range , the laser was fired at a target for the first time, with the following result. (Later footage of the laser “defeating” the target, or rendering it completely inoperable, is not yet available.)

Boeing has more videos, including this aerial view of the test:

A more obedient MQ-9 Reaper over Afghanistan (USAF photo)

Aerial warfare took another step into the robo-future on September 13 when a U.S. Air Force F-15E pilot was sent to destroy an out-of-control MQ-9 “Reaper” drone as it headed toward the Afghan border. It was the first time an errant Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) had to be shot down by a human pilot, who used an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile. Frank Hartnett, a spokesman for the U.S. Air Forces Central command, points out that “the order to engage was only made after exhausting all options to establish positive control of the MQ-9. The UAV was on a track to exit Afghani airspace, so decisive action was needed.”

It may take months before an investigating board determines what happened, says Hartnett. But it’s not uncommon for the Reaper or its smaller relation, the MQ-1 Predator, to go awry. Nearly a third of the two dozen serious Air Force aircraft “mishaps” so far this year have involved UAVs. An FAA report summarizing UAV accidents from 1999 to 2003 found that two-thirds of the Predator mishaps were caused by human error, although the more recent crashes appear mostly due to mechanical failure.

Still, the Air Force loves its drones. Next year the service plans to buy more UAVs than piloted aircraft. And use of the Predator and Reaper is on the rise in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for missions ranging from watching over ground troops to hunting down Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents.

If you want an idea of what it’s like to control a UAV, the Air Force has an online game where you can simulate flying the MQ-9 Reaper. Just don’t head for the Afghan border.

Photo: NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

From the company that brought you the P-51 Mustang, F-86 Sabre, and F-100 Super Sabre came the F-107, North American’s entry in a 1950s Mach 2 fighter-nuclear bomber competition. Though it was based on the F-100 design, evident in the wings, aft fuselage, and tail section, something went seriously wrong with the rest of it: An internal fire control radar in the fuselage necessitated placing the voracious intake just aft of the cockpit. Any pilot considering an ejection would think long and hard before doing so, hence the nickname, “man eater.”

In the end, Republic’s F-105 won out. Two man eaters went to the NACA High-Speed Flight Station (now NASA Dryden, in California); one retired to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Ohio.

An F-16 crash has claimed the life of Lieutenant Assaf Ramon, the son of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, who died when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart in 2003. One year after losing his father, Assad revealed his own astronaut aspirations. “I want to share my father’s experiences, and to understand what he felt,” he said at the time. “I think I’ll feel closer to him that way.”

Initial suspicions of what caused the crash focus on vertigo.

A "special" population? (USAF Photo)

Clinical depression is a significant health problem in America; even by low estimates, it afflicts 6.7 percent of the general population in a typical year.

For military pilots, it can be a career-ender. Air Force pilots and navigators diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) are taken off flight status, and pilots on flying duty aren’t allowed to use common antidepressants like Zoloft and Prozac, even when effective, for fear of possible side-effects.

That policy may change, however. Canada already allows some military pilots to use antidepressants if their depression is in remission, as does Australia (which has seen no attendant drop in safety). The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is considering whether private pilots should be allowed to fly while taking antidepressants. Should the Air Force follow suit?

Before deciding, it might be useful to know how common depression is among military pilots and navigators. So Blake Lollis and his colleagues at the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine in San Antonio, Texas, took a look at the data. Their results, published in the August issue of Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine, suggest that military aviators are a pretty happy bunch. After searching through electronic medical records for Air Force pilots and navigators (who numbered about 18,000 during the study period), the researchers found just 51 reported cases of major depression, 43 of which were non-recurring, over a five-year period. The annual prevalance of major depression among pilots and navigators was just 0.056%, far lower than the rate in the general population, and lower than the 2.8% rate for civilian executives and administrators.

Why? Lollis and his colleagues allow that some cases of depression may go undetected or misdiagnosed. Some pilots may practice “reverse malingering,” faking their test results to stay on flight status (some aviators have been known to memorize eye charts to get around vision requirements). It may be that pilots just don’t report their depression to Air Force doctors, and seek help on the sly.

But it’s also likely, write the authors, that “the mental ‘make-up’ or status of USAF pilots and navigators is significantly different from that of the U.S. general population.” For one thing, they’re all college graduates, with an average IQ of 124 (vs. 98 for the general population). They’ve had to “successfully overcome physical, behavioral, emotional, and academic hurdles.” Pilots work in a field that demands focus and self-confidence, and people with personality disorders are selected out. Surveys also show that successful military pilots have “exceptional consistency of background and better than average social and socioeconomic conditions when growing up.”

Considering these and other factors, the authors conclude, “it is highly likely that [military pilots] are a special population who…are less prone to psychiatric illness, including [depression] than the general population.”

Another video too cool not to pass on: Speeded-up assembly of an F/A-18F Super Hornet: