Aerospace Valley home to aviation milestones
For nearly 70 years, the Antelope Valley has long been known for its historic contributions to the world of aerospace, from the first supersonic flight to spacecraft and everything in between.
Those contributions are continuing now: the U.S. Air Force’s newest bomber is expected to be built in Palmdale by Northrop Grumman, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket planes are being built in Mojave to carry paying passengers into space and a new generation of NASA X-planes will be tested here to advance aviation technology minimizing fossil fuel use, emissions and noise to name just a few.
Valley locations known for fostering cutting-edge aerospace development include the world famous Edwards Air Force Base, NASA’s
Armstrong Flight Research Center, Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale and the burgeoning Mojave Air and Space Port.
In Ridgecrest, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake is the U.S. Navy’s largest single landholding, representing 85% of the Navy’s land for research, development, acquisition, test and evaluation use and 38% of the Navy’s land holdings worldwide. In total, its two ranges and main site cover more than 1.1 million acres, an area larger than the state of Rhode Island.
The Valley’s aerospace industry employs nearly 30,000 civilian and military personnel, with a payroll that tops $1 billion annually.
In addition to payroll, contract spending adds nearly $600 million to the local economy and nearly 20,000 indirect jobs.
Overall, that amounts to an economic impact approaching $3 billion annually.
Northrop Grumman in 2015 was awarded a contract for the engineering and manufacturing development phase of the Air Force’s next long-range bomber, now dubbed the B-21 Raider. Much of the multi-billion-dollar project remains classified, but Antelope Valley officials said they were told the bomber would be assembled in Palmdale, bringing an estimated 700 jobs to Northrop Grumman’s site at Air Force Plant 42 and potentially thousands more to the region.
Northrop Grumman is planning to construct approximately 340,000 square feet of new facilities and remodel its facility off Columbia Way (Avenue M) near 30th Street East, which contains some 2 million square feet of production space and reportedly could hold Pasadena’s Rose Bowl.
The company’s Air Force Plant 42 site, known as the Palmdale Aircraft Integration Center of Excellence, already employs more than 3,000 people on programs, including the F-35 joint strike fighter, as well as unmanned vehicles such as multiple versions of the Global Hawk spy plane and a technology demonstrator for a carrier-based unmanned vehicle for the Navy. The Navy’s demonstrator, known as the X-47, was the first unmanned vehicle to take off and land on an aircraft carrier and the first to use aerial refueling.
At the other end of the aerospace industry spectrum from Northrop Grumman is Monarch Inc. in Ridgecrest. The firm operates small drones with sensors that may be used in a variety of applications to collect data.
The company started out manufacturing drones for commercial use but has since moved to offering services instead.
Monarch focuses primarily on agriculture, mining, surveying and renewable energy fields, all readily available in the region.
One reason for Aerospace Valley’s success is its location, with great flying weather and wide open spaces well-suited for aerospace development.
This development requires the supporting facilities to house its various forms and act as a base for testing.
At Edwards, where Air Force pilot Chuck Yeager in October 1947 became the first pilot to fly faster than the speed of sound, the base is expected to be busy over the next decade as Air Force modernization efforts create new test programs and work continues on older aircraft getting upgrades.
The Air Force is working on the new KC-46 aerial refueling tanker and the new T-X trainer, as well as the new bomber.
The base is a major economic engine for the region, with an estimated local economic impact of $1.61 billion in 2015.
Nearly 11,500 people are at the base each day, about 2,200 of whom are military personnel, another 2,100 their family members, and the remainder a combination of civil service and contractor employees. Edwards has 68 test aircraft of 15 different types.
The multinational F-35 fighter jet test program employes 1,000 people and includes test crews from U.S. allies, including the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Australia.
Flight test work continues to be done on older aircraft, including the B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers and the F-22 and F-16 fighters.
There is also work being done on the F-15SA, a version of the F-15 fighter being purchased by Saudi Arabia. That work is being done with Boeing at Air Force Plant 42, which Edwards oversees.
Plant 42 provides a home for defense industry giants, including Northrop, Lockheed Martin and The Boeing Co., as well as NASA.
The facility is one of four such industrial properties in the Air Force, but Plant 42 is unique because it houses multiple contractors.
Grown from a small community airport before World War II, Air Force Plant 42 became a center for aircraft production in the 1950s with the arrival of what is now Lockheed Martin.
The 5,900-acre Plant 42 is located between Sierra Highway and 50th Street East and Avenues P and M. It has twin 12,000-foot runways available not only to the tenants but to neighboring operations, including Lockheed Martin and NASA. In addition, the Federal Aviation Administration operates an air traffic control center in its building on the site.
Much of the work done by Lockheed Martin’s 3,000 Palmdale employees is classified. The Palmdale operations houses modifications and upgrades to the long-standing U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft and modifications to and some production for the F-22 Raptor and F-35 joint strike fighter programs.
The company last year announced $480 million worth of work from United Kingdom-based Straightline Aviation to build 12 LMH-1 hybrid airships. Developed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works advanced development shop, the airship is a combination of a blimp, airplane and hovercraft, capable of carrying cargo to remote locations without roads, prepared runways or other transportation infrastructure.
Built at the company’s former L-1011 jetliner assembly building in Palmdale, the airships will be 300 feet long and measure about 78 feet high, roughly the length of a football field and the height of a seven-story building.
NASA bases at its Armstrong Flight Research Center’s Palmdale facility research aircraft, including a flying telescope, a 100-inch-diameter telescope mounted inside a highly modified 747 aircraft called the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA; high-flying ER-2 aircraft; a DC-8 flying laboratory and the ER-2s, civilian versions of the U-2 spy plane used for high-altitude research.
At NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards, preparations are underway for a new initiative to develop the next generation of aircraft, moving beyond traditional designs toward more efficient, quieter, low-emission planes. Armstrong, the space agency’s primary flight research center, was home to legendar y experimental research aircraft, or X-planes, like the X-15 rocket plane flown in the 1950s and 1960s.
NASA’s return to flying largescale X-plane technology demonstrators, a staple of its aeronautical research heritage, is part of New Aviation Horizons, an ambitious 10-year accelerated research plan developed and announced by NASA in 2016.
One aircraft, the X-57 Maxwell, will have an electric propulsion system. Another is a quiet supersonic airplane, which will validate in flight technologies that will allow it to fly over land with a quieter sonic boom. Also planned are unconventional shapes hoped to provide ultra-efficient subsonic flight.
The Mojave airport has grown from a World War II-era Marine Corps training base to the nation’s first licensed inland spaceport, as well as a general aviation airport. Today, it is home to some 2,000 employees at its 70 tenant companies. It is the fifth-largest aerospace employer in the region and in the top 10 employers in the Valley. Sometimes referred to as the Silicon Valley of space, the airport’s tenants include several companies in the emerging commercial space industry, including Virgin Galactic, The Spaceship Co., Masten Space Systems and Stratolaunch Systems. It is also home to civil aviation and flight test firms such as Scaled Composites and the 35-year-old civilian National Test Pilot School, as well as rail, service and other industries. In 2016, the National Test Pilot School became the first school certified for flight test training by the European Aviation Safety Agency.