F-16 Viper | Breaking the Sound Barrier TWICE at 50,000 Feet Above Edwards Air Force Base

We're currently flying an F-16 Viper, one of the most advanced lethal fighter jets in the whole world! At 1,000 miles an hour, over 40,000 feet up in the air! This is going to be a crazy video! Good morning and welcome to Edwards Air Force Base. Today, we're exploring the incredible rich history of this airbase. Everything going on in present day, the future, and at the end, an incredible once in a lifetime opportunity to fly in an F-16 Viper. So strap in, because this one is going to be the wildest ever! But before we get to the flying, we need to unpack why Edwards Air Force Base is one of the most extraordinary places on Earth for an opportunity like this. Because the story doesn't begin in the cockpit, it begins with the mission. Every day, the men and women here work to test, evaluate, and refine the aircraft, systems, and technologies that will eventually find their way into the hands of America's warfighters. Through a partnership of active duty airmen, government civilians, and private industry, the combined test forces at Edwards serve as the proving ground where ideas become capabilities, and where the future of airpower is forged. But to understand why flight test happens here, and why Edwards became the centre of the aerospace testing universe, we have to start with the very ground it's built on. A vast, ancient lakebed in the Californian desert that will go on to become one of the most famous pieces of real estate in aviation history. So this is the iconic Rogers Dry Lakebed. So many incredible things have happened here over the course of history. Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier above here many years ago. The Space Shuttle landed here, and this is in fact the longest runway in the world. It's truly a great place to do flight tests. This is where we came to break Mach 1, Mach 2, Mach 3, and then in one year with one airplane with one pilot, Machs 4, 5, and 6. And then just a few years after that, we'd set the still standing record for manned, powered level flight at Mach 6.7 in the X-15. The great thing about working at Edwards as a historian is the sheer breadth of aircraft that we have here, that we have flown in the skies here. This backdrop is just a part of it. The SR-71, of course, one of the fastest air-breathing airframes to have ever been built. This is a perfect place to fly it. But from Chuck to the Space Shuttle, what are some of the most significant things that have happened here? If there's any development in aerospace technology since basically the Wright Brothers, it has some connection here. America's first jet plane took off from the northern end of our lake bed. Chuck Yeager, of course, comes out here in 47, breaks the sound barrier, and then we move forward again. Mach 2, Mach 3, the North American X-15 would break Machs 4, 5, and 6 all in one year. America's premier combat aircraft of basically all of the last century flew here in some way, shape, or form. The YF-16 would take its first flight from our runway in 1974. Even two years before that, the first F-15 flight here. The first A-10 flight, that same year actually, in 1972, also here. All of the century series, the F-100, the 101, the 102, the 103, and the 104, all flew here. The YF-22 flew off against the YF-23 here. The X-32 flew off against the X-35 in a tech demonstrator for the Joint Strike Fighter that would become the F-35. The first flight of the space shuttle, the Enterprise, released from the back of a 747, no engines, just for glide testing, happened here in our airspace. Go forward a couple more years in history, and the first landing of Columbia coming back from orbit, our runway. So, this is where you did the first landing. Edwards built its name by pushing beyond the known limits of flight, and out here in the Mojave, that same mission is still alive today. This isn't just a place where aviation history happened, it's a place where aviation is still being shaped today. It all feeds into one mission. To push aircraft to the edge, understand exactly how they behave, and make sure the warfighter never has to discover those limits for the first time in combat. That mission belongs to the 412th Test Wing, and the people at the centre of it. Pilots, engineers, experts. So, with the history of Edwards behind me, it was time to see exactly how that legacy continues today. We're in the 416th Flight Test Squadron, and we're in the Squadron Heritage Room here. So, Edwards is kind of the home of flight tests, specifically in the Air Force, and that's really the foundation of what the 416th Flight Test Squadron is here to do. Hold short runway 23L. Squadron 31, taxiing to hold short 23L. I'm the operator of the F-16s here on Edwards Air Force Base. We do a lot of test support, chase, photo, and safety chase missions. So, a lot of the sorties we fly, we are not the ones testing something, but we're there to provide for either safety or documentation of things. So, that could be flying next to another aircraft, releasing a weapon, going as fast as they've ever gone for the first time, possibly. It allows us to get exposure to a lot of, if not all of, the other test programs on this base, from other fighters to bombers, transport, tanker aircraft. Some of the really exciting things, at least that I've been able to be a part of, is working with the V-21. Obviously, a very new effort, being able to chase that, see that in a very early stage. The F-16 is a much older, more mature platform, so seeing what it's like for something to start from zero. And the T-7 is in a similar place as well, starting and going through the early stages of expanding a flight envelope, flying the airplane in a new way for the first time. So, what that means is not every day looks the same. It could be a non-flying day, you're doing paperwork, planning, test planning or safety planning. You could be here at three o'clock in the morning, you could be here flying tonight, like I will be tonight. And that variability is something I really enjoy, that I get to feel that I'm part of a lot of different test efforts. So, the work that gets done here, how does that then translate and then go to the battlefield, for example, or into combat? In a lot of different ways. Some of the work we do here is very fundamental. So, the first time something flies, very early software sensor development. Some of that technology will have to go through many more wickets before it ever makes it to the warfighter, which is who we're really here to support at the end of the day as the warfighter. Other things, it's the very end of a program. So, we may do the last weapons draft, the last test of a software tape before it gets released to the combat units, which means that we kind of have that final look at something before we decide that the ten years younger than me right now self would be ready to go use it, possibly at night by themselves. And are we trusting in the technology enough? And then some of the other efforts that I've been able to work on involve kind of the bomber force, weapons testing, things like that that are very different from my previous experience coming from like a fighter-type platform. You're fulfilling more of a support role, but you get to be a part of some really important things that are on the leading edge. But beyond the pilots, hardware, and cutting-edge tech, Edwards is powered by a combined test force. Not just military personnel, but civilians and contractors working side by side. To understand what that really means, we're going to speak with a flight test engineer. So, first question, what's your job? I mean, you're a civilian on the military base. Can you talk a bit about that? Yeah, so I work at the 416 Flight Test Squadron. I'm currently operations tech expert, but my background is flight test engineering. Flight test engineering is one of those ones that, depending on the organization, you could have different responsibilities. But I work for the operations group at the 416th. Yeah, I've had some great conversations around base recently, and one thing's become apparently clear. Test is really important, but I was hoping to speak to you about that too. So, in your words, what is the true kind of value of test, really? Like, how does that fit into this, and why is it so important? Yeah, so I think the theme through my career has been warfighter support. You know, I've done all sorts of aircraft and programs that go up to life-saving technologies, war weapons, you know, countermeasures, things like that. And really, our job is to test it to make sure that this isn't going to be a problem for our warfighters as thoroughly as we can. So, I keep that warfighter-focused mentality, and, you know, there's even programs that I've supported in urgent operational needs that you really get a good sense of team and support in that warfighter. Something Eric mentioned here was life-saving technologies, and that's one of the main reasons we're actually here today. Edwards isn't just about building more capable aircraft, it's about protecting the people who fly them. One of the most remarkable systems developed here is the Auto Ground Collision Avoidance System, or AGCS. If the jet is about to hit the ground and the pilot hasn't reacted in time, the system can automatically take control and pull the aircraft to safety. It's already saved multiple pilots and aircraft from catastrophic crashes. Pilots, actually, that we've saved lives have come back and give discussions, and it's really impactful to see the impact that we've done to the warfighter in actually saving lives. So today, we're going to go and actually try out a bit of AGCS, my understanding, in this flight. Yeah, it's going to be taxing to test out the system, we're getting to see how it reacts. You'll enjoy the bunts and the slice and pulls. It's going to be a whole lot of fun. Eric, thank you for all the work that you do. It's been a pleasure to talk to you today, and looking forward to seeing what you do in the future as well. Sounds good. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you. Just want to say a huge thank you to our sponsor for this video, Saddleback Leather. Incredible leather goods, 100-year warranty, no breakable parts, and they're going to fight over it when you're dead. So check out Saddleback Leather, link's in the description. And for now, guys, let's get to the fun stuff. It's time to fly. Edwards made sure not to leave me empty-handed on this project. Despite being a civilian foreign national, they found a way to help me achieve my own first-of-a-kind flight in a place known for exactly that. A ride in an F-16 Viper with a 416 flight test squadron. But something like that doesn't come easy. Long before you ever step near the aircraft, the process truly begins. Every detail matters, every procedure, every check. It starts with the basics. Understanding the aircraft, the systems, the risks, and how to respond when things don't go to plan. And then the procedures. What happens if something goes wrong? How do you get out of the aircraft? How do you survive once you're out? Egress training, emergency drills, repeating the same actions over and over until they become instincts. Then comes the physical side. Medical checks. Making sure your body can handle the altitude, the g-force, the pressure. Equipment fitting. Making sure everything works exactly as it should, down to the smallest details. The g-suit, the helmet, the oxygen system. Everything designed for one purpose. To keep you alive in an environment the human body was never meant for. Because when you're moving at hundreds of miles an hour, thousands of feet up in the air, you don't have time to think, you have to react. Every step of this process is designed to prepare you, not just for the flight, but for the unexpected. Because once you're strapped into that cockpit, once the canopy comes down and the engine spools up behind you, there's literally no turning back. All right, so we're here. We're getting ready for the flight. So we've already done our training, egress training, getting in and out of the jet safely. So we're going to go through our flight brief for today. So overall game plan for today, we'll step out of here, get everybody in the jet, get the engine started. We'll taxi out. We'll do what's called an unrestricted climb. So we'll climb basically straight up after takeoff to about 20,000 feet. And then we'll head over to the sidewinder low level. Head back into more of our local, closer airspace and see quite a bit of what the jet can do. So we'll get up to about 50,000 feet, kind of see the high end of things. Fly some more low level, look to hit 9Gs at some point. Then give a demo of what the AGCAS system can do and how it can save people using a slightly different system. But it'll show you what that looks like. Come back for a tower flyby, kind of get a real close look at the lake bed from the air this time. Then come back in for a few landing patterns. So try to go high, low, fast, slow. See kind of the whole Mach and G regime that we can today to give you as best look at the F-16 as we can. My God, so that's like literally everything and everything you can do in F-16. I mean, are we missing anything from that? No, that's pretty much it. So all the time you can get to go see it. We got a pretty good day weather-wise out there. Great airspace out here to see what the jet can do. My God, I cannot wait. What's the plan now then? So the plan now is we'll just have a quick kind of more discussion. Make sure the jet is ready to go. Once the jet is ready for us, we'll step out the door here and go to where all of our flight gear is held. Get our G-suits, harness, helmets. Make sure we have all the equipment we need. From there, we'll walk out to the jet. And we'll make sure we take our time getting everything strapped in, getting cameras, all that set up. And then from there, we'll basically be in normal ground flow for us. And we'll be talking with the maintenance guys on the ground to get the jet started. Do some pre-flight checks on the ground before we taxi out. And then from there, it's pretty quick to take off and we'll get going with the sortie. So basically it takes us about an hour from when we step out the building to take off. So pretty quick. All right, let's roll. Sweet. All right, let's go get the harness. Okay, cool. There you go. And then we'll take this and we'll roll it up. So we'll walk out to the jet. Okay, cool. It's taken years to get here. And it has also taken days of preparation. But we're here now, taxiing to the Edwards runway. Preparing for the Viper's famous and very aggressive unrestricted climb. A max performance takeoff that gets you stationary to combat altitude in seconds. It's time to live a childhood dream. Eddie Tower, Skull 3-1, ready 2-3-left, unrestricted climb to 2-0-0, on request. Skull 3-1, Edwards Tower, taxi up to hold short, runway 2-3-left. Skull 3-1, taxi up to hold short, 2-3-left. Skull 3-1, line up right, runway 2-3-left. Skull 3-1, line up and wait, 2-3-left. All right, rotate 140, takeoff 155. Make sure they let us do the unrestricted climb. Line up and wait. Skull 3-1, unrestricted climb 2-0-0 is approved, runway 2-3-left, wind calm, clear for takeoff. Skull 3-1, clear for takeoff 2-3-left, unrestricted climb to 2-0-0 is approved. All right, you ready? Yep, bird ready. All right, here we go, he's coming up. Oh my god, it's crooked. Rotate. Gear's up, lights out. There's 300. There's 400. All right, go ahead and put your head back, here we go. Sport Skull 3-1 is airborne, passing 1-1-thousand for Sidewinder. Sweet. That's awesome. All right, what'd you think? It's unbelievable! Wow! All right, so I'll tell you what, we're going to start working our way over towards Sidewinder. Yep. So basically just keep us pointed kind of roughly this way. Okay. And you ready to fly? Yep. Oh yeah. Enjoy the aircraft. Okay. Hash just handed the controls of the F-16 over to me, a moment I've dreamed of my whole life. Immediately I noticed how incredibly responsive the Viper truly is. A tiny bit of hand pressure on the stick can unleash the full roll rate of the jet and turn performance. Every movement of the jet controlled by tiny bits of hand pressure that don't move more than a quarter inch. It truly feels like it can take you anywhere and does whatever you think. You can do a roll if you want. Yeah? Yep. All right. Woohoo! Oh yeah! Oh my god! Woohoo! Now that I've had my fun of the F-16, it's now time for the Sidewinder low level. The real question is... All right, you ready to get low? Oh yeah, let's do it. My aircraft here. Very ready. Here we go. We need some scope, everyone. Point Alpha. All right, we'll start working our way down. We're now entering Sidewinder Canyon, one of the most famous low level training routes in the U.S. and probably the whole world. At speeds approaching 500 knots, the F-16 is covering more than 8 miles every single minute. What makes low level flying so demanding isn't just that speed, it's the constant workload. Hash out front, constantly reading the terrain, monitoring the jet, navigating the route and planning several seconds ahead at all times. It's very difficult, but an essential part of becoming a fighter pilot. Charlie next. Wow. So we can get a little bit lower down here just because it's flatter. Yep. So if you look in the HUD, you see those little kind of chevrons on the side of the keycaps? Yep, I see them. Those are the computer doing the EGCAS algorithm. I gotcha. Because we're flying low, it's making sure that we're being safe essentially. Got it. So we'll get to the next point in about two minutes. That'll be kind of that aggressive descent. You're kind of going over the top of a ridge. Nice. And then we'll spill out into like a valley area. And from there, we'll kind of get towards Point Delta. Perfect. A few minutes ahead of us is an iconic mountain known as Haystack, where aviation spotters frequently take photos of jets as they pass by. For our project, many of the local spotter community agreed to help us film as we made our pass. Spell 31, Point Charlie, 500 feet, 500 knots. I see it. All right. I'm going to go ahead and move to Point Delta. Give myself some turning room. All right. It's going to be the quickest high and goodbye ever. In a second, we'll be able to see that little mountain that they were talking about. Yep. Sweet. Spell 31, Point Delta. There we go. Hey, guys. Sweet. Now, it's time to get some altitude. This is where, in the same airspace as Chuck Yeager, we're going to break the sound barrier and go supersonic for the first time in my life. Beyond that, we're going to push the Viper to 50,000 feet, where we expect to see the curvature of the Earth. So we'll just kind of keep this slow climb going. This is actually a good direction to point. Cool. And by the time we get into the airspace where we're allowed to go supersonic and we keep pointing this way, we'll have climbed up pretty high. Just to save some gas, we'll use the afterburner at the end. All right. Just to get up to 50, and then we'll get as fast as we can. Okay. Sweet. This should work out pretty good. So we are as high as a commercial airliner would go right now. Yep. So they cruise, yeah, like 30 to 40. So this is about what an airliner would see. Wow. Normally, we cruise in the 20s. We're in a very low drag config right now. When we're carrying fuel tanks and missiles and stuff, we just can't get up this high. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but this is about as high as we would normally cruise. And we've got a long way to go. Yep. 40,000 feet. All level launch should be good, right about here. And then one thing you'll notice, so the faster you go, the faster we can go faster. Yeah. So right now, the speed's taking up pretty slow. Once we get close to and especially over the speed of sound, it'll take up a lot faster. Got it. And we're limited in this configuration to 600 knots or up this high Mach 1.6. Passing 45. At this altitude, we're flying deep within the stratosphere, the second layer of Earth's atmosphere. The air is incredibly thin, the temperatures can plunge below minus 50 degrees Celsius, and we're among the highest people on the planet. This is a realm of flight that very few people will ever experience. Let's see, and just for gas here, we'll just start our acceleration. So 48,000 feet. We're 0.98, so pretty much as soon as I start to descend here. Yep. There's Mach 1. Oh my god. 1.01, so we're supersonic. Oh my god, we did it. Yep. 1.07. There's 1.1. 3. Feel a little bit of rumble. Yep. That happens sometimes just because you're going really fast, obviously. Yeah. No joke. There's 1.4. What did we hit, 1,000 miles an hour? About 1.5. We're going to turn for the airspace, so here we go. All right, you ready to fly? Yep, always. All right, do you have the aircraft? I have the aircraft. So just keep this left turn going, so you're still supersonic, so just keep pulling. Keep pulling a little bit more. Okay. There we go. Yep. Just about like that. We're back to subsonic now. Sweet. With the sound barrier broken, 50,000 feet altitude target achieved, and 1,000 miles an hour speed goal hit, it's time to try out the life-saving AGCAS system, and then the most physically challenging part of this flight, pulling 9G. Having never pulled more than 7.5G before, I knew this would push me to the limit, but has everything I've done over the last few years prepared me for this? We're going to find out. We're actually now supersonic again, just because we're descending, which is fine. And then we'll just look for a place to descend. We'll demo some of the AGCAS stuff. Enough to do the 9Gs, if you're feeling up to it. Oh yeah, I'm well up for it. Hash just mentioned there that we were back supersonic, meaning we broke the sound barrier for a second time, but I was in the controls when that happened. So somewhere over the Mojave Desert, I flew an F-16 through the sound barrier. That's a sentence I never imagined I'd be able to say. Okay, so let's see, how are you feeling? Yeah, I'm feeling great, man. Sweet. So the first thing I'll kind of show you here would be what AGCAS would kind of look like. So we're stuck low, so we're not going to do a lot of aggressive maneuvering, but imagine that I was maybe going to point the jet at the ground to shoot the gun or something like that. So let's say I roll in kind of this way. I think that I'm going to point the jet at the ground to shoot the gun. I get distracted, something goes wrong. That's what happens. Nice. So the jet, as soon as those chevrons meet, says, nope, I've got it, and pulls you up away from the ground. That's really impressive. Yeah, so we'll do one more here. So if I was going to point at the ground, kind of got distracted, didn't know what was going on. Very quickly, yep. Nice. So it's pretty snappy. Yeah, very. Cool. All right, so we have a little bit of gas left. Are you feeling up for 9Gs here? Oh, yeah, let's do it. Okay, I'm going to offset to the left a little bit here. We're going to get some speed. Basically, I'm going to roll to the left, and then I'm going to pull to the left in a hard turn, all right? Okay. So, make sure that your mask is tight. Yep, mask is tight. And that you're ready to squeeze your lower body. Okay. All right, you ready to go? Yep, okay. Here we go. What did you get to? Like, right about, pretty much exactly 9. Nice. All right, we'll do one last kind of harder turn here. Yep. To the left. Zoinked ourselves around. All right, cool. Scalper 1, request a contact tower for tower flyby. Having survived 9G, the last thing left to do in this flight is the Edwards Control Tower flyby. With a low approach over the lake bed, we're going to hit the afterburners one last time and return home in style. Nice. Working our way down. Whoop! Scalper 1, request right closed stop to the right. Right closed stop approved. Go up. And away. So, we've spudged the control tower at Edwards. All right, handles down, 3 green. That's good timing. Yep. Boink. That's great. All right. Derotating. Oh my god. That was incredible. I'm glad you had a great time. That was awesome. Best flight ever. Nothing will ever top it. Sweet. Scalapse. Scalper 1 is down. Code 1. Oh, what an evening as well. Oh yeah. Yeah, that's just amazing. Sweet. Copy. Welcome back to control. We do indeed. Sweet. All right. Combine 3, enter. I tell you what man, we did it all. Everything I could ever dream of. Congratulations. Thank you. For most of my life, Edwards Air Force Base always seemed like this mythological place across the world where magic happens. I was right to think that, but it's also so much more. Edwards is a place that makes the impossible possible. That brings the future into the present. That makes the present inspiring and incredibly exciting. But most importantly, values its history and its past as they move into the future they're hoping to create. Test is all about data. And history is nothing but a massive collection of data to draw from. The good, the bad, the things we did right, the things we did wrong, the lessons we learned. The other thing is, our history is nothing but innovation. We go all the way back. When you look at test, this includes Jimmy Doolittle, General Doolittle, who of course made famous in the world for developing the Doolittle Raid. But all of the stuff he did for that raid, all of the technological advancements, all of the risks he took, he undertook with the understanding of a test pilot. How to innovate, how to move forward without risking the airplanes. And so, there's a lot of that legacy, but that legacy is about developing ways to answer new problems. We don't stagnate. The goal is to push forward. And with that guys, that wraps up another incredible adventure. Thank you so much for watching today's video. Go and subscribe to support the channel and check out all the future videos coming up as well. And if you haven't already, go and look at the past ones too. We've got some incredible projects that have already been done to go and have a look at. And again, a huge thank you to Saddleback Leather for powering today's video. 100 year warranty, no breakable parts. Links in the description. Go check them out. Incredible brand. Thank you guys for watching again. See you in the next video. If you'd like to learn more about the people and mission behind Edwards, I've also interviewed Brigadier General Douglas Wickett, Colonel Marianne Carlin, Lieutenant Colonel Trance Brantigan, and Jessica Peterson on the Talk4 podcast. All who delivered fantastic interviews on leadership, history, the mission behind TESS, AGCAS, and the Combined TESS Force. You'll find links to those conversations below.