Often times an author will use a book to showcase his or her photography and this is very much the case with this book by Jamie Hunter. Fortunately for us, the photography is very good and the subject is one that many of us will find of interest.

Basically, the author has visited the six major bases where testing and evaluation of aircraft and systems takes place. There are three of them each for the US Navy and US Air Force. The Army seems to have been left out of this one, probably because many find helicopters to be uninteresting.

The three USAF bases are Edwards in California, Eglin in Florida, and Nellis in Nevada. Naturally, much emphasis is placed on the latest and greatest so the F-22 is rather heavily featured, though other types in the inventory, including F-16s, F-15s, QF-4s and even more mundane transport types are covered

For the US Navy, it is Patuxent River in Maryland, China Lake in California and Point Mugu in California that are covered. Here it is the F-18E/F Super Hornet and the MV-22 Osprey that get much of the coverage, though the full gamut of other types are included. There are even a few pages of photos of planes no longer in the inventory from past years to help fill things out a bit.

Each section includes information on the specific missions that are done at each of the bases. I say missions because there are a multiplicity of testing units assigned to each base and they each have a specific job to do. This is not only in testing and evaluating new aircraft, but doing upgrade testing and testing new systems, whether it be as exiting as a new missile or as mundane as a new piece of navigation equipment. It all has to be put through the ringer to see how well it performs before being issued to operational units.

The book is well balanced, a real piece of eye candy, and one that truly deserves to be on your shelves.

September 2006

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