From Popular Mechanics:
The tragic death of test pilot David Cooley in a F-22 Raptor crash last week highlighted a little known set of pilots who fly for defense contractors in support of military sales. Cooley was a 49-year old USAF veteran with 21 years of service who joined Lockheed Martin, manufacturer of the Raptor, in 2003. Last year, PM interviewed Jon Beasley, a Lockheed test pilot involved in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, for insights on what the military test pilot job is really like.
Test pilot Jon Beesley has ridden in history’s cockpit. Having flown in the development phase of every operational U.S. stealth aircraft—the F-117 Nighthawk, F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning II—he has witnessed the evolution of modern aviation from a position envied by historians, warplane buffs and fellow pilots. All his skills and experience are now at work getting three variants of the F-35 (or Joint Strike Fighter) into the air for Lockheed Martin and its global customers. “This is the place where PowerPoint and physics meet,” he says of the first test F-35, called AA-1. “This is where it becomes real.”
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