The Arnold Engineering Development Complex (AEDC), Arnold Engineering Development Center before July 2012, is an Air Force Materiel Command facility under the control of the
Air Force Test Center (AFTC). Headquartered at
Arnold Air Force Base,
Tennessee
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 36th-largest by ...
, the Complex also operates from geographically separated units at Ames Research Center, Mountain View and Edwards AFB, California; Peterson AFB, Colorado; Eglin AFB, Florida; the Federal Research Center at White Oak, Maryland; Holloman AFB, Kirtland AFB, and White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico; Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, and Hill AFB, Utah. AEDC operates more than 68 test facilities, including, but not limited to, aerodynamic and propulsion wind tunnels, rocket and turbine engine test cells, environmental chambers, arc heaters, ballistic ranges, sled tracks, centrifuges, and other specialized test units.
AEDC conducts developmental testing and evaluation through modeling, simulation, ground, and flight testing. Testing aims to evaluate aircraft, missile, and space systems/subsystems at the flight conditions they will experience during a mission. The complex aims to be the best value U.S. ground test and analysis source for aerospace and defense systems.
Staff agencies
* Test Division
** Turbine Engine Ground Test Complex
***
AEDC Sea Level Test Cells
***
Aero-propulsion Systems Test Facility
The Aero-propulsion Systems Test Facility, located at Arnold Engineering Development Complex is a unique national facility designed to test aircraft propulsion systems in true mission environments without leaving the ground. The test unit is o ...
***
AEDC Engine Test Facility
** Propulsion Wind Tunnel Ground Test Complex
***
Propulsion Wind Tunnel Facility
The Propulsion Wind Tunnel Facility, located at Arnold Engineering Development Complex, Arnold Air Force Base, Tennessee, holds three wind tunnels: the 16-foot transonic (16T), 16-foot supersonic (16S), and the aerodynamic 4-foot transonic (4T) ...
***
Von Karman Gas Dynamics Facility
** Space and Missile Ground Test Complex
***
AEDC Space Chambers Test Facility
***
High-Enthalpy Arc Heated Facility
***
Aero-ballistic Range Facility
***
Aerodynamic and Propulsion Test Unit
AEDC Aerodynamic and Propulsion Test Unit (APTU) is a blowdown hypersonic wind tunnel driven by a combustion air heater (CAH). The facility is owned by the United States Air Force and operated by Aerospace Testing Alliance.
History
The AEDC A ...
* Maintenance Division
** Support Asset Branch
** Test Asset Branch
* Mission Support Division
** Communications Branch
** Civil Engineer Branch
** Services
* Test Systems Division
** Technology Branch
** Investments Branch
** Management Operations
Environmental issues
Several areas of the facility are contaminated by substances including
polychlorinated biphenyl
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are highly carcinogenic chemical compounds, formerly used in industrial and consumer products, whose production was banned in the United States by the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, Toxic Substances Contro ...
s (PCBs) and
volatile organic compounds
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are organic compounds that have a high vapour pressure at room temperature. High vapor pressure correlates with a low boiling point, which relates to the number of the sample's molecules in the surrounding air, a t ...
and spills of
jet and
rocket fuel
Rocket propellant is the reaction mass of a rocket. This reaction mass is ejected at the highest achievable velocity from a rocket engine to produce thrust. The energy required can either come from the propellants themselves, as with a chemical ...
,
chlorofluorocarbon
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) are fully or partly halogenated hydrocarbons that contain carbon (C), hydrogen (H), chlorine (Cl), and fluorine (F), produced as volatile derivatives of methane, ethane, and p ...
solvents,
nitric acid
Nitric acid is the inorganic compound with the formula . It is a highly corrosive mineral acid. The compound is colorless, but older samples tend to be yellow cast due to decomposition into oxides of nitrogen. Most commercially available ni ...
and other materials. PCBs from the site have been detected in local creeks, in the water, sediment and in fish.
The site was proposed for addition to the
Superfund
Superfund is a United States federal environmental remediation program established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). The program is administered by the Environmental Protection Agency ...
National Priorities List in August 1994 though, as of May 2010, the site has not been added to the NPL.
The
Environmental Protection Agency
A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale ...
believes that human exposure to contaminants and contaminated groundwater migration are under control.
[
]
External facilities
* The Hypervelocity Wind Tunnel 9
AEDC Hypervelocity Wind Tunnel 9 is a hypersonic wind tunnel owned by the United States Air Force and operated bNational Aerospace Solutions The facility can generate high Mach numbers and high Reynolds for hypersonic ground testing and the valida ...
is located in Silver Spring, Maryland
Silver Spring is a census-designated place (CDP) in southeastern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, near Washington, D.C. Although officially unincorporated, in practice it is an edge city, with a population of 81,015 at the 2020 ce ...
* The National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC) is located at NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...
Ames Research Center
The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) labo ...
, Moffett Field, California. The NFAC was closed by NASA in 2003. In February 2006, AEDC entered into an agreement with NASA to lease the facility for a period of up to 25 years.
McKinley Climatic Laboratory
Eglin AFB, Florida
* 704th Test Group
The Arnold Engineering Development Complex (AEDC), Arnold Engineering Development Center before July 2012, is an Air Force Materiel Command facility under the control of the Air Force Test Center (AFTC). Headquartered at Arnold Air Force Base, ...
, Holloman AFB
* Other Testing Facilities at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico; and at Wright-Patterson AFB
History
The Air Engineering Development Center was authorized by an act of the 81st Congress, Public Law 415, approved Oct. 27, 1949 (Appendix 2).
On March 7, 1950, the Air Engineering Development Center was redesignated the Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) effective February 10, 1950, per General Order #23, signed by then-Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg. Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) was later redesignate
Arnold Engineering Development Complex (AEDC)
on 6 July 2012.
The complex is a part of a master unitary wind tunnel plan that is designated to provide the testing "tools" required to assure the United States continued air and space supremacy.
The necessity for an aeronautical test complex of this type was recognized by a number of different agencies of the government, as well as by expert technical groups from the industrial-scientific world. The creation of these research and testing facilities has enabled the U.S. to stay abreast of developments in this fast-moving field.
AEDC is the one of the most advanced and largest complex of flight simulation test facilities in the world with a replacement value of more than $7.8 billion.
At one time or another, the center has operated 58 aerodynamic and propulsion wind tunnels, rocket and turbine engine test cells, space environmental chambers, arc heaters, ballistic ranges and other specialized units. Twenty-seven of the center's test units have capabilities unmatched elsewhere in the United States; 14 are unique in the world.
Facilities can simulate flight conditions from sea level to 300 miles' altitude and from subsonic velocities to Mach 14.
AEDC's mission is to:
• Test and evaluate aircraft, missile and space systems and subsystems at the flight conditions they will experience during a mission to help customers develop and qualify the systems for flight, improve system designs and establish performance before production. It also helps users troubleshoot problems with operational systems.
• Conduct a research and technology program to develop advanced testing techniques and instrumentation and to support the design of new test facilities. Continuous improvement helps satisfy testing needs and keeps pace with rapidly advancing aircraft, missile and space system requirements.
• Maintain and modernize the center's existing test facilities.
AEDC is an important national resource and has contributed to the development of practically every one of the nation's top priority aerospace programs, including better spacelift, aircraft, missiles and satellites. Many of these programs are highlighted in the following sections.
AEDC is a
Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC)
organization managed by the Air Force but operated largely by a contractor work force. While AEDC's primary location is in Tennessee, it also operates two geographically separated facilities—the Hypervelocity Wind Tunnel 9 in Maryland, and th
National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC)
in California.
AEDC's economic impact to the local area for fiscal year 2008 exceeded $728 million. The total economic impact includes the center's payroll, secondary jobs created locally though the spending of that payroll, and other expenditures for supplies, utilities, fuel and services.
As a consultant to General Arnold, Theodore von Kármán
Theodore von Kármán ( hu, ( szőllőskislaki) Kármán Tódor ; born Tivadar Mihály Kármán; 11 May 18816 May 1963) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist who was active primarily in the fields of aeronaut ...
first called for the Center:
:In 1947 Stuart Symington
William Stuart Symington III (; June 26, 1901 – December 14, 1988) was an American businessman and Democratic politician from Missouri. He served as the first Secretary of the Air Force from 1947 to 1950 and was a United States Senator from ...
became the first secretary of the newly independent Air Force, and he strove hard to bring into reality some of my proposals, particularly the new facilities for Air Force research which I had urged in the report.
:One of the main items was a new U.S. center for the study and development of jet propulsion, supersonic aircraft, and ballistic missiles, a center I hoped would be greater than any then known. The proposal had actually begun after Frank Wattendorf
Frank Wattendorf (1906 — 1986) was an American physicist specializing in wind tunnels for research in aerodynamics.
Wattendorf is recalled for his report on the wind tunnel at Ötztal that was under construction in Austria during World War II. ...
's 1945 visit to the huge wind tunnel at Ötztal
The Ötztal is an alpine valley located in Tyrol, Austria. The Ötztaler Ache river flows through the valley in a northern direction. The Ötztal separates the Stubai Alps in the east from the Ötztal Alps in the west. The valley is long. The no ...
, Austria, which was bigger and more powerful than any in the United States.Theodore von Kármán
Theodore von Kármán ( hu, ( szőllőskislaki) Kármán Tódor ; born Tivadar Mihály Kármán; 11 May 18816 May 1963) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist who was active primarily in the fields of aeronaut ...
with Lee Edson (1967) ''The Wind and Beyond'', chapter 37: A New Air Force Emerges, pp 298 to 309
:Symington managed to round up sufficient support in Congress and to obtain the necessary funds, about 100 million dollars. The Air Force agreed to go ahead with the proposal to set up the center, and a committee was appointed which traveled around the country seeking a suitable site. One of the necessary requirements was a direct source of stored hydraulic power, as planned at Ötztal, to run the multi-thousand horsepower motors needed for the big wind tunnels.[
: Senator McKellar, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, ]ade
Ade, Adé, or ADE may refer to:
Aeronautics
*Ada Air's ICAO code
*Aden International Airport's IATA code
*Aeronautical Development Establishment, a laboratory of the DRDO in India
Medical
* Adverse Drug Event
*Antibody-dependent enhancement
* AD ...
a clever offer. He said the state of Tennessee would give up Camp Forest, a 40,000-acre World War II camp near Tullahoma, if the Air Force would set up its huge center there. Congress was about to adjourn and it looked like nothing would get done for another year. The Air Force, being realistic, accepted the offer ... The Arnold Engineering Development Center (as it was finally named) was dedicated in Tullahoma by President Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Frankli ...
in 1952.[
The center operates more than 68 ]aerodynamic
Aerodynamics, from grc, ἀήρ ''aero'' (air) + grc, δυναμική (dynamics), is the study of the motion of air, particularly when affected by a solid object, such as an airplane wing. It involves topics covered in the field of fluid dyn ...
and propulsion wind tunnel
Wind tunnels are large tubes with air blowing through them which are used to replicate the interaction between air and an object flying through the air or moving along the ground. Researchers use wind tunnels to learn more about how an aircraft ...
s, rocket
A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entir ...
and turbine
A turbine ( or ) (from the Greek , ''tyrbē'', or Latin ''turbo'', meaning vortex) is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work. The work produced by a turbine can be used for generating ...
engine test cells, space environmental chambers, arc heaters, ballistic ranges, and other specialized units. Currently, AEDC's prime contractor is the Aerospace Testing Alliance Aerospace Testing Alliance (ATA) is a defunct aerospace engineering company in the United States of America. It was the prime contractor of the US Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC), in Tullahoma, Tennessee from 2003 until 2016 ...
.
The center has helped to develop most aerospace systems in the U.S. government's inventory, including the Atlas
An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth.
Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geogra ...
, Titan
Titan most often refers to:
* Titan (moon), the largest moon of Saturn
* Titans, a race of deities in Greek mythology
Titan or Titans may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Fictional entities
Fictional locations
* Titan in fiction, fictiona ...
, Minuteman
Minutemen were members of the organized New England colonial militia companies trained in weaponry, tactics, and military strategies during the American Revolutionary War. They were known for being ready at a minute's notice, hence the name. Mi ...
and Peacekeeper ICBM
An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is a ballistic missile with a range greater than , primarily designed for nuclear weapons delivery (delivering one or more thermonuclear warheads). Conventional, chemical, and biological weapons ...
s, the Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program n ...
, space station
A space station is a spacecraft capable of supporting a human crew in orbit for an extended period of time, and is therefore a type of space habitat. It lacks major propulsion or landing systems. An orbital station or an orbital space station ...
, and Projects Mercury, Gemini and Apollo
Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label=Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label= ...
.
It is named for General Henry "Hap" Arnold, the father of the US Air Force and an air power visionary. The University of Tennessee Space Institute
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...
(UTSI) is located adjacent to AEDC.
The center lies near Manchester, Tennessee
Manchester is a city in Coffee County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 12,213 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Coffee County. The city is located halfway between Nashville and Chattanooga on Interstate 24.
Manchester i ...
and Tullahoma, Tennessee, and occupies much of the site of the former Camp Forrest
Camp Forrest, located in a wooded area east of the city of Tullahoma, Tennessee, was one of the U.S. Army's largest training bases during World War II. It was an active army post between 1941 and 1946.
History
The camp, named after Civil War cav ...
, a U.S. Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...
base and World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
POW camp. It is unique in that the majority of the workforce are contract personnel, with a small contingent of active-duty assigned.
Lineage
* Constituted as the Air Engineering Development Division on 27 October 1949 by the 81st Congress, Public Law 415.
: Redesignated Arnold Engineering Development Center on 7 March 1950 effective 10 February 1950, per General Order #23, signed by then Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Hoyt S. Vandenburg.
: Redesignated Arnold Engineering Development Complex on 6 July 2012
Assignments
* United States Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Si ...
: 7 March 1950
* Air Research and Development Command
The Air Force Systems Command (AFSC) is an inactive United States Air Force Major Command. It was established in April 1951, being split off from Air Materiel Command. The mission of AFSC was Research and Development for new weapons systems.
Ove ...
(later Air Force Systems Command), 1 May 1951
* Air Force Materiel Command
Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) is a major command ( MAJCOM) of the United States Air Force (USAF). AFMC was created on July 1, 1992, through the amalgamation of the former Air Force Logistics Command (AFLC) and the former Air Force Systems Co ...
, 1 July 1992 (attached to Air Force Test Center after 6 July 2012)
* Air Force Test Center, 1 October 2012
Stations
* Arnold Air Force Station (later Arnold Air Force Base), 25 June 1951 – present
Components
* 704th Maintenance Group, 1 June 2006 – 30 June 2010
* 704th Mission Support Group, 1 June 2006 – 30 June 2010
* 704th Test Group, 1 June 2006 – 30 June 2010 (Arnold AFB); 1 December 2016 - onwards (Holloman AFB, NM)704th Test Group (AFMC)
/ref>
* 704th Test Systems Group, 1 June 2006 – 30 June 2010
* 6560th Air Base Squadron (later 4960th Air Base Squadron, 4960th Air Base Group, 656th Support Squadron, 656th Air Base Squadron), 8 May 1951 – c. 1997
References
Beyond the Speed of Sound - The history of Arnold Engineering Development Complex
Bibliography
External links
Arnold Air Force Base
(official)
University of Tennessee Space Institute
{{Coord, 35.379, -86.050, scale:2000, display=title
Centers of the United States Air Force
Buildings and structures in Coffee County, Tennessee
Military units and formations established in 1950
Military Superfund sites
Aeronautics organizations
Buildings and structures in Franklin County, Tennessee
Superfund sites in Tennessee