gone through ight school and have done
their rst eet tour with an operational
squadron. After that, they are assigned
to other organizations such as test pilot
school.’ Gaining entry to a test pilot course
— either at NAS Patuxent River’s Naval
Test Pilot School or another recognized
course — means having a technical
degree and above-average performance
in the eet. After a tour on a VX squadron,
these experienced individuals tend to ow
back into the eet as squadron leadership.
‘Both the chief test pilot [CTP] here, CDR
Andrew ‘Lurch’ Gephart, and I are on our
second tours.’
Somerville ew as an electronic
countermeasures o cer (ECMO) with
VAQ-141 in the EA-6B Prowler before
converting to the EA-18G Growler as
an electronic warfare o cer (EWO).
In between those assignments she
attended the US Naval Test Pilot School
co-operative program and reported to the
to the Air Force Institute of Technology
to obtain her postgraduate masters
degree in aeronautical engineering. Upon
graduation, she joined US Navy Test Pilot
School class 130 and was presented with
the outstanding graduate award in 2006.
Her rst assignment after USNTPS was
to VX-31. Three years later she returnedto VAQ-141, rst as the maintenance
o cer and later as the squadron XO. In
2012, she reported to the EA-6B program
o ce (PMA-234) at Pax River as the Next-
Generation Jammer integrated project
team before returning to China Lake as
VX-31 CTP, becoming the commanding
o cer in July 2016.‘Devil’ worship
It’s not all about the iers at VX-31.
Indeed, some extremely skilled
maintainers spend days working on
particular jets to get them ready for test.
‘They not only make sure the aircraft
are safe to y but also that they are
con gured correctly,’ Somerville says. ‘The
unique thing with this squadron is that
each test requires a unique con guration
and a di erent set-up of the systems,
depending on what the objectives are for
that particular trial. An aircraft may y in
the morning with one particular software
set, a particular load-out and a particular
version of speci c systems in it. However,
it may be scheduled for an evening
ight for which it has to be completely
recon gured for whatever the needs are.
That is a challenge that a eet squadron
does not have.’ For the VX-31 team, it’s a
common occurrence.Right: A VX-31
F/A-18F fl ies
above NBVC Point
Mugu. The China
Lake jets often
detach to Point
Mugu for air-to-air
weapons work
over the Pacifi c.
NAVAIR
Below: This
F/A-18F
wears range
instrumentation
markings for
weapons testing.
Gert Kromhout
Bottom: VX-31’s
T-39D can be
reconfi gured to
carry various test
systems. Richard
VanderMeulenUNIT REPORT // VX-31 ‘DUST DEVILS’
74 October 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net