Drop test

A drop test is a method of testing the in-flight characteristics of prototype or experimental aircraft and spacecraft by raising the test vehicle to a specific altitude and then releasing it. Test flights involving powered aircraft, particularly rocket-powered aircraft, may be referred to as drop launches due to the launch of the aircraft's rockets after release from its carrier aircraft.

In the case of unpowered aircraft, the test vehicle falls or glides after its release in an unpowered descent to a landing site. Drop tests may be used to verify the aerodynamic performance and flight dynamics of the test vehicle, to test its landing systems, or to evaluate survivability of a planned or crash landing. This allows the vehicle's designers to validate computer flight models, wind tunnel testing, or other theoretical design characteristics of an aircraft or spacecraft's design.

High-altitude drop tests may be conducted by carrying the test vehicle aboard a mothership to a target altitude for release. Low-altitude drop tests may be conducted by releasing the test vehicle from a crane or gantry.

The landing gear on aircraft used on aircraft carriers must be stronger than those on land-based aircraft, due to higher approach speeds and sink rates during carrier landings. As early as the 1940s, drop tests were conducted by lifting a carrier-based plane such as the Grumman F6F Hellcat to a height of ten feet and then dropped, simulating the impact of a landing at nineteen feet per second. The F6F was ultimately dropped from a height of twenty feet, demonstrating it could absorb twice the force of a carrier landing. Drop tests are still used in the development and testing of carrier-based aircraft; in 2010, the Lockheed Martin F-35C Lightning II underwent drop tests to simulate its maximum descent rate of 26.4 feet per second during carrier landings.

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