L-29 AI Testing?

A couple of University of Iowa L-29s have been recently flying at Edwards AFB. I believe this may be a continuation of AI testing in collaboration with Lockheed Martin. The data presented here is from Aug 26 which I found the most interesting.

On this day, the L-29s worked separately for a while and concluded the mission with some mock combat. L-29 #1 seemed to be focused on lateral maneuvering with a variety of level and spiral turns. L-29 #2 split its time between vertical and lateral maneuvering. The vertical maneuvers consisted of a loop, a good split-s and two split-s that could really be steep slice maneuvers. The last interesting solo event was what I'm calling a longitudinal dynamics test point. For the stability & control folks, it looks like a phugoid motion. Was it really S&C or just some kind of pitch tracking task, I don't know.

The most interesting part of the mission was the mock combat, best seen in the Tacview video video. L-29 #2 seems to be the attacker with L-29 #1 defending every time. They got into a "furball" with what appears to be L-29 #1 in a defensive spiral. It's difficult to tell what was going on exactly because of ratty ADS-B caused by the maneuvering.

See the press announcement from Lockheed Martin about an earlier test campaign here.