F-35 JSF's surprising sonic boom

F-35 JSF's surprising sonic boom:
A couple of months ago I was fortunate enough to spend a day with a NASA and Air Force test team in the Mojave Desert near Edwards AFB. The day involved testing a small unmanned air vehicle equipped with an automatic ground collision avoidance system, with the intent of showing that – no matter how hard we tried to crash the UAV – the system would prevent us from doing so. I will post a separate blog about this program in the next few days.
However, the day was also eventful for me in other ways. Having spent many years now reporting on goings on in the high desert, and been bombarded by sonic booms on several occasions, I was not surprised or disturbed by the constant barrage of booms that echoed around the area as we conducted the UAV testing. After all, were in the heart of the R-2508 Edwards test range complex, and right beneath the Black Mountain low level supersonic corridor (marked in red circle below).