The Lake Geneva Test Flight

The Rhône Valley at dawn was a study in crystalline stillness, the jagged granite teeth of the Valais Alps standing sentinel beneath a sky of pure, icy cobalt. At the military testing airfield in Sion, three kilometers of reinforced concrete runway cut through the alpine meadows, flanked by concrete revetments and secure telemetry radomes. Here, shielded by sovereign Swiss neutrality and high-altitude airspace restrictions, the future of global aviation stood…