SANTA CLARITA / ANTELOPE VALLEY : Old Foes Now Friends After Air Base Visits : Glasnost: U.S., Russian test pilots find common ground during stays at each other’s research facilities.

Col. Vladimir Kondratenko, commander of the Russian Test Pilot School, got to do something Thursday that would once have made him a hero of the Soviet Union--he climbed into a training version of the cockpit of an SR-71 Blackbird, for many years the U.S. Air Force’s most secret spy plane.

But there is no Soviet Union any more and Kondratenko, far from carrying out a spectacular espionage mission, had an invitation from the American Air Force to climb into the cockpit simulator for the now-retired spy plane.

Now a colonel of the new Russian Air Force, Kondratenko was at the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School with four of his pilots from the Gromov Flight Research Installation in Zhukovsky, about 30 miles southeast of Moscow. The weeklong Russian visit completes an unprecedented swap of visits by test pilots of each country to the other’s top flight research facility, following a visit by five U.S. pilots to Gromov in late June.

“The histories are similar,” Kondratenko said of the two test pilot schools, speaking through an interpreter.

Praising the end of the Cold War, he continued: “It’s unfortunate that during 50 years of this history there was no possibility to meet each other. Now the situation has changed. All of us are happy.”

Accompanied by the other four Russians, he spoke sitting at a long table draped with the Russian Test Pilot School flag, with the U.S. flag and U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School flag in the background.

Col. Harry Strittmatter, commander of the Air Force Test Pilot School and one of the five U.S. servicemen who visited Russia, said that since the inception of the American Test Pilot School in 1944 there have been continuing exchanges between its staff and those of allied military test pilot schools around the globe.

But the end of the Cold War provided the opportunity for the United States and Russian test pilot schools to carry out such an exchange, which are becoming increasingly common between the militaries of the two nations after decades as enemies.

Adm. William J. Crowe, former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, set the precedent for the reciprocal trips in 1989 with a series of face-to-face meetings with his Soviet counterpart, Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev.

Kondratenko took a philosophical view of the visits between the two schools, saying, “We are all people. We live on one planet. The world is too small.”

He hopes, he said, the visits this summer are only the first steps in a continuing relationship between the test pilot schools of the former enemies.

Strittmatter noted that “through the exchanges, the staff is able to learn new ideas,” and gets “an opportunity to fly other aircraft.”

Flying aircraft was a key part of the visit of the Americans to Russia and similarly of the Russians to Edwards. During their visit, the American pilots flew the MiG-29, the former Soviet Union’s famed jet fighter, as well as other aircraft.

This week the Russians piloted or were passengers in the F-15 and F-16 fighters, the T-38 trainer and C-141 transport. They also toured Edwards, including NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Facility.

The five Russians also were taken to Tehachapi for glider rides, to a private test pilot school at the Mojave Airport and on a shopping trip in Los Angeles. Today they are just another group of tourists--they are visiting Disneyland. Evenings have been spent visiting at the homes of the five American pilots.

“We’ve become very close personal friends,” Strittmatter said.