FLUG REVUE July 2004: F/A-22 starts OPEVAL

LOCKHEED MARTIN F/A-22 RAPTOR STARTS OPERATIONAL TESTING

By Karl Schwarz

“We are a lot further down the line than people expected,” said James G. Roche, Secretary of the Air Force, two weeks after initial operational testing of the F/A-22 Raptor finally began on 29 April. The test phase scheduled to run for four months at Edwards AFB, California is a critical step along the path to clearance of full-rate production of the superfighter, which is now expected in December.

Four Raptors and one reserve aircraft have been made available for initial operational test and evaluation (IOT&E). They will be flown by pilots of the Operational Test and Evaluation Center of the US Air Force, Detachment 6. The hand-picked pilots of Air Combat Command have been training since March 2003 at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Specialists from the 31st Test and Evaluation Squadron are responsible for technical support.

“We will now test the weapon system in a realistic environment, in the course of which we will simulate the threats that we expect to encounter over the coming years,” explained Major General Doug Pearson, Air Force Flight Test Center Commander in Edwards. “With its combination of stealth, high agility, speed and integrated avionics, the F/A-22 is the most advanced fighter in the world,” said Pearson. Its superiority in the various air-to-air scenarios should accordingly be overwhelming. “We had five F-15 Eagles against one Raptor,” said James G. Roche. “The battle was over in three minutes. None of the F-15s even saw the Raptor.”

Due to these outstanding capabilities, the USAF is sticking resolutely to F/A-22, which it sees as essential to ensure total air superiority against even strong opponents. “In everything that the American armed forces will want to do in the future, the F/A-22 will be at the forefront of operations,” said an Air Force spokesman. “We believe it offers quite new capabilities that are important to all the Services. It will allow our other stealth types and our legacy fighter aircraft to operate without danger.”

The prospects are thus extremely promising, but right now the F/A-22 is having to contend with considerable problems. Thus, operational testing was split into two parts at short notice. Phase 1 began last October, but only two production standard aircraft were available. And IOT&E itself should actually have started in February.

This was thwarted by ongoing problems with the avionics. Only in February 2003, the software, which on the F/A-22 is concentrated into a single computer cluster, was crashing almost every two flying hours, following which it would have to be reloaded. By last August, the frequency of crashes had been reduced to every 25 hours, but it was still necessary to reset the subsystems every ten hours. Meanwhile the requirements have changed, so that “mission-critical errors” in the hardware and software are not allowed to occur more than every five hours. This standard was finally achieved in the spring with new versions of the software – the precondition to the start of IOT&E.

The final obstacle was the fact that, due to remedial work on the aircraft, deliveries by Lockheed Martin were several months late on average. Amongst other things, the air intake had to be reinforced and a titanium spar installed in the rudder unit. However, the manufacturer is hoping to make up lost ground and move back on track in the course of the year.

The USAF has already been forced to reallocate some $875 million earmarked for the production budget to the development funding. Additional expense is imminent. Thus, the US Congress's General Accounting Office (GAO) reported in March that the Intel I960MX computers currently used are no longer in production. 820 units have been purchased with a view to equipping the first 155 Raptors, but after that new computers will have to be integrated. According to the GAO, this is likely to cost at least $300 million.

On top of this are extra sums for the development of the F/A-22's air-to-ground capabilities. Although the Raptor recently released its first bomb, depending on how many “spirals” (the staged introduction of improved capabilities) are carried out by 2015, costs of $11.7 billion could be incurred.

All in all, the GAO is highly critical of the Raptor programme. Since 1991, the development costs, it points out, have risen from $19.5 billion to $28.7 billion, an increase of almost 50%. The unit price is probably well over $150 million. The result is that, given the production cost cap of $36.8 billion which has been set by Congress, there will not be sufficient funds available to procure the full 277 Raptors. The GAO believes 218 is more likely, but many experts are talking of as few as 180 aircraft.

But this is far too few to satisfy the USAF's plans to equip each of its Expeditionary Air Forces (units composed of different squadrons for deployment to crisis and war zones) with one Raptor squadron. So it looks as if the Air Force still has quite a bit of persuading to do. The immediate priority is to obtain the go-ahead for full-rate production in December, followed by Initial Operational Capability (IOC) in December 2005 – about 15 years after the start of development and almost a quarter of a century after the US Air Force first recognised the need for a successor to the F-15 Eagle.

F/A-22 BASES

So far the US Air Force has selected four bases for testing, training and deployment with regular squadrons.

Edwards AFB (California)
Flight testing by the Combined Test Force at the Air Force Flight Test Center has been in progress since the spring of 1998 when Raptor no. 4001 arrived on 5 February in a C-5 Galaxy. Responsibility lies with the 411th Flight Test Squadron.

Nellis AFB (Nevada)
The USAF's Air Warfare Center is responsible for training the first pilots. The first F/A-22 (00-012) arrived at the 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron (part of the 53rd Wing) on 14 January 2003. The operational procedures are to be developed from Nellis. A new hangar and repair facility for composite materials were built in Nellis specially for operating the Raptor. A spare parts warehouse has also been built here.
Altogether, 17 aircraft are to be stationed at Nellis. On top of this, in 2008/2009 the 57th Wing will take delivery of nine Raptors for the USAF Fighter Weapons School.

Tyndall AFB (Florida)
The Air Force Education and Training Command is building a training centre (for pilots and ground crew) for the Raptor at the 325th Fighter Wing in Tyndall. The first F/A-22 (Raptor 18) was ferried from the Lockheed Martin factory in Marietta to Tyndall by Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey “Cobra” Harrigan, Commander of the 43rd Fighter Squadron. The training programme commenced at the start of 2004, after five aircraft had been made available. Altogether the squadron is to get 25 Raptors.
A simulator centre with four full mission trainers, 23 weapons and tactics trainers and six classrooms equipped with computers is under construction.

Langley AFB (Virginia)
1 Fighter Wing is destined to be the first operational unit for the Raptor, and will take delivery of its first aircraft at the end of 2004. An “integration office” is currently preparing the base for the arrival of the F/A-22's. Around $130 million is being invested in new plant such as modern hangars and training facilities.
The first Raptor squadron will be the 27th Fighter Squadron, the oldest in the USAF, which was also the first to be equipped with the F-15 Eagle. By the end of 2007, the 71st and 94th Fighter Squadrons should follow. Each unit is to be equipped with two dozen aircraft.

From page 44 of FLUG REVUE 7/2004

Last updated 11 June 2004

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