The US Air Force's newest fighter stands poised to enter operational service this week, but with a new name. The Lockheed Martin F/A-22 is renamed the F-22A. The USAF's official explanation says the 'F/A' designation was invented three years ago as a marketing tool aimed at selling the Raptor as a multi-role fighter to a sceptical US Congress. A series of successful operational tests has since proved the point, so the USAF is now free to revert to tradition.
Perhaps the odd cynic might wonder if there was a different explanation -- perhaps a tacit admission of the F-22A's primarily single-role air-to-air abilities until a series of spiral upgrades are complete by 2009. Those would include a two-way data link and a multi-mode active radar.
For what it's worth, General Michael "Buzz" Moseley offered his own interpretation during a roundtable with reporters at the Pentagon on 13 December. Here's his reason:
"You can take this a bit to the extreme about the F/A, because [the Raptor] is equally capable as a Rivet Joint; it's equally capable as a Compass Call; it's equally capable as all these other aircraft when you look at the wide variety of things that it does. But we had no desire to call it an RC or an EW or an F/A/EW/RC-22Something. So the simplicity of this is the air force has fighters with the nomenclature of F which should be in the lineage of the rest of the fighters."
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