There you have it folks: The first instance that I'm aware of an F-22 intercepting another aircraft, and it was a cropduster. How's that for asymmetric range?As the President moves around we stand up and stand down temporary flight restrictions around airfields and principal locations. There clearly is one around the National Capital Region every day. When he travels to Crawford we establish one down there.
Well, I don't know how much you know about that area of Texas, but there's a lot of cotton farmers and other farmers in that area which require aerial spraying of the crops. We've had a couple of instances where 7:00 o'clock in the morning, that's when the crop sprayer gets out to spray his crops, and if his crops are on the other side of a restricted area from his airfield, he just takes off and flies right through it. Well that tends to alert the system quite a bit, and so we've had F-16s or F-22s even in one case, chasing around after a crop duster down there because he could have alleviated that by one, understanding that the flight restricted area was up; and then filing a flight plan or alerting the FAA that he was going to be transiting underneath that at such and such an altitude.
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F-22 intercepts cropduster?
Buried within the transcript of General Victor Renuart, chief of US Northern Command, who spoke to reporters on 17 December at a Defense Writers Group breakfast.
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