Recently in F-22 Category

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has directed the some additional safety measures for the US Air Force's fleet of Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptors.

Full article 

1) Pilots operating the stealthy twin-engine air dominance fighter must remain close enough to an airfield to recover the aircraft quickly in case they encounter problems with their oxygen system.

2) The USAF is directed to speed up the installation of an automatic backup oxygen supply into the entire F-22 fleet. The USAF should complete testing of the automatic backup oxygen system by the end of November. Installations should begin in December with 10 Raptors being retrofitted with the system per month.

3) The USAF will provide the SECDEF with monthly updates on the service's progress in determining the root cause of the jet's oxygen system maladies.

The Secretary did not, however, reverse the USAF's decision to defer installation of an Automatic-Ground Collision Avoidance System in the forthcoming Increment 3.2B upgrade for the Raptor.

Meanwhile, the USAF hasn't ruled out decompression sickness, but the current thinking is that the problem is related to either a toxin or it's an oxygen quantity/quality issue. A very knowledgeable source suggests that the problem could be related to a form of hyperventilation. More on that later...

The service has 185 operational jets left after two losses. There were also eight developmental jets, but how many of those are left flying is unclear, some of them are either in museums (like 4003 at Wright-Patterson) or used as maintenance trainers (like 4005 at Langley and another at Tyndall--the tail number of which I can't immediately recall).

The Indian version of Sukhoi's T-50 PAK-FA fifth-generation fighter might be delayed by two years, press reports in that country indicate.

Image by Maxim Maksimov via Wikimedia

Previously, India's defense minister A K Antony had said the Sukhoi/Hindustan Aeronautics Limited Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) would be inducted into the Indian Air Force by 2017. On 14 May, deputy minister M M Pallam Raju told the Indian parliament that the project is being delayed.

 "The fifth generation aircraft is scheduled to be certified by 2019, following which the series production will start," Pallam Raju says.

The Indian T-50 variant, which the country hopes to buy 250 of, is expected to cost about $100 million per copy--$25 billion for the whole Indian production run. The Russians are also buying 250 jets.

But the Indian variant is far more ambitious that the original Russian version of the T-50. The Indians have a good 40 to 45 improvements that they want incorporated.

One notable feature that India wants is a 360° active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar rather than the more conventional AESA found on the original Russian aircraft. A 360° AESA would be a first for any fighter on the planet, and it will undoubtedly be expensive.

Nor have the Indians determined if they want an enhanced single-seat version of the fighter or if they want to develop a two-seat variant. Redesigning the airframe might adversely affect the aircraft's stealth characteristics or impact the jet's performance to a degree that the Indians find unacceptable. It would also add to the jet's cost. The Indians will make that decision pending the outcome of the FGFA's preliminary design phase.

The Indian side of the programme is focusing on composite materials that can withstand flights at Mach 1.7. That suggests that the goal of the Indo-Russian effort is to the design the fighter to cruise at around those airspeeds--which would be comparable to the US Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor.

From the Indian perspective, perhaps the most important aspect of the FGFA effort is that the country's engineers are being embedded with their Russian counterparts. That would enable the Indians to learn how to design and build a large twin-engine fighter from the relatively early stages of the project.

More here at India's Business Standard.

Virginia Air National Guard pilots Major Jeremy Gordon and Captain Josh Wilson won't be punished for speaking out... or so the US Air Force says. I have my doubts about that personally.

Read the article here.

Meanwhile, in a somewhat weird twist, Lockheed Martin has apparently taken to Twitter to mount some sort of Raptor defense campaign. Basically, they sending out little F-22 factoids on a twitter feed...

But in this case, the only thing to do is to find out what is causing this problem and then to fix it... Only then will the public at large regain confidence in this jet. The USAF is apparently making some progress in that regard.

Let's hope they're well on their way to finding the root cause of this debacle.

In the meantime, here is a video of the last two tails Lockheed delivered to the USAF on their last company flight. Lockheed send the video over this morning. What's really good about this video is that it is not sullied by horrifyingly bad music... It's just the roar of a pair of Pratt & Whitney F119s as the universe intended (toward the end that is- it's mostly silent otherwise).
Here are some stills from that flight. Lockheed went all out and they have some fine photographers at their disposal.
Here is the last aircraft built 10-4195 flying alongside 10-4193, the third from last jet which is now the 3rd Wing flagship.

Virginia Air National Guard F-22 Raptor pilots Major Jeremy Gordon and Captain Josh Wilson were on CBS's 60 Minutes tonight. While there were no major revelations, the two aviators added detail to what was already known.

The two working theories as to the root cause of the Raptor's oxygen system maladies are still a toss-up between either some sort of toxin or some sort of oxygen flow/quality problem--as I have reported since the beginning of this mess.  Though I will say some of the symptoms as described remind me of decompression sickness, but that's purely my own observation.

Of particular interest is the fact that the charcoal filters--which were added after last year's F-22 grounding was lifted--were breaking up and ending up in the pilots' air flow. This was causing some of the pilots to cough up some nasty black stuff...

The USAF has removed those filters and is apparently looking for a replacement. When that might happen is anyone's guess...

This problem was predicted by a good source of mine when the US Air Force started to consider lifting the flight ban last September. The charcoal filters were tested at Edwards AFB in California, but without G loads on the test card--so I was told. The source had predicted correctly that the filters would break-up and cause further problems (such as face full of carbon)--as has proven to be the case.

But the USAF was pretty seriously gunning for my head at the time, so I just left well enough alone for the time being...

 

Here is the 60 Minutes segment:

Here is Jeremy Gordon describing his symptoms:

Here is Josh Wilson describing his symptoms:

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USAF photo from last week's ceremony at Lockheed Martin's Marietta, Georgia, factory--this is the last Raptor ever.

Major Jeremy Gordon and Captain Josh Wilson fly with the Virginia Air National Guard's 192d Fighter Wing, which is an associate wing of the USAF's 1st Fighter Wing at Joint Base Langley-Eustis. They are among the "very small number" of F-22 pilots, mentioned by Air Combat Command chief Gen Mike Hostage, who are refusing to fly the Raptor due to their concerns with the jet's oxygen system. This certainly explains the General's sudden public admission... he was preempting 60 Minutes--better to hear it from him than the news is probably his reasoning.

It's an unfortunate situation all around...

This shot was so awesome I had to post it twice... my congratulations to the Lockheed photographer who shot it.

My article on the last Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, Tail 10-4195, being delivered to the US Air Force is finally up.

When the jet leaves Marietta on Friday and flies home to Elmendorf, it will join the 525^th Fighter Squadron--commanded by Lt Col Paul "Max" Moga--as the squadron's flagship. Accompanying it will be 10-4193, which will become the new 3^rd Wing flagship.

USAF Photo- they had a much better camera than I did... I used a Blackberry.

While the two jets are the newest in the fleet, they won't be Elmendorf's most capable Raptors. The new aircraft are currently equipped with the Increment 2 configuration and will be upgraded with Increment 3.1 later.

The 3^rd Wing already has 10 Increment 3.1-equipped jets.

Meanwhile, the USAF is deferring adding an Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System and full Small Diameter Bomb capability on the forthcoming Increment 3.2B upgrade. The service already deleted the Multi-function Advanced Data-Link(MADL), which would have allowed the F-22 to share data with the F-35, years ago.

Deferring the Auto-GCAS seems troubling. Adding that feature was a specific recommendation by the USAF Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) looking into the Raptor's oxygen system woes.

Given that SAB recommendation, the USAF might consider coughing up the cash to integrate Auto-GCAS sooner rather than later. It probably would have saved at least two lives--those of Captain Jeff Haney and Lockheed Martin test pilot David Cooley.

The US Air Force took delivery of the last F-22 Raptor today at Lockheed Martin's plant in Marietta, Georgia.

It was a pretty elaborate affair with all the USAF big wigs like the chief, General Norton Schwartz, Air Combat Command boss General Mike Hostage, Pacific Air Forces commander General Gary North and a host of others.

Lockheed had its big wigs there too--CEO Bob Stevens, Aeronautics head Larry Lawson, and F-22 manager Jeff Babione all spoke during the ceremony.

And, of course, there legions of Lockheed and line USAF personnel--many of whom have worked on the program for decades. Which is a stark reminder that the Advanced Tactical Fighter effort originated in the early 1980s.

Overall, the mood was bittersweet since the USAF ended up with only a tiny fraction of the number of jets it wanted. 195 total--which breaks down into 187 production jets and 8 developmental test planes. Two have been lost, so the operational fleet consists of 185 jets.

Anyways, here are some pictures I took of the last jet 10-4195.

My original plan was to have a full article up on the news part of the site, but unfortunately technological glitches have scuttled that effort. So this will have to hold you guys over till the morning.

While I was unable to attend this (30 April) morning's briefing at Joint Base Langley-Eustis down in Hampton, Virginia, press reports from the event indicate that the US Air Force is admitting that a "small number" of Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor pilots are refusing to fly the jet.

"Obviously it's a very sensitive thing because we are trying to ensure that the community fully understands all that we're doing to try to get to a solution," says Air Combat Command chief Gen Mike Hostage as quoted by the Associated Press.

The USAF has not found the root cause of 11 hypoxia-like cases since the Raptor fleet returned to flight in September after a near five-month stand-down.  The F-22 fleet has flown about 12,000 times since then.

Incidentally, I had known that several pilots were planning on asking not to fly the Raptor for weeks, but could not report it because it might compromise the sources. I had asked USAF PA to confirm on the record--this appears to be it.

Hostage told the assembled reporters at Langley that he would get himself checked out in the Raptor and fly the jet until the cause of the F-22's oxygen woes are discovered and fixed.

"I'm going to check out and fly the airplane so I can understand exactly what it is they're dealing with. The day we figure out what the problem is I will stop flying because we don't have enough sorties for all of our combat aviators to get as much training as they need," Hostage says--via AP.

Hostage did address the recent reports of the F-22 deploying to Al Dhafra, in the United Arab Emirates. But he wouldn't confirm where the jet was deployed to, or where the aircraft came from--though the jet has deployed to Al Dhafra before.

However, I have it on good authority that the jets came from the 7^th Fighter Squadron at the 49^th Wing, based at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. My understanding is that this was simply part of their Air Expeditionary Forces rotation.

Indeed, Hostage says the deployment was previously planned.

Incidentally, I'm off to Marietta, Georgia, in the morning to attend the delivery ceremony for the last jet 10-4195 on 2 May.

Here is tail number 10-4194, the penultimate Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor built for the US Air Force arriving at Joint Base Langley-Eustis near Hampton Roads, Virginia. It was flown in from the Lockheed plant in Marietta, Georgia, earlier today by Lt Col Jason Hinds, the commander of the 94th Fighter Squadron. The jet will serve as the unit's flagship.

On Monday, Air Combat Command and the 1st Fighter Wing will host reporters at Langley to celebrate the arrival of this last jet. I won't be there due to a scheduling conflict, but I will be at Marietta on Wednesday.

Next Wednesday on 2 May, the US Air Force will formally take delivery of the last F-22 Raptor from Lockheed Martin. Amongst the delegation attending the ceremonies will be 3d Wing commander Col Dirk Smith, 525^th Fighter Squadron commander Lt Col Paul "Max" Moga and Lt Col Dave "Piff" Piffarerio--commander of the Air Force Reserve's 302^nd Fighter Squadron.

The last Raptor, tail 10-4195, will be based at Elmendorf AFB as the flagship of the 525^th Fighter Squadron--part of the 3rd Wing. But it is not the only jet being flown home. Tail 10-4193 is also making the long journey to Alaska and will become the Wing's new flagship.

Moga and Smith will fly the jets home on Friday, 4 May. In the meantime, the pilots will train on advanced networked simulators at the Lockheed facility, Piffarerio says. The simulator can replicate extremely challenging scenarios that are difficult to undertake during real training exercises.  

Piffarerio is the most experienced F-22 Raptor pilot anywhere with a total of about 1060 hours in the jet. He first flew the F-22 back in 2004 as part of a second batch of operational testers at Nellis AFB's 422^nd TES.

Piffarerio came to Alaska after transferring over to the Air Force Reserves in 2007--but in a full-time capacity. That allows him and other full-time Reservists to remain at operational squadrons far longer than their active duty counterparts. While they don't fly any more often per week than an active duty pilot, because they stay at flying units longer, officers like Piffarerio gain more hours and become a repository of experience for the USAF.

At a day-to-day level, at an associate reserve unit there is little difference between active pilots and full-time reservists. "The thought that we do here is we put the right person in the right job no matter what patch that they're wearing," Piffarerio says.

The sortie where he hit 1000 hrs on 4 November 2011 highlights the close relationship between the 3^rd Wing and reserve's 477^th Fighter Group.

It was a somewhat unique circumstance because it happened shortly after last year's Raptor grounding was lifted and because Piffarerio was tasked to give 3^rd Wing commander Col Dirk Smith his check ride. Smith was undergoing his initial qualifications after returning to flying the Raptor following a tour at US Central Command.

"I knew it was getting really close, and since we were scheduled to hot-pit [refuel], I was right at 998 or so, I knew it would probably happen that day," Piffarerio says. "It wasn't like it was planned necessarily."

It was on the second sortie that Piffarerio hit the 1,000-hour mark. Smith passed the check ride; he was already a highly experienced Raptor pilot who had previously overseen the 94^th Fighter Squadron's transition to the F-22.