“We’re still kind of learning which parts fail, for the supply chain,” Tolliver said. In future deployments, it won’t be necessary to take as many spares since the unit will have an ever-better handle on what it needs to take—and what it really doesn’t.
While the 27th was fighting the massed Red Air battles in Alaska, the 94th FS, commanded by Smith, flew to Hill AFB, Utah, for a different kind of action. Smith took 16 airplanes along, which was all of the 94th’s airplanes as well as a few from the 27th that didn’t go to Northern Edge. His force grew to 20 airplanes over the summer, as four more Raptors arrived from the Lockheed Martin plant in Marietta, Ga.
At the Utah Test and Training Range, the 94th’s F-22 fighters dropped 40 JDAMs while in supersonic flight. It was further validation of a capability that had been demonstrated in testing just once, with one bomb. It was also the first supersonic weapons delivery by an operational unit.
Just before the F-22s arrived, the test community cleared the Raptor for release of JDAMs at Mach 1.5, from an altitude of 50,000 feet. At that altitude and speed, Smith said, “we’re dropping on coordinates from quite a long ways away.” The rounds were inert, but were released in a variety of ways so as to further “validate the weapons employment zone” for the F-22’s main ground-attack weapon.
On Target
“They were all direct hits,” Smith said. The JDAMs do not need to be altered for supersonic delivery.
Smith noted that his group included the least-experienced F-22 pilots and maintainers, many of whom were getting on-the-job training. “I was just completely blown away by how these brand-new [people] figured out how to get the job done,” Smith said.
During the time at Hill, without the F-22’s regular support facilities, the maintainers turned in a utilization rate of 17.9 sorties per aircraft, per month, compared to about 20 for the F-15C, which is a mature system.
Smith said it was worth noting that the F-22 is no longer a pampered machine that has experts standing around to take care of the slightest glitch. “Here it comes, out of the factory, and you give it to a 26-year-old pilot and 20- to 22-year-old crew chief, and they figure it out ... and figure it out fast.”
While at Hill, the 94th FS sent some airplanes to Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, to demonstrate the F-22’s ability to deploy to an away base, recover at yet a third base, operate from there as a transient, and come back to the deployment base.
From Hill, the F-22s flew down to Tyndall AFB, Fla., where the 94th demonstrated live shots with real AIM-120C radar-guided and AIM-9 heat-seeking missiles, marking yet another first—that of an operational F-22 shooting real missiles and killing real aircraft.
Not many drones “died” in the Weapon System Evaluation Program piece of the road trip, because the weapons test organization has a limited budget for missiles and drones alike. Weather claims some sorties, as do required functions such as clearing the ocean test range of
fishing boats. Drones may have mechanical problems. Other tests may take precedence.
“About 94 major and minor miracles” all have to happen to conduct a live missile shot, Smith noted.
Some shots were fired at the very edge of the employment envelope in hopes that the missile would score a “lethal miss,” allowing the drone to survive and live to “fight” another day. Three AIM-120C-5 AMRAAMs and 13 AIM-9M Sidewinders were fired, because that’s what the test budget would allow.
Why is shooting a live missile such a big deal?
Smith said the missile launches help pilots to know what a real missile launch will look, sound, and feel like, so they will know when it looks right and when it doesn’t.
Practice It First
“When I push the pickle button, it takes about a second, time slows down, it seems like it takes an eternity, and you hear a clunk, and you hear a big roar, and you see a big fireball and a smoke trail, and then all of a sudden, it’s gone,” Smith said of the experience. “And what does it look like if it’s guiding right? And what’s it look like if it’s not guiding right and you need to shoot another one?” The first time a pilot experiences this should not be in combat, he added.
Likewise, the experiences of the ground crews in handling, loading, and wiring up real missiles that are going to be fired is different than working with training shapes or inert rounds.
Also at Tyndall, the 94th’s pilots got a chance to use the F-22’s internal gun—another operational first—by firing at a target dragged by a Learjet.
Northern Edge, the supersonic drops, and the missile firings: all were part of the workup to get the 27th and 94th ready for their AEF deployments, Tolliver said. Most AEF units get to go to a Red Flag as part of their workup; Northern Edge counted as the 27th’s Red Flag equivalent.
Maintenance continues to improve on the F-22 as experience is accumulated with the airplane. Col. Dain West, chief of F-22 maintenance at the 1st Fighter Wing, noted that, as good as things are now, they will improve, as “the book” on the airplane is written.
He doesn’t have “a whole lot of well-seasoned mid- and senior-level NCOs that have been working on the plane forever,” and those who are there don’t have the benefit of years of tech orders that describe how best to diagnose and repair problems.
“We’re writing the book. And while you’re writing the book, you’re also trying to train new guys, with a book that’s continuing to be updated.” The “book” will also form the basis of an Air Education and Training Command curriculum in F-22 maintenance, to be ready by 2008.
The F-22 is helping to make that go faster, however, with the most advanced self-diagnostic system ever fielded. The airplane will tell the maintainer about any anomalies during a flight, so he can check them out as soon as it lands. Frequent updates, in which contractors update the software to reduce the number of false alarms, help streamline the work even more.
West said there has been strong teamwork between the Air Force and its contractors on the F-22, what Smith called “the blue shirts and the polo shirts.”
He also said that mission capable rates, a common measure of how well aircraft are performing mechanically, are hovering at “about 70 to 75 percent,” which is “just below” the Air Force-desired 75 to 78 percent.
Fewer Fighters
About the only thing holding back the F-22 program at this point is the planned inventory. The Air Force was compelled to accept a fleet of 183 Raptors as one result of last year’s Quadrennial Defense Review. The service has long maintained that it requires a minimum of 381 to meet its obligations.
The Air Force has accommodated to the lower number by making changes at nearly every level. The 1st FW was to have fielded three squadrons of F-22s, for a total of 72 aircraft, or 24 combat-ready fighters per squadron. Now, the size of the squadrons has been trimmed to 18 (plus two attrition spares per squadron). Moreover, the 1st FW will field just two squadrons of Raptors.
“Post-QDR, when the decision was made to reduce to ... 183 Raptors, then the decision was made to field them at seven full squadrons at 20 jets per squadron,” Bergeson said. The 1st FW’s third squadron—the 71st FS—will keep its F-15Cs.
The third F-22 squadron will stand up at Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, next year.
Already, the first Elmendorf-bound aircraft are arriving at Langley. Pilots and maintainers will gain experience at Langley by integrating with the 27th and 94th for a time. When Elmendorf is ready to receive the aircraft and there are enough personnel to make it work, the F-22s with the “AK” tail code will head out to Alaska.
“The pilots that we populate Elmendorf with will come from a few different locations,” Bergeson explained.
“We’ll give them some seed corn—some experienced pilots from the 1st Fighter Wing,” between six and eight who are instructors, and the rest will be drawn from other fighter types. The same model was applied in standing up the 94th.
However, peeling off pilots to give to Elmendorf, as well as the normal attrition of pilots who must leave to go to schools or new assignments, means the Raptor fleet will be chronically short of pilots for awhile. That means the pilots who do fly the type get a few more hours every month than fighter pilots in other aircraft. Smith, however, noted that this will contribute to developing a seasoned cadre of F-22 pilots more rapidly than would normally be the case.
“We define 100 hours [in the aircraft] as ‘experienced,'" Smith said, and this benchmark has affected the transition of Virginia Air National Guard crews to their new assignment working on the F-22 at Langley.
Under the Base Realignment and Closure commission, the 192nd Fighter Wing from Richmond, Va., is giving up its F-16s and becoming an “associate” unit at Langley. Members of the ANG unit will work alongside the 1st FW’s personnel in almost all fields, from maintainer to pilot. However, Smith said it will take some time before the F-22 can be a typical Guard pilot assignment.
Not Smart
“Both parties agreed, we didn’t think it would be smart” to put a 2,500-hour F-16 pilot in the F-22 “and fly one weekend a month in a brand-new airplane,” Smith said.
“We want you to get seasoned for a period of time as a full-time guy,” but the mechanics of how this will work have yet to be decided, because ANG pilots are assigned and paid differently than active duty pilots.
“I personally think it ought to be about a year” for a pilot to work at the squadron full-time, “and then he probably has enough soaked in about the airplane to be ready to start doing part-time.”
One good thing about the ANG coming in, though, is that as the Guard maintainers and technicians become practiced with the F-22, they will stay put, helping ease the experience drain that will come as active duty personnel leave the unit.
The F-22 pilots and maintainers have few complaints about the F-22, but they are developing a wish list of things they would like to add to its impressive portfolio of capabilities. They would like to add an ability to use a dual mode bomb, able to guide either by satellite or laser, to provide a more responsive ground-attack capability. They would like to have a helmet-mounted weapons cuing system and are anxious for the day when they can transmit their comprehensive picture of the airspace to anyone in the air or on the ground who needs it.
Already in the program—improvements called “spirals”—are upgraded synthetic aperture radar, new radars (already being delivered in new aircraft), better geo-location of targets, and shadowy capabilities in airborne electronic attack. (See “Where Next With Electronic Attack?,” October 2006, p. 30.)
Bergeson said he is trying to educate the rest of the Air Force and the services as a whole about what the F-22 can offer.
“I’ve had one of my operations officers travel around to the various combatant commands and give a capabilities briefing at the classified level to all their planners, so they know what we can bring to the fight right now—what we can and can’t do.”
The regional commanders have started to “develop us into their war plans. And all the briefings have been very well received,” he said.
“As people become more familiar with the fact that we’re really here, we’re really flying, there will be more demand.” Already, however, he acknowledged that the long-anticipated F-22, with its awesome capabilities, is “right now ... a low-density, high-demand asset.”