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he F-22 is proving it’s a dog-fighter after all.

While it wasn’t part of a hard-turning furball, an F-22—with its Amraams and Side-

winders expended—slipped into visualrange behind an F-16 and undetectedmade a simulated kill with its cannonduring the stealth fighter’s first large-scale exercise and deployment outsidethe continental U.S.

Those and other revelations about theF-22’s emerging capabilities are increas-ingly important as the first combat unit,the U.S. Air Force’s 27th Fighter Sqdn.,begins its initial Air Expeditionary Forcedeployment this month to an undisclosedsite. And the first F-22 unit, the 94thFighter Sqdn., will participate in Red Flagin February.

The gun kill is a capability Air Forceplanners hope their F-22s won’t use. Thefighter is designed to destroy a foe wellbeyond his visual and radar range. With-in visual-range combat and, in particu-lar, gun kills are anachronisms. In amass-ing 144 kills to no losses during the firstweek of the joint-service Northern Edgeexercise in Alaska last summer, only threeair-to-air “kills” were in the visual are-na—two involving AIM-9 Sidewindersand one the F-22’s cannon.

The 27th Fighter Sqdn. aircraft—on

F-22 ROAD SHOW

Tdeployment from Langley AFB, Va.—didn’t get to show off their J-Turn andCobra maneuvers or their high-angle-of-attack, high-off-boresight (which ac-tually will arrive with the AIM-9X) andunique nose-pointing capabilities. Thereason, those involved say, was becausethe victims of the three encounters, fly-ing conventional fighters, never had aclue they were being stalked by F-22s until they were “killed.”

Raptor pilots agree that their pre-ferred location for the fighter while inthe battlespace is at high altitude, wellabove the other fighters, where they canadopt a fuel-efficient cruise, sweepingboth the air and ground with radar andelectronic surveillance for targets. Froma superior altitude, the F-22 used sus-tained supercruise to range across hun-dreds of miles of airspace before an en-emy fighter could threaten friendlyhigh-value surveillance, command-and-control and tanker aircraft.

Perhaps the most important revelationby the 27th Fighter Sqdn. was demon-strating the F-22’s ability to use its sen-sors to identify and target enemy aircraftfor conventional fighters by providing in-formation so they could engage the en-emy sooner than they could on their own.Because of the advanced situationalawareness they afford, F-22s would stickaround after using up their weapons tocontinue providing targets and IDs to theconventional fighters.

“We always left F-22s on station to help,but we didn’t designate any one aircraftto provide data,” says Lt. Col. Wade Tolliver, the unit’s commander. “It wascritical that every F-22 out there provid-ed all the data he had.”

With its high-resolution radar, theF-22 can guarantee target altitudes towithin a couple of hundred feet. Its abil-ity to identify an aircraft is “sometimesmany times quicker than the AWACS,”he says. “It was a combination of high-

As the F-22 begins its operational life, interest has turned to as-sessing just how well suited the stealthy Raptor is to its role asthe premier air-to-air fighter, while taking a peek at some of thesurprises for pilots and maintenance crews as they explore whatthe aircraft can do. As part of the research for this series of ar-

ticles on the F-22, Michael Fabey flew in the back seat of anF-15D while the Eagle and Raptor pilots demonstrated their air-craft’s capabilities in the air-to-air ranges at Tyndall AFB, Fla.(For additional details of the Raptor’s unique air-to-air capa-bilities, see AW&ST Sept. 6, 1999, p. 84.)

F-22:

AND LETHAL

DAVID A. FULGHUM and MICHAEL J. FABEY/WASHINGTON

Mass, speed and guile fail to score Raptor shootdowns

during Alaskan exercises

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resolution sensors and being closer tothe targets.”

The F-22’s radar range is describedonly as being more than 100 mi. Howev-er, it’s thought to be closer to 125-150 mi.,which is much farther than the standardF-15’s 56-mi. radar range. New, activeelectronically scanned radar technology—optimized for digital throughput—is ex-pected to soon push next-generation radarranges, in narrow beams, out to 250 mi.or more.

The ability to close on the enemy with-out being targeted also allowed the F-22sto operate in threat areas where conven-tional fighters could not survive. Thisenabled the Raptor to engage targets ata greater distance from the aircraft andhomeland they were defending.

Raptor pilots had all the available dataon the airspace fused and displayed on

a single, easy-to-read screen. “When I look down at my scope and

put my cursor over a [friendly] F-15 orF/A-18, it tells me who they are lockedon to,” he says. For example, “I couldhelp them out by saying, ‘You’re double-targeted and there’s a group over hereuntargeted’ . . . to make sure we goteverybody.” F-15 targets will be latentbecause of the radar sweep.

However, these messages are less andless verbal. “When you watch [tapes ofthe Alaska] exercise, it’s fairly spooky,”says Gen. Ronald Keys, chief of Air Com-bat Command. “There’s hardly a wordspoken among Raptor pilots.” That si-lence also previews some of the fighter’spossible future capabilities.

“Because of the way the aircraft wasdesigned, we have the capability to domore,” Keys says. “We can put un-manned combat aircraft systems in therewith Raptor. You’ve got three fairly low-

observable UCAS in the battlespace. Anair defense system pops up, and I clickon a UCAS icon and drag it over [theemitter’s location] and click. The UCASthrottles over and jams it, blows it up orwhatever.”

In Alaska, because the F-22 remainedfar forward at high altitude, with an ad-vanced radar it could monitor rescue mis-sions that the AWACS 150 mi. away could not. “We could see the helicopters down in the valleys and protect them,” Tolliver says.

In addition to AWACS, the F-22 alsocan feed data to the RC-135 Rivet Jointsignals intelligence aircraft to improvesituational awareness of the battlespace.

“If a Rivet Joint is trying to get tri-angulation [on a precise emitter loca-tion], he can get more [voice] informa-tion” from an F-22, Keys says. “If an

AWACS sees a heavy group 40 mi. to thenorth, Raptor can come up and say it’stwo F-18s, two F-15s and four F-16s.”

Moreover, Keys says, modifications areunderway to transmit additional targetparameters—such as sensitive, high-res-olution infrared data—from the F-22with a low-probability-of-intercept datalink.

“Getting data into an F-22 is nothard,” Keys says. “Getting it out [whilestaying low observable] is more difficult.We bought the links, but we just don’thave them on yet.”

The F-22’s advanced electronic sur-veillance sensors also provided addition-al awareness of ground activity.

“I could talk to an EA-6B Prowler elec-tronic attack crew and tell them where asurface-to-air missile site was active sothey would immediately know where topoint their electronic warfare sensors,”Tolliver says. “That decreased their tar-geting time line considerably.”

In addition, the F-22 can use its elec-tronic surveillance capabilities to con-duct precision bombing strikes on emit-ters—a capability called destruction ofenemy air defenses.

“And future editions of the F-22 arepredicted to have to have their own elec-tronic attack capability so that we’ll beable to suppress or nonkinetically kill asite like that,” he says.

The F-22’s operating altitude and ad-ditional speed during the Alaska exer-cise also garnered praise.

“We stayed high because it gives us an extra kinetic advantage with shoot-ing, speed and fuel consumption,” Tol-liver says. “The Raptor typically flies wayhigher than everybody else and it han-dles like a dream at those altitudes.” Tol-liver wouldn’t confirm the operating al-titude, but Pentagon officials have put it at 65,000 ft., which is at least 15,000 ft. higher than the other fighters.

“There were times we went lower,maybe to visually identify a threat or ifwe were out of Amraams and there wasa bandit sneaking in at low altitude,” hesays. “The Raptor would roll in and killhim with a heat-seeking missile.”

The lopsided combat ratio resulted because, “they never saw us,” Tolliversays. “We got there without being de-tected, and we killed them rapidly. Wedidn’t do any major turning. It’s not thatthe J-Turn maneuver isn’t fun, but wedidn’t get a chance to use it.”

The F-22’s Mach 1.5 supercruise ca-pability also got a workout in Alaska. Because only eight F-22s were ever air-borne at once during the exercise, fourof them were constantly involved in re-fueling from tankers flying orbits 150 mi. away. Supercruise got the fightersthere and back quickly. On station, thefighter would conserve fuel by cruisingat high altitude.

“We also used supercruise quite a bitbecause the fight was on such a largescale,” Tolliver says. “The airspace wasroughly 120 mi. by 140 mi. We could situp at high altitude and save our gas andwatch. We don’t hang out at Mach 1.5.With our acceleration, when we saw thethreats building, because we could seethem so far out, we’d dump the noseover, light the burners and we were rightup to fighting speed.”

During a typical day in the Alaska“war,” 24 air-to-air fighters, including up to eight F-22s, defended their aeri-al assets and homeland for 2.5 hr. AirForce F-15s and F-16s and Marine F/A-18s simulated up to 40 MiG-29s, Su-22s,Su-24s, Su-27s and Su-30s (which regen-erated into 103 enemy sorties in a sin-gle period). They carried AA-10s A toF, Archers, AA-12 Adders and the Chi-nese-built PL-12. These were supportedby SA-6, SA-10 and SA-20 surface to air missiles and an EA-6B for jamming.Each day, the red air became strongerand carried more capability.

As a result of all the emitters in the bat-tlespace, the F-22’s ability to map the

An F-15E, (left), F-15C and F-22 get togetherover one of Alaska’s glaciers after rackingup a combined one-day kill ratio of 83-1during Northern Edge, the Raptor’s firstlarge-scale air-to-air exercise.

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targets to be designated for convention-al F-15s or F-16s.

However, the question periodicallyresurfaces about whether the F-22 couldhold its own during a within-visual-rangefight with a very maneuverable fourth-generation fighter such as the Sukhoi Su-27 and Su-30, Eurofighter or DassaultRafale. The answer will never be obviousto an outsider. The Raptor’s high-angle-of-attack capabilities are part of the for-mula of classified tactics that are closelyheld. But, roughly, its unique maneuver-ing and nose-pointing options—plus thehigh off-boresight capabilities of the AIM-9X missile, which is to be addedabout 2010—give the aircraft previouslyunheard-of means of quickly shootingdown a foe.

Nonetheless, chasing an F-22 in a two-seat F-15D—which carried reporterMichael J. Fabey—provided perspectiveabout their comparative capabilities. A recent flight started with F-15 pilotCapt. Andy (Bishop) Jacob flying along-side an F-22 piloted by Maj. Shawn(Rage) Anger in the air-to-air rangesabove Tyndall AFB, Fla.

Opponents of further Raptor procure-ments argue that going by such basicflight physics as thrust-to-weight ratios,rearward cockpit visibility and simple

F-22 ROAD SHOW

Turn and BurnRaptor’s gunfighting heritage hasn’t completely disappearedMICHAEL J. FABEY/TYNDALL AFB, FLA., and DAVID A. FULGHUM/WASHINGTON

ighting in—or against—the F-22is a singular event, humbling andfrustrating to its victims, and of-ten startling to its pilots, who de-scribe each flight as a learning ex-

perience.The first thing anyone learns about

the U.S. Air Force’s Raptor is that it isn’t envisioned as a dogfighting aircraft,mixing it up with other high-perform-ance fighters.

Its strengths—which are being ex-plored daily by test, training and oper-ational units—include pervasive situa-tional awareness of what’s in thebattlespace gathered by the aircraft’s ac-tive electronically scanned array (AESA)radar, electronic surveillance and in-frared sensors. Moreover, information is piped into the aircraft through datalinks to off-board sensors and other in-telligence sources. The range of its sen-sors out-distance those of non-AESA aircraft, allowing it to strike a foe that’sstill unaware of the F-22. The Raptor’sstealth enables it to operate 150 mi.ahead of large-sensor aircraft and wellabove legacy aircraft, where it can useits acceleration and high-resolution viewof the battlespace to greater advantage.A newly emerging strength is the F-22’s“mini-AWACS” capability that allows

Waiting to sortie for one of the nine major air-to-aircombats during Northern Edge, 27th FS F-22s line upat Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. The Raptor demonstratedboth performance and sensor advantages over con-ventional fighters.

electronic order of battle (EOB)—what’semitting and from where—proved criti-cal.

“I love intel, but it’s only as good asthe last time [analysts] got a data up-date, which could have been hours oreven a day earlier,” Tolliver says. An F-22 “gets rid of the time delay. I can plot an EOB in real time. I’m not say-ing we’re better than a Rivet Joint, but I can go places that it can’t. If he’s 150mi. away, he’s probably not going to beable to plot a high-fidelity threat loca-tion as quickly as I can.”

The adversaries were wily and didn’twant to lose.

“We had guys running in at 500 ft. offthe deck,” Tolliver says. “We had guysflying in at 45,000-50,000 ft. doing Mach1.6, trying to shoot me before I know they are there. They would mass theirforces and try to win with sheer num-bers. None of it worked.”

A tactic used by the F-22s was actu-ally developed and practiced in small-er scale at Langley before the exercise. Raptors worked in pairs, integrated withF-15Cs or F/A-18E/Fs.

“I could help target for them from be-hind and above,” Tolliver says. “We real-ly don’t have a name for what we were doing other than integrated ops. I was able to look down and smartly target F-15s or F/A-18s to groups at ranges wherethey could not yet [detect] the target.”

Yet, there are a number of F-22 ca-pabilities that are shrouded in mystery,including electronic attack, informationwarfare and cruise missile defense.

“It’s no secret that one of our modsis to put electronic attack on board andthen we will play a role in combating networks,” Tolliver says. “We’re alreadyinvolved in the collection part. When wecome back from a mission, we have theability to download EOB data that’sturned into intelligence pictures. Thismakes us an intelligence platform do-ing nontraditional ISR by bringing backemitter data so that teams can go outand conduct information operations.”

The next step will be to pass the de-tailed information about surface-to-airmissile locations, capabilities and emis-sion details (called parametrics).

“If I have characterized, say an SA-10,I can send it verbally to AWACS and theycan send it out to other platforms,” saysMaj. Shawn Anger, an F-22 instructorwith the 43rd Fighter Sqdn. at TyndallAFB, Fla. However, “I can’t pass the parametrics characterization. Hopeful-ly, we’ll be able to shoot it up the radar”—a new capability for the radar,which is being developed to send large,

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aircraft size, the F-22 ranks below the F-15 and other earlier fighters.

Aerial engagements like the en-counter between Anger and Jacob aresupposed to help prove the Raptor’s case. Still, one argument offered by F-22opponents is that the jet’s reported vic-tories over F-15s are often scripted andunreliable gauges of Raptor superiority.

The Raptor’s silhouette stood outagainst the thick wool of clouds build-ing nearly 18,000 ft. up. The two air-planes lined up their noses on an imag-inary starting line and accelerated from250 kt. at an altitude of 13,000 ft.

Inside the F-15, Jacob’s body slammed backward and the two fightersstayed even for about 10 sec. The F-15hit 450 kt. in full afterburner in levelflight after 20 sec. The F-22 hit 500 kt.in maximum afterburner and pulledaway, ending the race. Jacob laughed.“That’s it,” he said. “My F-15 can’t ac-celerate any more.”

The F-15 was designed and built to bea quick, maneuverable dogfighter. It hasPratt & Whitney F100-P-W100 turbofanengines powering a lightly loaded and ad-vanced airframe. Weighing in at about42,160 lb., the F-15 has a thrust-to-weightratio approaching 1.2 (when stripped andnot in a combat configuration) and a wingloading of about 69 lb. per sq. ft. By com-parison, the F-22 has a thrust-to-weightratio closer to 1 and wing loading of about80 lb. per sq. ft. But the Raptor has twoPratt & Whitney’s F119 low-bypass, aug-mented 35,000-lb. class engines with two-dimensional vectored thrust nozzles.

Jacob circled above the Raptor asAnger put the fighter through severalmaneuvers. He illustrated three key tac-

tical moves—the J-Turn, high-alpha turnand the classic, Russian Cobra. Thereare times during an air-to-air engage-ment when any of them could be em-ployed, but the J-Turn is used more thanthe Cobra, says Lt. Col. Wade Tolliver,commander of the 27th Fighter Sqdn.

Roughly, the J-Turn begins with thenose of the F-22 pointed up. Then, athigh alpha (angle of attack), the rudderis kicked and the nose swings until point-ed downhill. F-22 pilots describe a flightpath mimicking the shape of a candycane. The J-Turn is a vertical maneu-ver used to quickly reverse the aircraft’sdirection using a very small turn radius.

After a planned stall, Anger’s Raptorpivoted through a rapid-minimum, 180-deg. J-Turn at 250 kt. in maximum after-burner with full aft stick. It’s also knownas the “Herbst Maneuver,” after Wolf-gang Herbst, a German proponent of us-ing post-stall flight in air-to-air combat.

The aircraft pulled into a 60-70-deg.bank, nose high, with roughly a 60-deg.angle of attack. Anger applied full stickand pro-rudder, turning into the air-craft’s roll. The Raptor’s nose yaweddown into the vertical.

For the second maneuver, Anger pulledthe Raptor into a high-alpha loop, powering again to 250 kt. He pulled 3-4gto about 180 kt. in the pure vertical, reaching 20-30 deg. past the vertical withfull aft stick. The AOA increased beyond60-70-deg. alpha as the upward motionslowed. Normally a rapid pitch rate wouldstop the aircraft’s nose, but thrust vec-toring carried the F-22’s nose back overthe top, completing the loop.

In contrast, the legendary Cobra ma-neuver is done from the horizontal

plane, and the nose pitches up past ver-tical and returns to the horizontal aftera pronounced deceleration.

To force an opponent to overshoot,Anger yanked the Raptor into a dynam-ic, nose-high attitude made possible bybrute engine power—a maneuver thatRussian Su-27 pilots introduced to airshow crowds. First, Anger slowed to 250kt., pushed both throttles to the militarypower detent, then pulled the controlstick to its full-aft position. The Raptor’snose pitched up to a 60-70-deg. attitude,so the fighter’s belly remained alignedwith the flight path, creating enough drag to immediately slow the aircraft substantially. He then pushed the stickfull forward to snap the Raptor’s noseback to level flight.

The Cobra is used to “gain highground and stop your forward travel,”Tolliver says. “The Cobra is a great airshow maneuver, but most of us don’t typically use it during aerial combat.”

Fighting—or even keeping up with the Raptor—requires extremely fast as-sessment and reactions. “Faster than re-quired for any other aircraft I’ve flownagainst,” Jacob says.

Anger and Jacob had planned to en-gage in mock combat. However, a flash-ing indicator light warned that some-thing could be wrong with the F-22. Butthe flight was enough to make a believ-er of Jacob. “Maybe, with some tricks ortactics, I can beat it,” he said. “But thatwould be a one-time set of circumstances.As for a Raptor-beating tactic—there’sno such thing.” C

For F-22 video, see www.aviationweek.com/f22

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our [stealth] repairs on the flight line orin a normal hangar.”

What Tolliver didn’t discuss was theF-22’s Signature Assessment System.

“SAS will tell you if you can ignore the accumulated scratches and dings,”says an official involved in the Raptorprogram. “If you have sufficient LO margin, you don’t have to make imme-diate repairs and can simply wait untilthe return to Langley. The stealth sig-nature is still not easy to fix, but thestealth coatings are not as fragile as theywere in earlier stealth aircraft. It isn’tdamaged by a rain storm, and it canstand the wear and tear of combat with-out degradation.”

“The biggest success at Northern Edge was maintenance,” Tolliver says.“We were tasked for 105 sorties; welaunched 102. That’s a 97% sortie gen-eration rate. That’s incredible on an im-mature fighter. Since we were doing eight turn six [launching eight F-22s, then returning and launching anothersix] the whole time with 12 jets, that re-sulted in a 21.8 utilization rate. Normal-ized over a month, that means each plane would fly 21.8 times.”

The squadron sent a relatively com-pact organization to Alaska to supportthe exercise.

“The deployment plan was two KC-10s dragging 12 F-22s from Langley toElmendorf,” Tolliver says. “It’s an 8-hr.

flight and 3,200 naut. mi. We took all our people with us [218 personnel] onthe two KC-10s except for the 15-mem-ber advance team we sent about threedays earlier. They’re there early to set up and have guys ready to catch the air-planes when the jets land.”

To prepare for the trip, the squadronstopped flying three days prior to pre-pare the F-22s. Two days prior, they readied all the cargo. One day prior, thepilots and maintainers had a final brief-ing and planners finalized which 12 air-craft would be deployed.

The support package included theequipment and spare parts to maintainthe aircraft for 45 days. In the mix weretwo extra Pratt & Whitney F119 engines.They had to take F-22-specific aircraftsupport equipment with them becausenone is distributed around U.S. bases, as is done for F-15s and F-16s.

“That equated to 63 increments of cargo [pallets carrying 170 short tons],”Tolliver says. “That’s about five C-17equivalents. What didn’t go by air wentby truck and then ferry to Alaska. That’sabout in line with what’s needed for12-15 F-15Es going to a bare base.”

When the system matures, around2010, Air Force planners hope to cut that number. They want to deploy 24F-22s with just seven C-17s loads—about30% less than today. However, programofficials say that by summer 2009, they

F-22 ROAD SHOW

Away GameFirst F-22 large-scale, air combat exercisewins praise and triggers surprise

DAVID A. FULGHUM/WASHINGTON

t’s high drama. The first combatsquadron of F-22s goes on its longestdeployment—3,200 naut. mi. away—with an immature aircraft and a newskipper.Despite the potential for unknown

problems and the uncertainty of be-ing far from its maintenance base inLangley AFB, Va., the 27th FighterSqdn. was able to go to war for twoweeks with 12 F-22s. Every flying dayof the Northern Edge exercise in Alas-ka, the truncated force was able tolaunch eight aircraft for a 2.5-hr. mis-sion, return, re-arm and then launch sixaircraft, says Lt. Col. Wade Tolliver, who at the time of deployment had been squadron commander for twoweeks. While no more than one-thirdof the defending force, the F-22s gen-erated 49% of the air-to-air kills.

And perhaps the most pleasing vin-dication for the F-22 design was avoid-ing the stealth maintenance problemsthat dogged the B-2 bomber during itsearly deployments. Repairing and cur-ing the exterior finish of the B-2 re-quired a special climate-controlledhangar wherever it went to ensure thatit stayed low observable (LO).

“You have to maintain the signatureof any LO aircraft,” Tolliver says. “Theywere able to take care of it in Alaska with no problem. Here at Langley wehave a special facility. In Alaska we did

I

The U.S. Air Force’s oldest (F-117)and newest (F-22) operational stealth

fighters fly together over a test range in the southwest U.S. But the Raptor brings

far greater capabilities in speed, altitude and intelligence-gathering to the fight.

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Posted from Aviation Week, January 8, 2007, copyright by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. with all rights reserved. This reprint implies no endorsement, either tacit or expressed, of any company, product, service or investment opportunity.

#1-19375571 Managed by Reprint Management Services, 717.399.1900. To request a quote online, visit www.reprintbuyer.com.

want the requirement further reduced to about 50%.

“But now, we’re still taking a lot of extra parts and equipment because wedon’t know what’s going to break,” Tol-liver says. “As we fly more and more, welearn that. Once we get the F-22 fully deployed, some of that aircraft-specif-ic, mission-generation equipment will be other places.”

A point of pride for the 27th was thatcrews were able to generate local sor-ties the day after they arrived in Alaskaat the end of their long flight from Vir-ginia.

Northern Edge was a two-week, large-force employment exercise, the F-22’sfirst. More than 5,000 troops from 36units participated. There were nine large-force employment periods—eachabout 2.5 hr. long—during the twoweeks. The F-22 flies about 1.25-1.5 hr.

without refueling, much the same as anF-15 or F-16, so the unit was involved in a lot of refuelings. The missions weremostly flown over the Pacific-AlaskanRange Complex and the Gulf of Alaska.The range is about 120 X 140 mi.

“The airspace was awesome becausewe had the surface to 60,000 ft., couldfly supersonic, chaff and flares allowed,so everything was really good,” Tolliv-er says. “Another big benefit was the abil-ity to operate with joint assets. The serv-ices are busy around the world, andtrying to get together and operate as ajoint combat unit on this scale is tough.Taking this new fighter and integratingit with all the proven assets ensure thatthe first time we go to war is not the firsttime we’ve operated together.”

Participants claim that everybodyconnected with the F-22 force did bet-ter in the exercise because of the

situational awareness that the Raptorprovides.

The Langley F-22s will have anotherbusy year in 2007. The 27th Fighter Sqdn.will make its first air expeditionary forcerotation. The AEF requirement involvesa 20-month cycle subdivided into four-month increments. They train for 16months and then deploy four months. TheRaptor’s first AEF starts in January.

“We’re anxiously awaiting our ordersto deploy somewhere,” Tolliver says. “We know they want us to go. The pilotsand maintainers are combat-ready. I’dlove to go into [the Iraq/Afghanistan]theater and contribute to the war, but Idon’t know. If they want us to contribute,we’re ready.”

Meanwhile, the 94th Fighter Sqdn.,which is just becoming operational, willbe the first F-22 unit to participate in RedFlag at the end of this month. C

EDITORIALS

pparently the F-22 Rap-tor, the newest aircraft inthe U.S. Air Force inven-tory, isn’t the Cold Waranachronism its detractors

thought it would be. In fact, evi-dence to date suggests the stealthyfighter is worth more than skep-tics expected.

At a current flyaway cost of $136 million, the Raptor willnever be a bargain. The procurement quantity will be an is-sue as long as it is in production. But the aircraft’s first large-scale deployment, and its performance in the joint-serviceNorthern Edge exercise in Alaska (see p. 46), show that tax-payers are getting high value for the high cost.

After that exercise, the F-22’s advantages of speed, alti-tude and stealth are undeniable. The Raptor flew 10,000ft. higher than its “opponents,” and it used its supercruisecapability to dash back and forth across a huge battle space.Even when the F-22 moved within visual range to “kill” an F-16 with its cannon—a weapon it may never use in com-bat—the “enemy” never knew it was there.

Raptor pilots never had a chance to show off their J-turns,high-alpha loops and high off-boresight capabilities. But nev-er mind. Virtually no one believes the F-22’s primary role willbe mano-a-mano aerial combat against previous-generationfighters. Far more important, the aircraft showed some of itsvalue in intelligence-gathering and surveillance, which keptit over the battlefield long after it had fired its weapons.

Loitering at high altitude, F-22swere able to identify targets ac-curately enough to satisfy the rules of engagement and passthem along to conventional fight-er aircraft for precise, long-rangekills. The F-22 can perform somesurveillance/target identificationand signals intelligence missions

of AWACS and Rivet Joint aircraft, respectively. But un-like those aircraft, which must stay 150 naut. mi. or moreaway from many hostile forces, the stealthy F-22 can fly overtargets with impunity. It can build a fresh, up-to-the-moment electronic order of battle—the type and locationof enemy emitters, in the air and on the ground—as it enters an area.

In the future, F-22s will analyze and pinpoint the low-power wireless communications networks that insurgents use to organize and trigger weapons remotely. Using low-probability-of-intercept data links, F-22s will send informa-tion they collect to other aircraft and intelligence networks.

This auspicious beginning shows the F-22 has much to offer in today’s warfare against insurgents and less-than-superpower forces, not just the future high-tech conflicts itwas designed to deter. We’re looking forward to learningmore about this versatile aircraft and the roles it can playin transforming more of the last superpower’s combat edge,from the realm of explosives to the world of electronics andnetworks. c

No Cold War Vestige, F-22 Is Proving

Its Net-Centric MettleA

www.lockheedmartin.com

The F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II bring stealth to the fight. Each brings low observable

design, concealed weapons, sensor fusion, revolutionary technologies – all the features that separate

5TH Generation Fighters from all others. Game-changing capabilities for an unfair fight. Virtually

impossible to detect. F-22 and F-35. 5TH Generation capability only from Lockheed Martin.

You can define a 5TH Generation Fighter™ –

but can you find it?

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