asset — there simply aren’t enough to ll
the requirement.
Speaking as the commander of the
3rd Wing at Elmendorf, Col Chris Niemi
says: ‘Most people today believe that
curtailing production at 187 or so F-22s
was probably a mistake. We spent about
half the total programme’s money on the
research and development phase, and
we quit producing F-22s just when the
return on that initial xed investment
was being realised and production costs
were becoming reasonable. Nonetheless,
we’re long past that decision today and
restarting production probably isn’t
cost-e ective given that the F-35 is now in
production.
‘During the DIOT&E, it was envisioned
that the USAF would transition to an all
fth-generation ghter eet in the coming
years, so there was no initial plan to
integrate F-22s with F-15s or other fourth-generation ghters. Consequently, fourth-
gen’ integration was not part of the IOT&E.
However, after the IOT&E was nished, it
became clear that F-22s would be ying
with fourth-gen ghters inde nitely and so
we started developing integration tactics
[much of this work was done in the F-22
operational units: Langley rst, followed
by Elmendorf and then Holloman]. We
found that integrating with [these] ghters
provided signi cant bene ts in large force
employment scenarios — fourth-gen’
ghters provided additional capacity
and made it even easier for us to remain
undetected.’
Col Niemi is in the rare position that
he has also own the F-35A. He remarks:
‘Unlike the F-22, the F-35 was already
integrating with both the F-22 and fourth-
generation ghters before IOC. The F-35
and F-22 are more alike than any other two
ghters in existence, so the F-35 has beenable to leverage much of the experience
learned in ying the F-22 operationally
over more than a dozen years. That’s
helped the F-35 community to advance
much more quickly than we did in the
early F-22 days.’
Speaking of his current role, Niemi says:
‘Having been involved with the F-22
programme since 2002 has been a huge
advantage as the 3rd Wing Commander.
I know the programme’s history, and so I
intuitively understand the big F-22 issues
we’re still grappling with today. That has
allowed me to play a more active role in
some of the programmatic discussions
like the F-22’s upgrade roadmap. It’s also
extraordinarily satisfying to see how the
programme has matured. For example,
when I last ew the F-22 in 2011 we were
only talking about the capabilities we’ve
since elded such as synthetic radar
images and AIM-9X.’This image: An
F-22A of the
3rd Wing ies
near Joint Base
Elmendorf-
Richardson.
ANG/SSgt
Edward Eagerton
Below: 3rd
Wing Raptors
carrying
external drop
tanks. These are
usually reserved
for ferry ights
as any external
stores ruin
the Raptor’s
low-observable
characteristics.
ANG/SSgt
Edward EagertonRAPTOR^3728-37 Niemi and Service C.indd 37 28/09/2017 14:52