of the stealth and advanced avionics is to
kill without ever being seen. ‘The LO is in
large part what we paid the money for on
these airplanes’, says Col Fesler.
Maj ‘Bullet’ expands on this part of the
mission. ‘The four-ship is our tactical
ghting formation — it’s how we operate.
The four-ship leader sets the tone for
the mission, establishes expectations,
allocates responsibilities and develops
contracts. The F-22 provides the pilot with
a ton of information. Each pilot needs to
manage that information and use it to
make the smartest tactical decision for
the team. Building e ective contracts and
communicating them to the four-ship is
what we do as ight leads.’
These contracts are the agreements
between the ight lead, deputy ight lead
and wingmen, conceptually regarding
who will be responsible for what. For
example, if a group of bandits comes in
from a certain direction at a certain height
it might be the responsibility of the number
two in the formation to take care of them.
They would do it silently and without the
need for prompting — that’s how the
contracts work.
‘The integrated sensor fusion is just
incredible’, adds Sqn Ldr ‘Duzza’, who
is a relative newcomer to the Raptor.
‘It provides you with so much more SA
[situational awareness] than you’re ever
going to get in a fourth-generation ghter.’
He continues: ‘One of the trickiest
things I found coming to the F-22 from
the Typhoon was thinking fth-gen. I
didn’t appreciate that until I started ying
the F-22. I’d worked with the Raptor on
numerous occasions in the past on joint
exercises and I had a good appreciation
of how they worked. However, what I
didn’t have an appreciation of is how you
have to think in the cockpit to make that‘THE RAPTOR
HAS INCREDIBLE
POWER. IT CAN
ALSO PULL VERY
HIGH ALPHA AND
THE POST STALL
CONTROL IS TRULY
EYE WATERING’
SQN LDR ‘DUZZA’
(^56) RAPTOR
50-63 1st FW C.indd 56 28/09/2017 14:50