FIGHTER INTEGRATION
Comparisons will undoubtedly be drawn
between the introduction to service of the
F-22 and the F-35. On the maintenance side,
Col Fesler says: ‘The F-35 has an advantage
that we in the Raptor community did not.
It took us a long time on the calendar to
nd our problems. The best way to nd
problems with airplanes is give them
to young lieutenants — they’ll nd the
problems.’
Inevitably, the question of integration
and interoperability is never far away.
The Air Force is well down the road of
guring out how to integrate the F-22 and
the F-35. There have been regular user
summits as well as the aforementioned
exchange programmes. The 422nd Test
and Evaluation Squadron ‘Green Bats’ at
Nellis is the lynchpin in this e ort and the
rst joint F-22/F-35 ‘Red Flag’ exercise was
held in 2017.
Lt Col ‘Lobo’ comments: ‘They’ll
complement one another once the F-35
gets up and running. The F-22 in the air-to-air role and the F-35 for air-to-ground, and
each has a little bit of overlap. The F-22 can
execute some air-to-ground missions, but
it’s not optimised for that — it’s the best
air-to-air ghter that’s ever been built. The
F-35 will have great sensors and execute
some air-to-air missions, but it is optimised
for the air-to-ground role; it just doesn’t
have the speed and manoeuvrability — the
athleticism — that makes the Raptor so
special.’
Maj ‘Bullet’ adds: ‘What we have seen in
the relationship between the F-15C and the
F-16 over the past several decades, we will
experience similarly with the F-22 and the
F-35. While the F-22 can attack targets using
CAS [close air support] procedures, we are
primarily optimised to detect, identify and
kill air threats.’
As the F-35 continues to proliferate,
the F-22 has to ensure it is being used
to best advantage its fourth-generation
compatriots. ‘We are involved in a ‘Razor
Talon’ exercise today’, says ‘Bullet’. ‘We are
working integration with multiple ghterAbove top to
bottom: Four 94th
FS brie y form up
in echelon before
their range time.
The four-ship is
the way Raptor
pilots like to
ght.
Merge! ‘Red
Air’ and ‘Blue
Air’ Raptors go
head-to-head in a
turning ght.correlated was that when the jet said it
was this and the pilot it was this — it was
nearly always this, and so on. They bundled
all that data together and sent it back to
Lockheed, who then rewrote the software.
Now the jet really does tell on itself.’
Col Fesler continues, ‘The next thing they
did was to identify which parts failed more
often. The engineers redesigned and built
new panels for those so we can now access
on places that usually had to be via labour-
intensive ‘picking’ of a panel. Now you can
get at it and put it back on very easily.’
An area where the F-22’s technical
record has shone is the F119 engine. ‘Even
though this engine is more complex with
thrust-vectored controls, it’s just much
easier to maintain’, explains Fesler. ‘All the
accessories are on the underside of the
engine. So things that would require an
engine pull on other jets can be done
on this jet with the engine still in place.
It’s one of the most successful parts
of the F-22 and not a system we have
challenges with.’RAPTOR^6150-63 1st FW C.indd 61 28/09/2017 14:50