Aviation Specials — F-22 Raptor (2017)

Lt Col Lehoski added: ‘The UK airspace

was one of the highlights of the

deployment. We had pretty much the

whole of the North Sea [to work above]

and it was a very large piece of airspace

— larger than we usually have access

to in the US’. On  rst impression this

statement appears surprising — that the

UK can o er more expansive training

airspace than Florida. But as Lt Col

Lehoski explained: ‘We don’t normally get

access to all the ‘Whiskey Ranges’ over

the Gulf of Mexico back home, so the

UK  ying airspace increased our training

value greatly.’

The  rst week of the exercise was

geared towards scenarios with modern

long-range ground threats that required

the F-22s to  y simulated destruction

of enemy air defences (DEAD) missions.

The second week was about  ghter

integration and DCA, with the third

week structured for what Lt Col Lehoski

calls ‘more conventional OCA [o ensive

counter-air], escorting F-15Es into

target areas.’

One of the most notable and most

widely reported missions involved a pair

of Raptors  ying with F-15C/Es in the

‘Machynlleth Loop’ series of valleys in

the Welsh military training area (MTA)

— better known as the ‘Mach Loop’.

Speaking of this particular mission,

Col Novotny commented: ‘Sending the

Raptors into Low-Flying Area 7 was

an opportunity for their low-altitude

quali ed pilots to see  rst-hand the

amazing training opportunities we have

in the UK. The training ranges and low-

 ying airspace here are some of the best

in the world’. Lt Col Lehoski continued:

‘Low-level is part of our normal training

requirement that we try to get for our

pilots. Unfortunately, the Raptor bases at

Tyndall and Langley are located by the

water, so it doesn’t allow us a good low-

level training environment. Any time we

get the chance to  y low-level over actual

terrain it is of huge training value.

‘We also used Spadeadam range

[in Cumbria] and that was one of the

highlights of the  rst week as it a orded

us the ability to fully train with our

Increment 3.2 capabilities against the

ground threats on the range’. The 95th

FS deployed with a mix of software

standards on its jets, according to

F-22 Raptors

of the 95th FS

had a busy 2015

and 2016 as

they deployed

twice to Europe.

USAF/TSgt Jason

Robertson

(^92) RAPTOR
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