Warbird Information Exchange

At Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, 27th Fighter Squadron pilot Captain Phil Colomy opened his presentation on the Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor with a video of inert bomb impacts set to a rock soundtrack. Clip after clip showed 1,000-pound Boeing GBU-32 Joint Direct Attack Munitions slamming into derelict trucks and digging craters in sand.

The footage was from the squadron's recent weapons camp at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, where Raptors climbed to higher than 50,000 feet, accelerated to faster than Mach 1 then dropped JDAMs 20 miles or more from targets. According to 1st Fighter Wing commander Brigadier General Burton Field, all 22 drops resulted in direct hits at greater accuracy than any other aircraft has ever achieved with JDAM.

From 2002 to 2005, the F-22 was known as the F/A-22, emphasizing its ground-attack capability hauling two internal JDAMs or (in the future) eight 250-pound Small Diameter Bombs. "We were trying to tell a story, trying to say that the F-22 is not just a better [Boeing] F-15C," Field explained.



Wing spokeswoman Captain Elizabeth Kreft pointed out that, during the period of the "F/A" designation, James Roche, a former sailor, was Air Force secretary. The dual designation has been standard in Navy tactical air since the early 1980s with the Boeing F/A-18A Hornet.

But with the major fights over Raptor funding over and with Roche having stepped down, this year the Air Force switched the Raptor's designation back to the traditional F-22. But lest anyone take this to mean that the Raptor is once again just a fighter, Field pointed out that the Raptor's only truly unique capabilities lie in the ground attack realm. "Shooting down other aircraft is not what the F-22 is best at." (Though it is pretty good at this -- check back for Part Four.)

Where the Raptor truly excels is in the high-energy, long-range delivery of smart bombs in a high-threat environment. The weapons camp was a basic demonstration of that capability.

Colomy brought up a schematic of Iran's integrated air defense network featuring overlapping radar coverage and the latest Russian-made surface-to-air missiles. The systems' detection and engagement ranges were plotted with circles based on their performance against legacy Air Force aircraft such as the Lockheed Martin F-16C and F-15E. Next Colomy brought up a slide that showed the effect of the F-22's superior speed and stealth on the performance of the same air defenses. Their ranges were halved, leaving huge gaps in the network.

"There's no shortage of bomb droppers in the Air Force," Colomy said. "But can they get close enough?"

With its front-aspect stealth and its ability to supercruise faster than Mach 1 at high altitude over long ranges (contingent on adequate tanking), the Raptor can sneak up on enemy defenses then release a pair of JDAMs with far greater energy than other aircraft can manage. That means more destructive weapons effects and fewer sorties to roll back air defenses. "We use the F-22 to clear a path for other aircraft," Colomy said.

Thus has evolved the Raptor's new niche. In light of the tiny production run of just 183 jets, Raptors will equip only seven squadrons -- effectively a "silver-bullet" force. Rather than replacing F-15s wholesale, the Raptor will complement modernized F-15s and work alongside legacy aircraft to enhance their capabilities. While Raptor-Eagle teams clear the skies, ground-attack Raptors will poke holes in integrated air defenses so F-16s, F-15Es, Lockheed Martin F-117s and strategic bombers can bring their firepower to bear.

"This thing is a turkey," Pierre Sprey says of the Air Force's Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor fighter.

Sprey, one of the designers of the successful Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter, has been presenting a litany of F-22 criticisms alongside author James Stevenson at the Center for Defense Information in Washington D.C.

In a series of slides, Sprey and Stevenson accuse the F-22 of being slow, gas-guzzling, vulnerable and expensive.

Their last point is indisputable. $65 billion buys the Air Force just 183 aircraft -- an average cost of around $350 million, versus around $50 million for a new F-16.

But the men and women who operate the F-22 from Langley Air Force Base in southern Virginia say their new mount is worth every penny.

"We'll use the F-22 to clear a path for other aircraft," says Captain Phil Colomy, a Raptor pilot with the 27th Fighter Squadron. He describes how Raptors would come in high and fast, sneaking up on enemy air defenses with its radar-absorbing and -reflecting airframe and its hard-to-detect radar, then drop satellite-guided bombs to take out radars and surface-to-air missiles. On the same mission, Colomy adds, a flight of F-22s could shoot down enemy fighters.

Recent exercises corroborate Colomy's enthusiasm. At Northern Edge in Alaska recently, the 27th Fighter Squadron simulated 108 kills against other fighters for no losses of its own. And at a weapons test in Utah, the squadron dropped 22 bombs for 22 hits with better accuracy than any other aircraft.

Sprey contends that these awesome capabilities are unnecessary in conflicts such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, where there are no air defenses and no enemy aircraft.

But the commander of the 27th Fighter Squadron's parent wing says that the future is uncertain. "One thing we've done really well in the United States is not predict the next war," says Brigadier General Burton Field of the 1st Fighter Wing. "We look at all the capabilities that exist in the world and imagine how we fight against them."

A Wing presentation on the F-22 lists potential threat systems including European Typhoon, French Rafale and Russian Sukhoi fighters and Iran's dense surface-to-air missile network.

Sprey insists that the Raptor isn't as "hot" as the Air Force claims. He cites the aircraft's weight and size as disadvantages in aerial combat. Colomy counters by pointing out that the aircraft's massive control surfaces and sophisticated flight control computer afford unprecedented maneuverability. The Raptor's single-piece fin is as large as an F-16's entire wing and its elevators dwarf those of the similarly-sized Boeing F-15 Eagle.

"I don't know what people have been reading, but this thing is a monster," Field says in praise of the advanced fighter. He says he's concerned only that budget cuts have reduced the Raptor force to just seven operational squadrons. The Air Force says it needs 381 F-22s in at least 10 squadrons to outfit all of its rotating Air Expeditionary Forces.

In light of the reduced number of F-22s, Field says the force has to do some creative thinking. "We're going to have to figure out how to use this thing in the right way.”

The vaunted Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor is less a nimble, sharp-eyed bird of prey than a sluggish, half-blind buzzard, according to noted fighter designer Pierre Sprey. He cites several figures to support to his claim:

* The F-22 has higher wing loading than the Boeing F-15A, meaning more weight on the wing and less maneuverability

* The Lockheed Martin F-16C Block 50 with a General Electric 110 engine out-accelerates the F-22 with its two Pratt & Whitney 119s -- at any altitude

* The F-22 has a lower thrust-to-weight ratio than the F-15A

* The F-22 pilot's rearward and downward visibility is inferior to the F-16 pilot's

The result, Sprey contends, is that the F-22 will lose in dogfights against older, supposedly inferior aircraft.

The fighter jocks of the first operational Raptor unit, the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, scoffed at the notion during my Aug. 10 visit.

thrustvector.jpg"I don't know what people have been reading, but this thing is a monster," Brigadier General Burton Field said. "It's more maneuverable than anything out there."

"We will turn inside anybody," Captain Phil Colomy seconded.

Exercises have tended to corroborate these pilots' contentions. At Northern Edge in Alaska in June, the 27th Fighter Squadron's Raptors killed 108 F-15s and F-16s for no losses. In one four-hour engagement teaming F-22s and F-15s against other U.S. aircraft, the Raptor team killed 83 and lost just one Eagle.

To explain this apparent disconnect between the Raptor's flight performance and its exercise results, Field and Colomy point to aspects of the F-22's design that Sprey ignores, such as:

* An advanced flight control system that renders smarter aircraft reactions to control inputs: The F-22, like the F-16, is an aerodynamically unstable aircraft that relies on computer systems to stabilize it in flight and translate pilot inputs into aircraft movements. The sophistication of the computer is a factor in the maneuverability of the aircraft.

* Large control surfaces: The F-22 features some of the largest elevators, flaps, fins and stabilizers on any fighter aircraft ever built. The single-piece stabilizers are as large as an F-16's entire wing. Control-surface design is another key factor in maneuverability.

* Thrust vectoring: The P&W-119s terminate in vertical thrust-vectoring nozzles that can direct 35,000 pounds of thrust apiece 20 degrees up or down, improving turning ability. Confronted with the criticism that these nozzles incur a weight and drag penalty, Colomoy laughed and pointed to a nearby F-15's large, unmoving nozzles. "You've got to have nozzles," he said. "The only difference with these is that they move." In other words, they're no heavier or draggier than any other nozzle.

The one criticism that the Raptor fliers can't counter is that the jet's canopy affords poorer visibility than the F-16's. It's true: the F-22's canopy is slightly obstructed by the intakes and the spine, but this flaw hasn't resulted in any lost dogfights in recent exercises.

--David Axe

Given all that was said regarding the F-22, I did think that one point might be valid. Upgrade the existing A-10s with a better avionics package and the ability to carry a wider variety of weapons, maybe even begin a new production run. This way you have an aircraft that has been designed specifically for the ground attack role and does not cost nearly as much as the Raptor.

Any idea what it would cost to tool up for a production run of an airplane [A-10] whose company no longer exists??

Any idea what it would cost to tool up for a production run of an airplane whose company no longer exists??

What people are forgetting here is that the Raptor is not supposed to be the end-all, be-all fighter aircraft. It is not supposed to fill every role, just as no other fighter in the inventory is supposed to do that. It is in no way competing for A-10 missions.

I agree that the Hog needs some money thrown at it for upgrades, but you're not solving any air superiority problems by buying improved Hogs over F-22s.