 |
Image: From the net
|
The United States Air Force held a ceremony earlier this month to
commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Lockheed Martin F-22A
Raptor’s first flight.
The United States Air Force held a ceremony earlier this month to
commemorate the 20th
anniversary [3] of the Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor’s first
flight.
The ceremony was held at Edwards Air Force Base in California on
October 19.
However, the actual 20th anniversary of the Raptor’s was on
September 7. The Raptor first flew on September 7, 1997, when Lockheed Martin
chief test pilot Paul Metz took to the air in tail AF 91-4001—the first of nine
Engineering Manufacturing Development F-22 that were built—at Dobbins Air Force
Base in Marietta, Georgia.
During that first flight, Metz flew the brand new fighter—known
simply as ‘Raptor 01” for just under an hour reached 20,000ft. That first
flight in 1997 launched the start of long and sometimes difficult flight test
program that was—for the time—groundbreaking. Eventually, after an arduous
flight test program, Gen. Ronald E. Keys, then commander of Air Combat Command,
declared the Raptor as initial operational capable on December
15, 2005 [4].
However, though the Raptor become operational more than a decade
ago, the stealthy, supersonically cruising F-22 continues to be the most
capable air superiority fighter ever built. Moreover, the F-22 Combined Test
Force at Edwards AFB continues to test new upgrades that will keep the Raptor
flying into 2060s.
In fact, the according to the Air Force, the Raptor’s airframe is
so robust it will be able to fly until that time with no structural upgrades.
The Raptor’s airframe is incredibly robust due to the Air Force’s extreme
requirements for the design during the closing years of the Cold War. Though
the F-22 was designed with an 8000-hour airframe life, real life-flying
experience shows that the jet can be safely flown without modifications out to
12,000 hours at the low-end and as many as 15,000 hours on the high-end.
“Way back in the late 80s and early 90s when we designed the F-22,
we had about 10 design missions that we built the structure of the aircraft
around,” Tom McIntyre, a program analyst for F-22 requirements at Air Combat
Command, told The National Interest earlier
this year. [5] “That’s what during EMD [engineering, manufacturing,
development] we did the full scale testing on against those missions. We came
to find out we have not been flying the Raptor nearly as hard as those design
missions nor as what we found out during the structural testing, so actually
the airframe itself—without any service life extension program—is good out to
approximately 2060.”
The Raptor is being upgraded with new avionics and software, but
eventually the jet will need a complete overhaul of its computer hardware.
“Sometime between 2025 and 2030 we’re going to have to take a serious look at
the supportability of some of the systems onboard the Raptor and upgrading
those,” McIntyre said. “We’re currently in the very early stage of looking at
that.”
Despite the Raptor’s stealth and blistering performance, by 2030
the F-22 will no longer be the top of the line as the enemy catches up.
Potential adversaries like Russia and China are designing measures to
defeat the Raptor and American air superiority writ large.
What might happen is that the F-22 would partner with the
sixth-generation Penetrating Counter Air (PCA) in a teaming arrangement similar
to today’s partnership between fourth and fifth-generation aircraft. The Raptor
would take the place of the F-15C Eagle as the lower-tier of a high-low mix
with the PCA forming the upper-tier. “When the PCA comes online, it will be
designed to operate and be interoperable with fifth-generation aircraft such as
the F-22 and F-35,” McIntyre said. “There will come a time whether it is 2030,
2040 or 2050 when the F-22 will be kind of like a fourth-generation aircraft
today.”
But until the day the PCA becomes operational, the Raptor will
remain the world’s single most formidable air superiority fighter.
Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for The National
Interest. You can follow him on Twitter: @davemajumdar [6].
Author
Original post: scout.com
Related articles:
F-22 Raptor: Details
No comments:
Post a Comment