Steve Cooke
By Rachel S. Cohen
Mar 29, 02:02 AM
An Air Force instructor pilot assigned to the 43rd Fighter Squadron conducts F-22 Raptor start-up procedures at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, Feb. 1, 2022. The Air Force altered the photo for security purposes by blurring out identification patches. (Airman 1st Class Tiffany Price/Air Force)
The Air Force plans to retire nearly three dozen of Tyndall Air Force Base’s F-22 fighter jets in fiscal 2023, ending tentative plans to move them to Virginia that have been on hold for more than three years.
The Raptors have been flying out of nearby Eglin AFB in Florida since a hurricane destroyed Tyndall in October 2018.
Officials want to divest 33 of the service’s oldest F-22s and use that money to instead research cutting-edge combat jet designs under the “Next-Generation Air Dominance” program. If Congress approves the idea, it would send all but three Block 20 Raptors to the “boneyard” at Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, Arizona, and shrink the overall fleet from 186 to 153 fighters.
It’s too expensive to upgrade the stealth jets from their usual status as training planes so they can hold up in combat, said Maj. Gen. James Peccia, the Air Force’s deputy assistant budget secretary. That investment would cost $1.8 billion over eight years, which the Air Force believes is money better spent on upgrading newer F-22s with more advanced sensors and improving the F-35A Lightning II.
“We will take operational jets and use them for training, but yet we can also take them and use them in the fight,” Peccia told reporters March 25. “It’s really using every dollar as smart as we can in our fighter portfolio when we’re trying to modernize that portfolio.”
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