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From the article 'FIRST FIGHTERS' (text only, not images), a report on USAF F-22s in the January 2017 issue of Combat Aircraft):
"...With just six combat-coded Raptor squadrons, it’s easy to see why Air Force leaders openly state that they simply don’t have enough F-22s and that production was cut short prematurely at 187 jets. The last flicker of hope that production might be restarted seems to have been extinguished, and the USAF has now set its sights firmly on F-35A Lightning II production and a new Penetrating Counter-Air ‘sixth-generation’ fighter. But most remember that pushing both the F-15 and F-22 through to production were huge battles for the USAF and that it will take a lot of ‘push’ to realize a sixth-generation fighter.
Once current modifications have been completed, the F-22A fleet will comprise 139 combat-coded Block 30/35 aircraft, 32 training Block 20s, 12 test-assigned Block 20/30/35s, and two pre-block test aircraft. Two jets have been lost in accidents.
...COBRAS AND J-TURNS
‘It was a truly mind-blowing experience for an F-15 guy stepping into that thing’, says Fesler. ‘I have a stealthy platform that can out-turn everybody, can out-run everybody, and it has better sensors. The F-22 put it all together. I can fly around the battlefield at Mach 1.5 in supercruise and just hang out there, being largely invisible.’ As well as incredible sensors, the sheer performance of the Raptor in the close-in fight is awe-inspiring to witness at close hand. The thrust-vectoring controls of the twin Pratt & Whitney F119 engines enable many of the maneuvers debuted by Russian ‘Flankers’ in the 1990s, but now in a swept-up, stealthy, killing machine.
‘In an F-15, if I was pulling too hard the airplane would talk to me and I’d back off on the stick, otherwise it would stall and fall out of the sky’, Fesler explains. ‘In the Raptor, the way to get out of a lot of situations is to just keep pulling back on the stick. The thrust-vectoring will just kick the nose around to wherever you want it. In another airplane you’d just depart [from controlled flight]. But that’s just a small percentage of what this jet can do. Like, the first time you point at an F-15 or an F-16 from 100 miles away you can fly right by them, turn around and come up 3,000ft behind in their six, and know they never saw you. The way they’re used to seeing you is just not there.’
Maj ‘Bullet’ is the weapons officer on the 94th FS. As a newly patched Weapons School graduate he is tasked with teaching the latest weapons and tactics on the unit — he’s the resident expert in ripping into the enemy. ‘Thrust-vectoring gives you the ability to point, but it doesn’t mean you’re automatically going to win. We teach our young pilots to use post-stall maneuvers in a way those maneuvers can be beneficial; during scenarios when we see specific ‘pictures’ [of the enemy] during BFM [basic fighter maneuvers].
‘For example, if we see a bandit overshooting our turn circle inside of a certain range, with a certain amount of line-of-sight rate and planform, we will teach our young fighter pilots to execute a minimum-radius turn to defeat the enemy’s attack and deny them our control zone. We’ll tell our pilots that in order to execute a min-radius turn, they need to select power to max A/B [afterburner], roll with lateral stick to set lift-vector approximately 30-45° angle of bank, input full pedal, and increase aft stick pressure through the moderate buffet to the light buffet, at which point they will feel the yaw rate of the aircraft start to increase. At this point the jet is post-stall. Essentially, we are teaching our fighter pilots to execute a certain maneuver or perform a certain task to achieve their objectives when they see a certain picture from the enemy. Being able to successfully maneuver your jet in relation to another aircraft is one of the most important characteristics of a fighter pilot.’
Sqn Ldr ‘Duzza’ is the privileged UK Royal Air Force exchange pilot on the Raptor, flying alongside ‘Bullet’ at the 94th FS. ‘The Raptor has incredible power’, he says. ‘It can also pull very high alpha and the post-stall control is truly eye-watering. When applicable, we use it quite a bit during BFM with Cobras, J-turns, pedal turns and high-alpha loops. In short-range BFM engagements you’ll definitely see high-alpha maneuvers — up to 60 degrees — as we trade altitude and energy for angles.’
While the thrust-vectoring clearly has its uses, the F-22 pilot is still without a helmet-mounted sight system, such as the Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing System (JHMCS) in the F-15 and F-16. While the Thales Scorpion system has been trialed on the Raptor, it has not advanced to the front line.
The agile Raytheon AIM-9X Sidewinder has made it though to the combat-coded F-22 squadrons under Update 5, after a lengthy and drawn-out test program, is a great improvement, but we would love to have a helmet [-mounted cueing system]. It’s more critical for our fourth-generation colleagues than it is for the Raptor, because typically I can arrive in the bandit’s six o’clock undetected.’
However, others acknowledge that the F-22 remains at a disadvantage in the close — within visual range (WVR) — fight due to the lack of a helmet sight. ‘We are not equal to the threat in that environment’, comments one pilot.
THE LONG GAME
It’s BVR (beyond visual range) where the F-22 truly excels air-to-air. The whole point of the stealth and advanced avionics is to kill without ever being seen. ‘The LO is in large part what we paid the money for on these airplanes’, says Fesler.
Maj ‘Bullet’ expands on this part of the mission. ‘The four-ship is our tactical fighting formation — it’s how we operate. The four-ship leader sets the tone for the mission, establishes expectations, allocates responsibilities and develops contracts. The F-22 provides the pilot with a ton of information. Each pilot needs to manage that information and use it to make the smartest tactical decision for the team. Building effective contracts and communicating them to the four-ship is what we do as flight leads.’
These contracts are the agreements between the flight lead, deputy flight lead and wingmen, conceptually regarding who will be responsible for what. For example, if a group of bandits comes in from a certain direction at a certain height, it might be the responsibility of the number two in the formation to take care of them. They would do it silently and without the need for prompting — that’s how the contracts work.
‘The integrated sensor fusion is just incredible’, adds Sqn Ldr ‘Duzza’, who is a relative newcomer to the Raptor. ‘It provides you with so much more SA [situational awareness] than you’re ever going to get in a fourth-generation fighter.’ He continues: ‘One of the trickiest things I found coming to the F-22 from the Typhoon was thinking fifth-gen. I didn’t appreciate that until I started flying the F-22. I’d worked with the Raptor on numerous occasions in the past on joint exercises and I had a good appreciation of how they worked. However, what I didn’t have an appreciation of is how you have to think in the cockpit to make that happen. Our tactics [in the Raptor] are very important — it’s all about being a team. It’s very much about how we share information within the formation. The way we fly is not just about protecting each other’s flank, it’s also the fact that another Raptor that is stood off from me might be able to provide me with information that I don’t have. The jet tells me what all the others are doing, and displays it to me in an easy-to-process format.’
‘During ACM [air combat maneuvers] we are trying to kill and survive without being detected’, says ‘Bullet’. Enemies have increasing ways to sniff out a Raptor, so mission planning is key. ‘We are currently Link 16 receive-only and our IFDL [intra-flight data link — pronounced ‘eye-fiddle’] is our information link to one another, so we can see what each other is doing. This information is fused on to our RAP [recognized air picture], which is a God’s eye view of the battlespace. We are able to develop a higher-level situational awareness of the formation with this RAP. We can see if we’re being ‘spiked’, we can see our missile, and fuel states. We are able to work with command and control assets, which further increases our situational awareness. With these inputs, we are able to develop a tactically sound plan based on the picture we see and kill the enemy.
‘That clear situational awareness, the combat identification, the total assuredness of what is going on at long range, allows the Raptor pilot to literally drag and drop a cursor on a target to deliver a killer blow. When others talk about the F-22 and it being easy to fly, it’s really not. The business of air dominance is not easy by any means, and we can’t afford to not be ready.’
Maintaining the high end of training required to keep these perishable skills honed is crucial for the Raptor community. ‘We can’t let down our guard on training for that high-end, anti-access, denied-environment air dominance’, adds Lt Col ‘Lobo’. ‘People are depending on us.’
STAYING SHARP
In its heyday, the USAF had more than 1,000 Eagles on its books. While incoming F-35A numbers remain high, these are essentially F-16 replacements. The service lives of around 235 F-15C/Ds are now being extended until 2045, but with relatively few Raptors the USAF must avoid burning out its precious F-22s before their time.
The annual readiness aircrew plan dictates a certain number of sorties that are required to maintain readiness — for the Raptor, this is a mix of missions including defensive counter-air and offensive counter-air, as well
as performance-based pilot upgrades.
The realistic simulators that today provide a key element of fast jet fighter training supplement the expensive live flying. The simulators are employed as cleverly as the aircraft, with some ingenious applications being used to meet specific needs. For example, there was a realization that the Langley pilots weren’t getting enough dissimilar air combat training (DACT). This led to the development of a new simulator scenario with distributed mission operations, essentially linking the Langley simulators to other bases in order to get that high-level training. The live flying complements this groundwork. ‘The Weapons School allows you to operate at a high level and against tools that you don’t have at your home to providing adversary support to exercise those four-ship teams.
Fresh out of training, Capt ‘Single’ is one of a number of young pilots who are able to come here as a stepping-stone to the Raptor. ‘Our squadron is a hybrid in terms of who is here’, explains ‘Stab’. ‘We have our superstar first-assignment pilots; the top graduates from pilot training like ‘Single’ who are assigned the Raptor, but they come here to tread water as they wait for their B-Course slot down at Tyndall. Plus I have former F-15, F-16 and F-22 pilots, both ANG and Air Force Reserves, plus pilots who are on the staff here at ACC [Air Combat Command] headquarters.’
For pilots like ‘Single’, this is a golden opportunity to initially learn how to be an aggressor, with plenty of flying to be had. It also allows the development of an early relationship with the Raptor, as ‘Stab’ explains. ‘Our first-assignment pilots like ‘Single’ attend the weapons and tactics talks, and on a typical day she not only leads T-38s and Red Air Raptors, but also reaches out to the Blue Air team to make plans and achieve their aims. She builds in intelligence briefings, weapons, SAMs and really orchestrates the fight. After the fight we pre-mass as a T-38 team, then we mass with the Red Air Raptors, then we go into the full Individual combat aircrew display system [ICADS] debrief. All of this means that these young pilots show up for the B-Course as a far superior round and they are as prepared as possible to step into the Raptor.’
‘Single’ continues: ‘There are eight new pilots here fresh out of training and this is our first assignment, here for two years as Red Air, while being fully read into Raptor capabilities — we can literally study their tactics. The first year it’s all about the Red Air; then as we move into our second year we are allowed to go into the simulator and start our F-22 spin-up.’
The 71st provides support to both Raptor squadrons at Langley. ‘When both squadrons are in town, we generally provide four T-38s for each, and they add between two and four Red Air Raptors to go up against the four Blue Force Raptors.’ The little Talon is, of course, easy meat for the brutal Raptor. But, as ‘Single’ told CA, ‘For us, a lot of it is about strength in numbers. They kill us, we die and regenerate and be alive again.’
Short endurance limits how long the T-38s can spend over the vast Atlantic military operating area (MOA), but they offer the Raptors 20 to 30 minutes of high-end training. ‘They will have certain DLOs [desired learning objectives] to achieve on each mission, and it’s our job to set a presentation or tactic that drives those DLOs. For example, if we get to WVR, if we can pick a Raptor up visually, that would be a DLO for them. They might be looking to fight a bandit that has a presentation in azimuth, maybe in a super-wide lane, or in range, so we present different pictures to drive those objectives. If we get to the merge, we have met their DLO, because in general their tactics rely on them not being seen. We don’t BFM with the Raptors, because they out-perform us. Their learning objective was 30 seconds to a minute before that — their decision that got them into that merge.
‘My favorite is the ACM, because we start with such a short-range problem for them that we actually do get WVR with them — it’s a lot more fun when you see them. Depending on what we present, they might need to blow through and take out a bandit, then come back for you. If we start 60 miles apart, we can present problems for them because we are savvy to their tactics. We can get around not having our own radar because we know where to look for them. There are times when we fly DCA with them and we don’t see a Raptor all day. We just drive out, get killed and go back.’
Looking at it from the Raptor perspective, Maj ‘Bullet’ adds: ‘They can merge with us at the end of the mission when we start to run out of AMRAAMs, so the F-22 will have to get close to them. If they continue to press, we have to kill them with an AIM-9X or the gun to meet our commander’s intent for the mission.’
Bereft of any advanced sensors or weapons, the T-38 pilots have to get creative when it comes to simulating a credible threat for the Raptors. ‘We know the ranges and angles we need to simulate the WEZ [weapon engagement zone] of each weapon we are replicating, so we simply write down times and post-flight check back and see if we got a kill. It’s our job to know the off-boresight capability of the weapons out there that we are simulating, and we know where that relates to as we look through the canopy of the T-38’. It’s interesting to note that one weapons officer on the 71st actually drew lines on the canopy of a T-38 to enable easier evaluation of off-boresight WEZs.
Kill Signs Painted on one T-38
‘We don’t have data tapes or a HUD [head-up display], so we rely on Baron [ground control] to give us target ranges’, adds ‘Single’. The small GPS carried to the jet for each sortie is taken back to the squadron post-mission and fused with the ICADS data to enable the flight to be replayed and carefully evaluated.
At present there are two aggressor support T-38 squadrons — the 71st FTS at Langley and the 2nd FTS at Tyndall AFB, Florida. Gen ‘Hawk’ Carlisle, the outgoing ACC boss, says that he believes it’s incorrect to use the F-22 as a Red Air platform — it’s a draw on the airframe, and it doesn’t present great training. The expanding F-35A community needs similar aggressor support squadrons. Many believe that ACC will grow its Talon aggressor business as the new T-X trainer arrives and frees up T-38Cs, which may become available as active-duty or government-furnished equipment in the hands of contractors.
Gen Carlisle said in September that he would like to form another aggressor squadron at Nellis AFB, even though the 65th AGRS relinquished its F-15s at the Nevada base in 2014, apparently because of sequestration. Carlisle went on to say that he sees a need for contractor support to supplement the Air Force’s in-house Red Air for the next 15 to 20 years.
This underscores a huge movement toward increased aggressor training, including a need for more potent, higher-end platforms.
'FIFTH GEN CHALLENGES"
For experienced pilots transitioning to the Raptor, it’s very much in at the deep end from the outset. ‘Duzza’ comments: ‘As an experienced Typhoon pilot I was only given 12 sorties on the FTU [Fighter Training Unit] down at Tyndall. When I got to Langley I still only had 15 hours in the jet.
‘The airspace here is very different to the UK. We do most of our training organically, and the Raptor has embedded training modes that you can load on to the mission data card ‘People tend to focus on pilots, but it’s the support team too. The maintainers have done a tremendous amount to improve the machine over time’, says Fesler. ‘They’ve figured a lot of things out. For example, when the Raptor first came on board it was supposed to tell on itself. You’d plug in the maintenance computer and it was supposed to say: ‘I’m broken, there’s an 85 per cent chance it’s this, there’s a 15 per cent chance it’s this’, and it would tell the crew chief what to do and the maintainers would go after it. What it actually did was say: ‘I’m broken, but it’s one of these 1,000 things, oh, and 800 of them are behind LO-intrusive panels’. So they’d have to ‘pick’ a panel to get at the parts and then re-apply the skin. Plus, parts failed at rates different to what was expected, so the jet got a poor early reputation for being un-maintainable.
‘What our maintainers here at Langley did was to go data-mining, jet by jet. They looked at what the jet said was wrong and what the pilot thought was wrong, and looked at how they fixed it. What they correlated was that when the jet said it was this and the pilot [said] 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.
‘The next thing they did was to identify which parts failed more often. The engineers redesigned and built new panels for those [parts] that we can now access [in] places that usually had to [involve the] labor-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 concerns the thrust-vectoring Pratt & Whitney 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.’
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 find our problems. The best way to find problems with airplanes is give them to young lieutenants — they’ll find the problems.’
Inevitably, the question of integration and interoperability is never far away. The Air Force is well down the road of figuring out how to integrate the F-22 and the F-35. There have been regular user summits as well as the aforementioned exchange programs. The 422nd Test
and Evaluation Squadron at Nellis is the lynchpin in this effort, and it is expected that a joint F-22/F-35 ‘Red Flag’ exercise will be held in 2017.
‘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 optimized for that. It’s the best air-to-air fighter that’s ever been built. The F-35 will have great sensors and execute some air-to-air missions, but it is optimized for the air-to-ground role. It just doesn’t have the speed and maneuverability — 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 optimized to detect, identify and kill air threats.’
As the F-35 continues to proliferate, the F-22 force has to ensure it is being used to best advantage by its fourth-generation compatriots. ‘We are involved in a ‘Razor Talon’ exercise today’, says ‘Bullet’. ‘We are working integration with multiple ~fighter and bomber aircraft against a near-peer adversary to develop
NEW ENEMY, NEW ROLES
Despite the emphasis on air-to-air, recent upgrades have obviously been designed to enhance the attack capabilities of the F-22. While the F/A-22 designation was short-lived, ‘Lobo’ acknowledges that ‘our role has shifted slightly.’
‘The F-22 was designed for air-to-air — then we added limited air-to-ground’, he explains. ‘A decade on and we are far more robust in that air-to-ground role. We have a synthetic aperture radar [SAR] and the SDB, and in Iraq and Syria under ‘Inherent Resolve’ there is a need for low-collateral damage weapons. My squadron was the first squadron with SDB, which we got under Increment 3.1. What we are doing is just looking for ways for this airplane to help out the bigger team. Whether that’s with our sensors, [or] our situational awareness, we can keep track of both air and surface threats. We are not traditional SEAD [suppression of enemy air defenses] assets. There are some things the F-35 will be best for, but we are doing a little bit of that mission.’
‘Lobo’ described the Raptor as the ‘aerial quarterback’ and says that in current combat operations, while the Syrian integrated air defense system hasn’t actively engaged coalition aircraft, it’s still good to have F-22s there. ‘You never know’, he says.
Each and every asset in the CENTCOM AOR is expected to pull its weight, and the Raptors are no exception. As well as having flown dedicated, pre-planned strikes on key targets in Syria, more nonstandard events have come up. ‘When we were deployed, the ‘Hat in the Ring’ gang was asked to provide CAS for friendlies on the ground’, says Maj ‘Bullet’. ‘As the weapons officer, I had to lead the development of TTPs [tactics, techniques and procedures] and create a plan of action to train our pilots to provide weapons effects against the enemy with SDB and JDAM. We became the first combat-coded F-22 squadron to deploy with Increment 3.1 and the first F-22s to attack the enemy using SDB. I am deeply proud of what the squadron accomplished during our deployment.’
‘Lobo’ asserts: ‘We have been trying to adapt this airplane and the capabilities it has for the current fight without going down a road that’s going to change us into an airplane that we’re not. This is the air dominance platform, and as long as we have that mission squared away, we can look at the other things.
‘The fact is that there are JTACs [Joint Terminal Attack Controllers] that need weapons. We’re overhead with those weapons, so our pilots are now trained in JTAC language and we have started dynamic targeting. It’s CAS in terms of being a strike on a co-ordinate with an SDB. So, we can adapt and be relevant without losing our identity and ability to be the high-end air dominance platform that everyone expects us to be.’ "
@Bilal Khan 777 @Khafee @Indus Falcon @HRK @Oscar
"...With just six combat-coded Raptor squadrons, it’s easy to see why Air Force leaders openly state that they simply don’t have enough F-22s and that production was cut short prematurely at 187 jets. The last flicker of hope that production might be restarted seems to have been extinguished, and the USAF has now set its sights firmly on F-35A Lightning II production and a new Penetrating Counter-Air ‘sixth-generation’ fighter. But most remember that pushing both the F-15 and F-22 through to production were huge battles for the USAF and that it will take a lot of ‘push’ to realize a sixth-generation fighter.
Once current modifications have been completed, the F-22A fleet will comprise 139 combat-coded Block 30/35 aircraft, 32 training Block 20s, 12 test-assigned Block 20/30/35s, and two pre-block test aircraft. Two jets have been lost in accidents.
...COBRAS AND J-TURNS
‘It was a truly mind-blowing experience for an F-15 guy stepping into that thing’, says Fesler. ‘I have a stealthy platform that can out-turn everybody, can out-run everybody, and it has better sensors. The F-22 put it all together. I can fly around the battlefield at Mach 1.5 in supercruise and just hang out there, being largely invisible.’ As well as incredible sensors, the sheer performance of the Raptor in the close-in fight is awe-inspiring to witness at close hand. The thrust-vectoring controls of the twin Pratt & Whitney F119 engines enable many of the maneuvers debuted by Russian ‘Flankers’ in the 1990s, but now in a swept-up, stealthy, killing machine.
‘In an F-15, if I was pulling too hard the airplane would talk to me and I’d back off on the stick, otherwise it would stall and fall out of the sky’, Fesler explains. ‘In the Raptor, the way to get out of a lot of situations is to just keep pulling back on the stick. The thrust-vectoring will just kick the nose around to wherever you want it. In another airplane you’d just depart [from controlled flight]. But that’s just a small percentage of what this jet can do. Like, the first time you point at an F-15 or an F-16 from 100 miles away you can fly right by them, turn around and come up 3,000ft behind in their six, and know they never saw you. The way they’re used to seeing you is just not there.’
Maj ‘Bullet’ is the weapons officer on the 94th FS. As a newly patched Weapons School graduate he is tasked with teaching the latest weapons and tactics on the unit — he’s the resident expert in ripping into the enemy. ‘Thrust-vectoring gives you the ability to point, but it doesn’t mean you’re automatically going to win. We teach our young pilots to use post-stall maneuvers in a way those maneuvers can be beneficial; during scenarios when we see specific ‘pictures’ [of the enemy] during BFM [basic fighter maneuvers].
‘For example, if we see a bandit overshooting our turn circle inside of a certain range, with a certain amount of line-of-sight rate and planform, we will teach our young fighter pilots to execute a minimum-radius turn to defeat the enemy’s attack and deny them our control zone. We’ll tell our pilots that in order to execute a min-radius turn, they need to select power to max A/B [afterburner], roll with lateral stick to set lift-vector approximately 30-45° angle of bank, input full pedal, and increase aft stick pressure through the moderate buffet to the light buffet, at which point they will feel the yaw rate of the aircraft start to increase. At this point the jet is post-stall. Essentially, we are teaching our fighter pilots to execute a certain maneuver or perform a certain task to achieve their objectives when they see a certain picture from the enemy. Being able to successfully maneuver your jet in relation to another aircraft is one of the most important characteristics of a fighter pilot.’
Sqn Ldr ‘Duzza’ is the privileged UK Royal Air Force exchange pilot on the Raptor, flying alongside ‘Bullet’ at the 94th FS. ‘The Raptor has incredible power’, he says. ‘It can also pull very high alpha and the post-stall control is truly eye-watering. When applicable, we use it quite a bit during BFM with Cobras, J-turns, pedal turns and high-alpha loops. In short-range BFM engagements you’ll definitely see high-alpha maneuvers — up to 60 degrees — as we trade altitude and energy for angles.’
While the thrust-vectoring clearly has its uses, the F-22 pilot is still without a helmet-mounted sight system, such as the Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing System (JHMCS) in the F-15 and F-16. While the Thales Scorpion system has been trialed on the Raptor, it has not advanced to the front line.
The agile Raytheon AIM-9X Sidewinder has made it though to the combat-coded F-22 squadrons under Update 5, after a lengthy and drawn-out test program, is a great improvement, but we would love to have a helmet [-mounted cueing system]. It’s more critical for our fourth-generation colleagues than it is for the Raptor, because typically I can arrive in the bandit’s six o’clock undetected.’
However, others acknowledge that the F-22 remains at a disadvantage in the close — within visual range (WVR) — fight due to the lack of a helmet sight. ‘We are not equal to the threat in that environment’, comments one pilot.
THE LONG GAME
It’s BVR (beyond visual range) where the F-22 truly excels air-to-air. The whole point of the stealth and advanced avionics is to kill without ever being seen. ‘The LO is in large part what we paid the money for on these airplanes’, says Fesler.
Maj ‘Bullet’ expands on this part of the mission. ‘The four-ship is our tactical fighting formation — it’s how we operate. The four-ship leader sets the tone for the mission, establishes expectations, allocates responsibilities and develops contracts. The F-22 provides the pilot with a ton of information. Each pilot needs to manage that information and use it to make the smartest tactical decision for the team. Building effective contracts and communicating them to the four-ship is what we do as flight leads.’
These contracts are the agreements between the flight lead, deputy flight lead and wingmen, conceptually regarding who will be responsible for what. For example, if a group of bandits comes in from a certain direction at a certain height, it might be the responsibility of the number two in the formation to take care of them. They would do it silently and without the need for prompting — that’s how the contracts work.
‘The integrated sensor fusion is just incredible’, adds Sqn Ldr ‘Duzza’, who is a relative newcomer to the Raptor. ‘It provides you with so much more SA [situational awareness] than you’re ever going to get in a fourth-generation fighter.’ He continues: ‘One of the trickiest things I found coming to the F-22 from the Typhoon was thinking fifth-gen. I didn’t appreciate that until I started flying the F-22. I’d worked with the Raptor on numerous occasions in the past on joint exercises and I had a good appreciation of how they worked. However, what I didn’t have an appreciation of is how you have to think in the cockpit to make that happen. Our tactics [in the Raptor] are very important — it’s all about being a team. It’s very much about how we share information within the formation. The way we fly is not just about protecting each other’s flank, it’s also the fact that another Raptor that is stood off from me might be able to provide me with information that I don’t have. The jet tells me what all the others are doing, and displays it to me in an easy-to-process format.’
‘During ACM [air combat maneuvers] we are trying to kill and survive without being detected’, says ‘Bullet’. Enemies have increasing ways to sniff out a Raptor, so mission planning is key. ‘We are currently Link 16 receive-only and our IFDL [intra-flight data link — pronounced ‘eye-fiddle’] is our information link to one another, so we can see what each other is doing. This information is fused on to our RAP [recognized air picture], which is a God’s eye view of the battlespace. We are able to develop a higher-level situational awareness of the formation with this RAP. We can see if we’re being ‘spiked’, we can see our missile, and fuel states. We are able to work with command and control assets, which further increases our situational awareness. With these inputs, we are able to develop a tactically sound plan based on the picture we see and kill the enemy.
‘That clear situational awareness, the combat identification, the total assuredness of what is going on at long range, allows the Raptor pilot to literally drag and drop a cursor on a target to deliver a killer blow. When others talk about the F-22 and it being easy to fly, it’s really not. The business of air dominance is not easy by any means, and we can’t afford to not be ready.’
Maintaining the high end of training required to keep these perishable skills honed is crucial for the Raptor community. ‘We can’t let down our guard on training for that high-end, anti-access, denied-environment air dominance’, adds Lt Col ‘Lobo’. ‘People are depending on us.’
STAYING SHARP
In its heyday, the USAF had more than 1,000 Eagles on its books. While incoming F-35A numbers remain high, these are essentially F-16 replacements. The service lives of around 235 F-15C/Ds are now being extended until 2045, but with relatively few Raptors the USAF must avoid burning out its precious F-22s before their time.
The annual readiness aircrew plan dictates a certain number of sorties that are required to maintain readiness — for the Raptor, this is a mix of missions including defensive counter-air and offensive counter-air, as well
as performance-based pilot upgrades.
The realistic simulators that today provide a key element of fast jet fighter training supplement the expensive live flying. The simulators are employed as cleverly as the aircraft, with some ingenious applications being used to meet specific needs. For example, there was a realization that the Langley pilots weren’t getting enough dissimilar air combat training (DACT). This led to the development of a new simulator scenario with distributed mission operations, essentially linking the Langley simulators to other bases in order to get that high-level training. The live flying complements this groundwork. ‘The Weapons School allows you to operate at a high level and against tools that you don’t have at your home to providing adversary support to exercise those four-ship teams.
Fresh out of training, Capt ‘Single’ is one of a number of young pilots who are able to come here as a stepping-stone to the Raptor. ‘Our squadron is a hybrid in terms of who is here’, explains ‘Stab’. ‘We have our superstar first-assignment pilots; the top graduates from pilot training like ‘Single’ who are assigned the Raptor, but they come here to tread water as they wait for their B-Course slot down at Tyndall. Plus I have former F-15, F-16 and F-22 pilots, both ANG and Air Force Reserves, plus pilots who are on the staff here at ACC [Air Combat Command] headquarters.’
For pilots like ‘Single’, this is a golden opportunity to initially learn how to be an aggressor, with plenty of flying to be had. It also allows the development of an early relationship with the Raptor, as ‘Stab’ explains. ‘Our first-assignment pilots like ‘Single’ attend the weapons and tactics talks, and on a typical day she not only leads T-38s and Red Air Raptors, but also reaches out to the Blue Air team to make plans and achieve their aims. She builds in intelligence briefings, weapons, SAMs and really orchestrates the fight. After the fight we pre-mass as a T-38 team, then we mass with the Red Air Raptors, then we go into the full Individual combat aircrew display system [ICADS] debrief. All of this means that these young pilots show up for the B-Course as a far superior round and they are as prepared as possible to step into the Raptor.’
‘Single’ continues: ‘There are eight new pilots here fresh out of training and this is our first assignment, here for two years as Red Air, while being fully read into Raptor capabilities — we can literally study their tactics. The first year it’s all about the Red Air; then as we move into our second year we are allowed to go into the simulator and start our F-22 spin-up.’
The 71st provides support to both Raptor squadrons at Langley. ‘When both squadrons are in town, we generally provide four T-38s for each, and they add between two and four Red Air Raptors to go up against the four Blue Force Raptors.’ The little Talon is, of course, easy meat for the brutal Raptor. But, as ‘Single’ told CA, ‘For us, a lot of it is about strength in numbers. They kill us, we die and regenerate and be alive again.’
Short endurance limits how long the T-38s can spend over the vast Atlantic military operating area (MOA), but they offer the Raptors 20 to 30 minutes of high-end training. ‘They will have certain DLOs [desired learning objectives] to achieve on each mission, and it’s our job to set a presentation or tactic that drives those DLOs. For example, if we get to WVR, if we can pick a Raptor up visually, that would be a DLO for them. They might be looking to fight a bandit that has a presentation in azimuth, maybe in a super-wide lane, or in range, so we present different pictures to drive those objectives. If we get to the merge, we have met their DLO, because in general their tactics rely on them not being seen. We don’t BFM with the Raptors, because they out-perform us. Their learning objective was 30 seconds to a minute before that — their decision that got them into that merge.
‘My favorite is the ACM, because we start with such a short-range problem for them that we actually do get WVR with them — it’s a lot more fun when you see them. Depending on what we present, they might need to blow through and take out a bandit, then come back for you. If we start 60 miles apart, we can present problems for them because we are savvy to their tactics. We can get around not having our own radar because we know where to look for them. There are times when we fly DCA with them and we don’t see a Raptor all day. We just drive out, get killed and go back.’
Looking at it from the Raptor perspective, Maj ‘Bullet’ adds: ‘They can merge with us at the end of the mission when we start to run out of AMRAAMs, so the F-22 will have to get close to them. If they continue to press, we have to kill them with an AIM-9X or the gun to meet our commander’s intent for the mission.’
Bereft of any advanced sensors or weapons, the T-38 pilots have to get creative when it comes to simulating a credible threat for the Raptors. ‘We know the ranges and angles we need to simulate the WEZ [weapon engagement zone] of each weapon we are replicating, so we simply write down times and post-flight check back and see if we got a kill. It’s our job to know the off-boresight capability of the weapons out there that we are simulating, and we know where that relates to as we look through the canopy of the T-38’. It’s interesting to note that one weapons officer on the 71st actually drew lines on the canopy of a T-38 to enable easier evaluation of off-boresight WEZs.
‘We don’t have data tapes or a HUD [head-up display], so we rely on Baron [ground control] to give us target ranges’, adds ‘Single’. The small GPS carried to the jet for each sortie is taken back to the squadron post-mission and fused with the ICADS data to enable the flight to be replayed and carefully evaluated.
At present there are two aggressor support T-38 squadrons — the 71st FTS at Langley and the 2nd FTS at Tyndall AFB, Florida. Gen ‘Hawk’ Carlisle, the outgoing ACC boss, says that he believes it’s incorrect to use the F-22 as a Red Air platform — it’s a draw on the airframe, and it doesn’t present great training. The expanding F-35A community needs similar aggressor support squadrons. Many believe that ACC will grow its Talon aggressor business as the new T-X trainer arrives and frees up T-38Cs, which may become available as active-duty or government-furnished equipment in the hands of contractors.
Gen Carlisle said in September that he would like to form another aggressor squadron at Nellis AFB, even though the 65th AGRS relinquished its F-15s at the Nevada base in 2014, apparently because of sequestration. Carlisle went on to say that he sees a need for contractor support to supplement the Air Force’s in-house Red Air for the next 15 to 20 years.
This underscores a huge movement toward increased aggressor training, including a need for more potent, higher-end platforms.
'FIFTH GEN CHALLENGES"
For experienced pilots transitioning to the Raptor, it’s very much in at the deep end from the outset. ‘Duzza’ comments: ‘As an experienced Typhoon pilot I was only given 12 sorties on the FTU [Fighter Training Unit] down at Tyndall. When I got to Langley I still only had 15 hours in the jet.
‘The airspace here is very different to the UK. We do most of our training organically, and the Raptor has embedded training modes that you can load on to the mission data card ‘People tend to focus on pilots, but it’s the support team too. The maintainers have done a tremendous amount to improve the machine over time’, says Fesler. ‘They’ve figured a lot of things out. For example, when the Raptor first came on board it was supposed to tell on itself. You’d plug in the maintenance computer and it was supposed to say: ‘I’m broken, there’s an 85 per cent chance it’s this, there’s a 15 per cent chance it’s this’, and it would tell the crew chief what to do and the maintainers would go after it. What it actually did was say: ‘I’m broken, but it’s one of these 1,000 things, oh, and 800 of them are behind LO-intrusive panels’. So they’d have to ‘pick’ a panel to get at the parts and then re-apply the skin. Plus, parts failed at rates different to what was expected, so the jet got a poor early reputation for being un-maintainable.
‘What our maintainers here at Langley did was to go data-mining, jet by jet. They looked at what the jet said was wrong and what the pilot thought was wrong, and looked at how they fixed it. What they correlated was that when the jet said it was this and the pilot [said] 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.
‘The next thing they did was to identify which parts failed more often. The engineers redesigned and built new panels for those [parts] that we can now access [in] places that usually had to [involve the] labor-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 concerns the thrust-vectoring Pratt & Whitney 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.’
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 find our problems. The best way to find problems with airplanes is give them to young lieutenants — they’ll find the problems.’
Inevitably, the question of integration and interoperability is never far away. The Air Force is well down the road of figuring out how to integrate the F-22 and the F-35. There have been regular user summits as well as the aforementioned exchange programs. The 422nd Test
and Evaluation Squadron at Nellis is the lynchpin in this effort, and it is expected that a joint F-22/F-35 ‘Red Flag’ exercise will be held in 2017.
‘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 optimized for that. It’s the best air-to-air fighter that’s ever been built. The F-35 will have great sensors and execute some air-to-air missions, but it is optimized for the air-to-ground role. It just doesn’t have the speed and maneuverability — 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 optimized to detect, identify and kill air threats.’
As the F-35 continues to proliferate, the F-22 force has to ensure it is being used to best advantage by its fourth-generation compatriots. ‘We are involved in a ‘Razor Talon’ exercise today’, says ‘Bullet’. ‘We are working integration with multiple ~fighter and bomber aircraft against a near-peer adversary to develop
NEW ENEMY, NEW ROLES
Despite the emphasis on air-to-air, recent upgrades have obviously been designed to enhance the attack capabilities of the F-22. While the F/A-22 designation was short-lived, ‘Lobo’ acknowledges that ‘our role has shifted slightly.’
‘The F-22 was designed for air-to-air — then we added limited air-to-ground’, he explains. ‘A decade on and we are far more robust in that air-to-ground role. We have a synthetic aperture radar [SAR] and the SDB, and in Iraq and Syria under ‘Inherent Resolve’ there is a need for low-collateral damage weapons. My squadron was the first squadron with SDB, which we got under Increment 3.1. What we are doing is just looking for ways for this airplane to help out the bigger team. Whether that’s with our sensors, [or] our situational awareness, we can keep track of both air and surface threats. We are not traditional SEAD [suppression of enemy air defenses] assets. There are some things the F-35 will be best for, but we are doing a little bit of that mission.’
‘Lobo’ described the Raptor as the ‘aerial quarterback’ and says that in current combat operations, while the Syrian integrated air defense system hasn’t actively engaged coalition aircraft, it’s still good to have F-22s there. ‘You never know’, he says.
Each and every asset in the CENTCOM AOR is expected to pull its weight, and the Raptors are no exception. As well as having flown dedicated, pre-planned strikes on key targets in Syria, more nonstandard events have come up. ‘When we were deployed, the ‘Hat in the Ring’ gang was asked to provide CAS for friendlies on the ground’, says Maj ‘Bullet’. ‘As the weapons officer, I had to lead the development of TTPs [tactics, techniques and procedures] and create a plan of action to train our pilots to provide weapons effects against the enemy with SDB and JDAM. We became the first combat-coded F-22 squadron to deploy with Increment 3.1 and the first F-22s to attack the enemy using SDB. I am deeply proud of what the squadron accomplished during our deployment.’
‘Lobo’ asserts: ‘We have been trying to adapt this airplane and the capabilities it has for the current fight without going down a road that’s going to change us into an airplane that we’re not. This is the air dominance platform, and as long as we have that mission squared away, we can look at the other things.
‘The fact is that there are JTACs [Joint Terminal Attack Controllers] that need weapons. We’re overhead with those weapons, so our pilots are now trained in JTAC language and we have started dynamic targeting. It’s CAS in terms of being a strike on a co-ordinate with an SDB. So, we can adapt and be relevant without losing our identity and ability to be the high-end air dominance platform that everyone expects us to be.’ "
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