The Air Force has put off the debut of its new F-22 Raptor stealth multi-role fighter aircraft in the coalition air-combat training exercises held in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) until the Raptor fleet is more firmly established in the United States, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley said.
Originally, the Air Force had planned to send a small group of Raptors to the UAE’s Air Warfare Center to take part in the multi-week training class that started this month and will continue into next month for nations of the Arabian Gulf and their friends and partners. However, it subsequently withdrew the Raptors from the event, which is also featuring the first-ever participation of Eurofighter Typhoons, in this case from the United Kingdom. Other Air Force assets are still participating, such as F-16 Block 50 fighters.
Moseley said, while he wants the F-22s to participate in Air Warfare Center exercises, their deployment at this time would have been too disruptive to the overall F-22 fleet. The Air Force is in the midst of populating its Raptor squadrons and solidifying the aircraft’s presence at bases in the United States.
Already two combat-ready units, the 27th and 94th Fighter Squadrons (F.S.), operate from Langley AFB, Va., each with 18 front-line aircraft. And the service is currently standing up two similarly sized squadrons at Elmendorf AFB, Alaska. These are the 90th F.S. and 525th F.S. After the Alaskan units are in place, the Air Force will then establish two squadrons at Holloman AFB, N.M., and one at Hickam AFB, Hawaii, before the middle of next decade to round out the currently planned fleet. Each of the latter three units will also have 18 front-line aircraft.
“For every airplane we send, we lose about 50 or 60 training sorties to be able to get Elmendorf up and running,” Moseley said Nov. 16 in explaining the reason for keeping the Raptors at home and away from the current Air Warfare Center course. This impact would be exacerbated the longer the F-22s are away, he said.
“So I am always going to have the dilemma of taking them off line [when] I could be generating the training capacity to get the [operational readiness] and to get them at the third and fourth location,” he said.
The Air Force declared the F-22 operational in December 2005. To date the only publicly acknowledged deployment of Raptors outside of the United States occurred early this year when 12 F-22s from Langley’s 27th F.S. flew to Kadena Air Base, Japan, and stayed there for a few months as part of a normal rotation of combat forces in the Pacific theater to support the needs of the combatant commander there (Defense Daily, Jan. 26, Feb. 20 and March 5). While there, the Raptors trained with other Air Force and Navy aircraft in the Pacific region and with Japanese fighters.
Lockheed Martin [LMT] leads the industry team that builds the F-22. The Air Force’s program of record is for 183 Raptors, but its wants more. The standing requirement is for 381 of them. Already more than 100 F-22s have been delivered from Lockheed Martin’s assembly plant in Marietta, Ga.
Moseley did note that the Air Force will have “more options” with the F-22 as the Raptor’s fleet size grows closer to 183. For example, he mentioned the biennial Farnborough Air Show that will take place next in mid 2008 on the outskirts of London. The F-22 has yet to appear at a major international airshow, like Farnborough, although the service had mulled sending it to last year’s air show in Paris.