By Marina Malenic
LANGLEY AFB, Va.— Air Force leaders are currently in discussions over how many F-22 Raptors will be modernized to full combat capability over the next five years, the service’s chief airpower provider said last week.
“As we look to the future, there is going to be continued modernization of the F-22,” Gen. William Fraser, the head of Air Combat Command, told Defense Daily in a June 18 interview here.
“We are not all the way out to the 3.1 and 3.2 software drops, which will give us increased capability,” Fraser said. “As those capabilities are brought on, we’ll of course thoroughly develop the tactics techniques and procedures on actually how we would employ that aircraft, be it in formation with itself or information in complement with other legacy platforms.”
In 2001, the first Raptors flew with the Block 3.0 software–the first combat-capable avionics version. In 2009, Increment 3.1 was tested at Edwards AFB, Calif. That upgrade provides a basic ground-attack capability through Synthetic Aperture Radar mapping, Electronic Attack and integration of the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb. Operational testing of 3.1 is scheduled for later this year, according to the Air Force.
Air Force documents detailing the F-22 program of record show that the modernization plan is expected to yield 34 Block 20 F-22s for test and training; 63 combat-coded Block 30s with Increment 3.1 software; 83 combat-coded Block 35s with Increment 3.2, and three Edwards AFB-test coded aircraft. The service will also have to decide whether to upgrade the Block 30s to the Block 35 configuration.
Officials here said timelines for the software drops are contingent on the program objective memorandum, or POM, talks, which will determine the service’s proposed five-year spending blueprint beginning in Fiscal 2012.
“The Block 3.2 upgrade will include integration of air-to-air weapons–AIM-9X Sidewinder and AIM-120D AMRAAM missiles–and some sustainment improvements,” said one official who asked not to be named. “It takes the two blocks of the F-22 that we have and brings them up to the same air-to-air capability.”
“It will also reduce out maintenance burden and related costs,” said another official. “Because we have fewer Raptors than we expected, we have to make it the most capable platform that it can be.”
The Air Force had initially planned to purchase 381 of the Lockheed Martin [LMT]-built stealth fighter.
However, even with the Block 3.2 software, the F-22 will still lack a helmet mounted cueing system to allow the aircraft to take advantage of the AIM-9X’s high off-boresight capability. The Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System (JHMCS) may be integrated at a later date, according to Air Force documents.
The service will have to spend approximately $8 billion for the Block 3.2 software upgrade, then-top Pentagon weapons buyer John Young said in late 2008 (Defense Daily, Nov. 21, 2008). In May 2009, Air Force leaders told Congress that retirement of legacy fighters would be the cost trade-off for the effort (Defense Daily, May 16, 2009).
Officials here said both F-22 and legacy aircraft operators are still studying how the two generations of fighter platforms will work together.
“The initial location of the first operational squadron here at Langley, co-located with the F-15s–those two platforms and those two communities have done tremendous work in integrating them and have laid the foundation for how we more generally will integrate fourth and fifth gen,” said one official. “That will continue as we bring on the F-35.”