The two-month long grounding of the F-22 Raptor fleet is not only preventing the Air Force from flying its premier fighter but it’s keeping the service from getting any new ones.
Raptor-maker, Lockheed Martin, and government test pilots can’t perform the check-flights necessary to accept new jets into USAF service, as a result of the grounding. The entire F-22 fleet was on altitude restrictions for months after the December crash of an F-22 in Alaska was suspected of being caused by the failiure of the craft’s oxygen generating system. On May 3, that flight restriction was replaced with an all-out grounding of the fleet. At this point, it’s unkown when the fleet will take to the skies again. All this will probably create a backlog in deliveries of the final Raptors, according to Defense News:
Technically, four aircraft have been delivered to the Air Force, but are being stored at Marietta pending the lifting of the flight restrictions. When the Air Force resumes F-22 flight operations, those aircraft will be flown to Langley Air Force Base (AFB), Va.
Two further aircraft, 4182 and 4183, have been completed, but the company and DCMA can’t do required flight testing on those jets, Stinn said. The aircraft are being stored in a near-flight-ready status, she said.
Aircraft “4182 and 4183 were scheduled to deliver in July, but they’re not in a position to do any sort of test flights, so we can’t deliver,” Stinn said. “Maybe early August, but we don’t have a definitive date.”
Aircraft 4182 and onwards, which have not undergone any of their acceptance flights, have yet to receive their final stealth coatings. The coatings are applied only after a number of flight tests have been completed, and as a result, a backlog is slowly building up.
Before the stealth coatings are applied, the aircraft fly coated only with a primer.
Let’s hope something like this doesn’t happen to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fleet when it makes up the vast majority of U.S. tactical fighters.
{ 64 comments… read them below or add one }
The F-22 program might take some bumps and hurdles for the JSFs, possibly ensuring a easier approval process. God knows.
That said, if the program is backlogged, it would suggest an opportunity to re-open the line for the distant future (for those of us obssessed with the F-22).
Lockheed needs to start putting together the "Block I" package, incorporate modern tech upgrades for the F-22, and maybe substitute some paper orders of Block 0 for Block I, then back upgrade. At 186, we might as well have an eye to keeping them fully upgraded for future threats.
Now I'm not a thinking type of man, but 2 months to fix an air system? I understand this is an extremely complex machine, but no alternatives to getting these flying?
"was suspected of being caused by the failiure of the craft’s oxygen generating system."
"Suspected" being the key word here.
I'm really surprised by this problem too… it has to be a software glitch somewhere… otherwise a mechanical problem with what is a fairly simple system should definitely be solvable. (I think)
Software code can take absolutely ages to fix… and then to re-check it again and again. To be honest, if someone already did some bad lines of code somewhere… then there is a chance they did more… so I'm guessing that's why.
Tis only a guess though.
Depending on the hundreds of thousands of lines of code, or even a million plus lines of code…bleh.
It'll be cheaper to buy the Chinese ones and reverse engineer those. We can't get it right after how long? 10 years? Enough bs is enough.
cause the words on the fuseloge: MADE IN CHINA
The turquoise baron. Is that what it looks like without its final paint job or is there another reason for it being that way?
"Before the stealth coatings are applied, the aircraft fly coated only with a primer."
All aircraft (in the west) look that way before a paint-job… apart from things with carbon-fibre.
Don't the Russians tend to have a bluish primer?
WOA!
WTF is going on?
NEW F-22 Raptors????
NEW???
Didn't they shut that production line down???
What is going on here?
This from Wiki….
On 30 July 2009, the House agreed to remove funds for an additional 12 aircraft and abide by the 187 cap. In mid-2010, Gates reduced the F-22 requirement from 243 to 187 aircraft, by lowering the preparations for two major regional conflicts to one.] President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 in October 2009, without F-22 funding….. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22…
???
yes, the procurement stopped but production still going on as suppliers started to close shop after the 187 airframe sometime back & now gradually translate to the plant. Not sure if it'll be easy to restart the production again as the suppliers are now moving on to other projects or gone for good.
There are some F-22's that are still on the production line
This IS strange…….
They're still manufacturing the 187, obviously. Little incentive to rush production, and it keeps the factories open for war production if needed.
maybe they'll keep it going for a few decades, eh?
defense projects never go away…….
"Let’s hope something like this doesn’t happen to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fleet when it makes up the vast majority of U.S. tactical fighters."
What was it that Gen. Sullivan said? Ah yes, I remember now.
Hope is not a method.
I wonder what on of these would cost us with out its fancy silver paint?
I imagine the low RCS coating is a small fraction of the total flyaway cost.
But doesn't it account for a large portion of its maintenance cost?
I don't have numbers. In the B-2, the RCS coating is the primary maintenance haggle. Don't recall if this was true of the F-117 as well. Allegedly, the F-22's coat is more robust, but it remains to be seen…
Without proper LO coating I imagine they will still have lower RCS than what the Air Force currently has.
Wonder why they don't start using the F-22 paint on the B-2 since it is more robust?
This bird will get a brown paint job similar to the color on the frames around the panels that are primer green. There are still several jets in the pipeline. The last center fuselage left the Fort Worth plant a couple of months ago headed for Marietta, GA and final assembly.
The thing about oxygen systems is that you don't really know you have a problem. A pilot can just lose conciousness. That may be what happened in Alaska. A very tough way to die because you don't have a chance to avert disaster. As my instructor told me before every flight before I got my Navy wings, "Flying is inherently dangerous!" Any instructor and pilot will tell you the samething.
-The Navy has a problem with they oxygen generating equipment on their submarines, so the entire fleet has been forced to the surface and sent to the mouthball fleet
-The Navy has a problem with the food storage freezers on the Arleigh Burke destroyers, so the entire fleet has been recalled to dry dock for overhauls
-The Army has a problem with the air conditioners on the A-1 Abrams tank so all 3,000 tanks are now non-operational and out of service
-The Army has a problem with the .223 ammo used in the M-16 rifle, apparently they can't keep their powder dry. So every M-16 rifle in the Army has been gathered up and send in for refurbishment.
-The air farce has a irrigation system problem with all of their golf courses so the poor pilots have nothing do to while the air farce brass tries to find a new watering solution for the grass. In the meantime, in order to keep up moral, the air farce brass has issued every pilot a free pass to Chucky Cheese.
;-D
There is no problem. They're retrofitting something else. Fleet-wide.
And you people worry about China’s J-20 and Russia’s PAK-FA. Imagine what thier aircrafts gonna experience.
Not necessarily. They'll probably stick to what works, which means trading capability for reliability. The teen series fighters currently in use don't appear to have these problems with their equipment…
The Chinese would only do that because they have a large population base to spend should they need to go to war……
Civilians and soldiers are not interchangeable. Eventually you run out of trained, skilled manpower well before you run out of people. Japan ran out of pilots, sailors, fuel and rifles before they ran out of aircraft, midget subs and civilians pressed into suicide squads. Germany still had Volksgrenadiers, but couldn't properly equip them, but ran out of skilled soldiers (and fuel too) before "spend"ing their population.
Really? How about this? http://www.f-16.net/news_article2791.html
Formaldehyde? Really? Formaldehyde is used in pressed wood, and is reponsible for that particular acrid smell out of the lumber department at Home Depot. It's also used to preserve stuff, especially for medical school.
Not the same level as an O2 generator going out.
Addendum: Yes, I recognize formaldehyde is a DNA cross-linker, thus a carcinogen. But considering the military is generally exempt from civilian environmental laws (look at how many military sites are Superfund), even today…what's a little formaldehyde between friends?
I think there is something more than meets the eyes. Considering how hi-tech the rest of the plane is, fixing the oxygen supply system should be a piece of cake (for the experts anyway). As someone said, they may be retrofitting something else on the whole fleet and they ain't telling.
Maybe it ain't broke, so they can't find what to fix.
Good Morning Folks,
This is rather serious stuff. The problem(s) are deeper then just a fix on the 02 generator system. The next bombshell for the F-22 will be the cost of the “fix”. If the “real” problems are as extensive as is being indicated, estimations of $50 million per plane would not be out of line or another $9.35 billion. This is not including money for programed upgrades over the first ten years of the F-22 life to bring it up to original specification as a 5th. Generation Fighter.
At this point it must be asked exactly in the current threat level where does the F-22 fit in. So far the only mission that it appears to be used for is patrolling the commercial air traffic of CONUS.
The F-22 has been billed as an sir superiority fighter, but in its six years of operational service it has yet to fly a single combat mission, although the US has been actively engaged in two ears. The defense has always been that the US has to maintain air superiority over any other country. I won’t get into the absurdity of that statement , but regardless an F-22 that after six years of operations has yet to be flown in a combat theater must be of some suspect regarding its utility and economic value to the defense of the United States.
Perhaps it come to to look into scrapping the F-22 and just writing of the 30 year $250 investment.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Says the guy without any experience in military aviation… Please go back to the rock you crawled out from….
It is rather serious, Byron. I would like you to consider that the F-22 was selected for grounding in response to OBOGS suspicion because it triggers some action without affecting ongoing war operations. I would also like to point out that the evidence for an OBOGS problem in the F-22 is purely circumstantial. If you are inclined, it would explain some incidents to blame the OBOGS. A circumstantial case can be made for other bizzare cases also, except the jets involved are not politically controversial right now. There are many, including two that have happened in the past month (an F-15J in the South China Sea and an F-16C at Nellis), but the case of Capt. Button of the USAF makes the point succinctly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_D._Button Put your biased agenda aside for a minute and think what this means to the Western Air Forces.
"an F-22 that after six years of operations has yet to be flown in a combat theater must be of some suspect regarding its utility and economic value to the defense of the United States."
Why would we deploy it in Afghanistan? To strafe a guy on a goat? Let the A10's and F15E's do that.
Flight time is expensive- no reason to send a fighter for a mission its not suited for.
Hate how people always go, "whats the point of having this? wer not using it now!", seriously people, you spend your life preparing for the future, why not for the military? People complained about the f16 in 1979, saying why have this light weigth, we dnt need it. Look now!
"Who needs an Army? World War Two is over, and we have the bomb…"
Great the only real advancement in US airpower in decades might be comming to an end before it really begin and President wants that crappy underpowerd F-35 to do the F-22s job give me a break.
JSF was always intended from the very beginning to be the primary fighter. Hence the huge proposed numbers for delivery.
The JSF was designed to fill the role of the F-16, and the F-22 the role of the F-15C. Don't know what the current plan is though….
Gates always claimed F35 can perform F22 roles….. so no need for extra Raptors… hope he's holding the basket full of eggs very safely
Hey Bryan
What is up with the overall incompetency of our "stars" (generals and admirals)? It seems that they can't do anything right.
It is my opinion that the "system" that promotes these people to high ranks is a massive failure. I mean how can there be so many "idiot" leaders.
While there are a few good smart ones out there, the vast majority is of the WTF variety. When "bad" leaders get promoted to high ranks they make "bad" decisions.
When I was active duty we actually respected the brass-now they are a laughing stock.
But I guess it's just one more sign of the overall demise of our society and country.
As someone mentioned in other news: "It's time to fire the MBAs and bring back the Engineers". The state of our economy is the way it is now because we let too many MBAs decide what we should manufacture. The same may be too for the defense industry.
+1
Can anyone decipher the tail/aircraft numbers of 4182 and 4183? Would those be the 182nd and 183rd airframes produced? I know that in a lot of airframes the first or first two numbers imply the year of production. There is no way these are 2004 airframes, right?
Someone please please PLEASE tell me F-22's don't take ELEVEN YEARS a piece to produce?
Public math! 2004 to 2011 would be seven years.
Yes, the tail numbers for all F-22s are sequential in the last four digits, even across procurement years. The first digits of the tail number represent the fiscal year the money was approved. The first flying F-22 was "914001" (or 91-001, or 4001 to confuse you more). It is a museum piece now. The first 8 jets (4001-4008) do not count in the 187 jet limit. So, I reckon the last one's tail number is 4195 or 10-195, or 104195…oh I give up.
We've all seen the dog fights in Congress over high-level appointments. It's really not much different when Congress approves (appoints) a star. They've gotta be political animals to reach that level, not necessarily also technically competent. To even get an aircraft onto the drawing board is the result of about 15 committee compromise sessions. You'd think that an O2 generating system would be on off-the-shelf item, so if there is a problem, it's either a flaw in the design compromises, or manufacturing put it in upside down. Regardless, grounding the entire fleet, such that it is, points to a very serious problem.–Gunny J
FYI: 4182/4183 are normal production planes Block 3.5. The last of the 187 will be no. 4190.
also from what I understood the no. 4182 started construction around 2008-09
Isn't the pic the JSF and not the F-22?……………..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:F22a3view.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:F-35A_three-vie…
They look close, but I /think/ the intakes resemble those of the F-22. Let's see what others say.
The F-35 intakes angle in toward the fuselage, not out toward the wing like the F-22. Pretty obvious they got the picture right, even if you can't make out the little divider between the 2 engine exhausts.
If you look just at the wings, tail, cockpit you might be deceived as I was. The intakes are the most obvious clue I could find.
I'm sorry, they do not look that much alike to me. It is obviously an F-22. See that wing sweep, the elegant canopy, the nice weapon bay door arrangement and the prominent AK on the tail signifying it is going to PACAF in Alaska?
I pray for world peace. I am against wars and killings. I also believe we need a lot of this for the country's self defense.
Won't this compete with your pro F-23 agenda?
What, are you a beauty pagent participant or something? "If I could have any wish in the world , my desire would be for world peace". Excuse me, I am going into diabetic shock. This is so sweet.
AF is too hyperbolic problem for OBOG it’s just cause start raptor in hangar, raptor didn’t fly three month and AF oxymoroon to extend wharthdog until 2040 it is old fashion tech, to stupid doing that.
That's an interesting question, but it's Lockheed paint on a Northrop product. The LM product would be be able to stand up to supercruise and high speed performance, but that doesn't mean it would be appropriate for the B-2. They both operate in different performance envelopes. Maybe there's a condition in B-2 flight where the F-22 paint isn't appropriate? Or more likely, nobody's tested it yet, and this might also be LM protecting their formula.