Posted on 07/20/2002 9:36:56 AM PDT by Pokey78
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- Dust devils swirl across the wind-swept desert floor as F-22 Raptor No. 4008 touches down on a shimmering black runway.
Dry blast-furnace heat and miles of flat, rock-hard lake beds seem a world away from the verdant Cobb County surroundings the supersonic new fighter left behind when it took off from Lockheed Martin's Marietta assembly plant three hours earlier.
But it's here, in the cloudless sky over the Air Force's austere flight test center, that the controversial new fighters must prove themselves. No. 4008 joined five other F-22s on the Edwards flight line in late May.
Here, the planes are pushed beyond normal limits by test pilots who cartwheel them through the sky at high altitudes and race at supersonic speeds a few feet above the Pacific.
Next spring, they'll confront the Air Force's best F-15 Eagles and F-16 Falcons in a series of unscripted aerial duels to determine whether the longest and most expensive fighter development program in history -- one centered in Marietta for the past 11 years -- has truly produced a revolutionary weapon.
The F-22 is meant to fly faster, farther and more nimbly than any other fighter. Cockpit instruments give pilots computerized images of all potential threats within hundreds of miles, but the F-22 itself is designed to be invisible to radar. Other military planes have some of these capabilities, but none combines all of them in such a lethal package.
Fred Knox, a Boeing test pilot who recently began flying F-22s at Edwards, said the plane's "normal" appearance is deceptive. "The F-22 is about the same physical size as other fighters, and the cockpit has a stick and rudder pedals just like the rest," said Knox, 52, a former Navy flier.
"But the first time you're out there super-cruising on the test range and you can see everyone else but they can't see you, it's absolutely eye-watering. It wasn't until I experienced it myself that I began to understand how radically different this plane is from anything that has come before."
Back to square one
The story of the F-22 starts at a dead end.
On July 10, 1987, after nine months of collaboration, a group of 20 top engineers and executives from Lockheed, Boeing and General Dynamics reluctantly admitted the airplane they had hoped to build together was a turkey.
The three companies had joined forces to bid for the contract to build what was then known as the Advanced Tactical Fighter. By teaming up they could share both their expertise and the staggering costs of the competition.
But their initial design, a pointy-nosed, swept-wing jet reminiscent of the then-secret F-117 Nighthawk, or stealth fighter, was overweight and underpowered. It wouldn't fly fast enough to outrun its opponents or turn hard enough to outmaneuver them -- and it didn't stand a chance against the competing design from rival Northrop.
"We'd been grilling each other with technical questions for hours when reality finally set in," recalled Sherm Mullin, now 66, a garrulous, self-educated Lockheed engineer who headed the three-company team.
"Our airplane was going to be too heavy and it wouldn't fly well enough to win the competition. We had to start over, and we had to do it right away."
Northrop, maker of the B-2 Spirit, or stealth bomber, was already cutting metal on its prototypes when the Lockheed-Boeing-General Dynamics team tossed out its original design.
And the company that flies first generally wins.
Racing the clock
But Mullin wasn't worried. The Ivy League dropout joined Lockheed as a field engineer in 1959 and later managed the company's most sensitive and complex aerospace ventures. A lifelong collector of historical and literary biographies, Mullin believed a crisis could focus his people and enhance their creativity.
First, he had to meld the three very different organizations into a cohesive team -- and conflicting cultures were getting in the way. Boeing and General Dynamics engineers came from top universities and tended to treat each other with deference. Many Lockheed engineers had been promoted from the ranks of hourly workers and had little regard for hierarchy or protocol.
"We put everyone in a room with some of their fiercest competitors and told them to bare their souls," he said. "The process was brutal, but it was absolutely necessary."
Engineers from Boeing and General Dynamics had been taken aback by the harsh way their peers at Lockheed spoke to each other, Mullin said. "They weren't used to hearing engineers tell program managers they were full of crap. We led the world in frankness."
Mullin also took heart in the fact that aerospace history is full of examples in which short bursts of invention had produced enduring results.
The first P-51 Mustang, the legendary World War II fighter, was designed and assembled in 120 frantic days. And Lockheed's U-2 and SR-71 spy planes had emerged from short, intensive bursts. Mullin had led Lockheed's pioneering effort to design and build the world's first stealth aircraft, the F-117. It could drop precision bombs, as the world would see years later during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but the slow and plodding aircraft was flown only at night when darkness protected it from faster, more maneuverable adversaries.
The Advanced Tactical Fighter had to be a quantum leap forward. Not only would it be invisible to radar, it also would fly higher and faster and be able to outmaneuver any opponent.
"We all knew the ATF was going to be a very tough engineering problem," Mullin said. "Traditionally, what you gained in stealth you lost in speed and maneuverability. The ATF couldn't afford to make those compromises. It had to push the limits of technology across the board."
Nevertheless, 90 days of around-the-clock design work produced blueprints for the airplane that would become the F-22.
The new design was larger than the original, but a sleek front end would help it fly faster. Bigger trapezoidal wings would make its turns tighter and carry more fuel. And an oversized tail would make it an aerial acrobat.
The design's groundbreaking elements were:
ä A shape and engines that would enable the plane to fly faster than the speed of sound without fuel-guzzling afterburners.
ä Engine exhaust nozzles that pivoted up and down providing "vectored thrust" to boost maneuverability.
ä A stealth outline that made the plane virtually invisible to radar.
ä Cockpit instruments that show color images of all other aircraft within hundreds of miles, and computers that prioritize targets and allow pilots to share information without using radios.
"By October, we firmly believed we had designed the right airplane," Mullin said. "All we had to do was build it."
'Unobtainium'
The Lockheed team spent 1988,1989 and most of 1990 building a pair of F-22 prototypes at the company's plant in Palmdale, Calif., an hour's drive east of Los Angeles. The only difference in the two planes was the engines -- one carried General Electric models, the other Pratt & Whitneys. Workers confronted myriad problems, from the front of the airplane, where the canopy reflected radar, to the rear, where engine nozzles were too heavy and frequently failed.
They joked the planes would have to be carved from "unobtainium" because no known material was light enough or strong enough to meet their requirements. The team tested thousands of samples before selecting metals and composites that could stand the punishment.
When the first prototype flew -- on Sept. 29, 1990 -- members of the Lockheed-led team believed they had produced a marvel.
Lockheed test pilot Dave Ferguson made the first eight flights.
"The first thing that hits you in flying the plane is its brute force," said Ferguson, a Vietnam fighter pilot who restores Corvettes.
"The plane loves to go fast. On one of the early tests, I accelerated to 1.6 Mach [or 1.6 times the speed of sound] at an altitude of 40,000 feet and slowly reduced power to maintain that speed.
"I kept bringing the throttles back farther and farther until I was well below [full] power. The F-15 chase plane flying next to me was in full afterburner just trying to keep up."
The Northrop prototypes had already flown.
But the Lockheed-Boeing-General Dynamics team worked seven days a week for the next three months, often flying twice a day or more. In April 1991, their F-22 was named the winner, sparking celebrations in both California and Marietta.
"Things had to go almost perfectly during the fly-off -- and they did," Ferguson said. "We demonstrated the plane met or exceeded all of the Air Force's requirements, and we made it with a couple of days to spare."
'Worst-case scenario'
More than a decade later, Mullin, Ferguson and the other founders of the program are retired and gray-haired -- a reflection of the time it took to get the F-22 from concept to production.
The plane was supposed to be in production by 1995 but development issues and funding delays stretched the timetable. The plane's basic shape and physical features have remained the same, although computer and software advances have been incorporated into its electronics.
Now, the most demanding tests are just beginning at Edwards. The first planes that will be flown by frontline Air Force squadrons are just coming down the assembly line in Marietta.
Engineers there spent six years refining the plane's design and building an assembly line. The first test plane took off from the adjacent Dobbins Air Reserve Base on Sept. 7, 1997.
Edwards' testing began in 1998, and planes have been put through a steadily expanding set of challenges as more arrived from Marietta.
F-22 test pilots have flown at more than twice the speed of sound at high altitude. Now they are attempting to do the same at extremely low altitudes -- as low as 50 feet -- which is much riskier.
"The low and fast portion of the flight envelope puts the greatest loads on the airplane and the pilots," said Bret Luedke, Lockheed's chief F-22 test pilot. "We do a lot of the flying out over the ocean where we can fly at supersonic speeds and low altitudes for long distances without sonic booms bothering anyone."
Unlike the free-wheeling experimentation at Edwards in the 1940s and 1950s described in "The Right Stuff," today every F-22 flight is meticulously planned to illuminate a few narrow "test points."
Pilots pre-fly missions in a simulator, and engineers in a NASA-style control room monitor all aspects of the aircraft while it's in the air.
Still, there have been some surprises.
While exploring the F-22's flight characteristics in a worst-case scenario, Luedke intentionally shifted the fuel to one side of the plane and opened the weapons bay and gun doors. Then he rolled the plane upside down, shoved the stick forward and stepped hard on one of the rudder pedals.
The plane "cartwheeled" at 35,000 feet -- a result the computerized flight simulator hadn't anticipated.
After tumbling for a few seconds, the plane quickly recovered as soon as the pilot released the controls, a sign of its inherent stability.
"The airplane is going to be lieutenant-proof," Luedke said of the rookie Air Force pilots likely to fly the plane in the future. "Flying the F-22 is a lot less demanding than the planes they'll fly in training."
'Not . . . a fair fight'
The final exam for the F-22 is scheduled to begin in April 2003 and last six months.
That's when F-22s will face off against entire squadrons of F-15s, F-16s and others in a series of unrehearsed mock battles. The Air Force already has selected eight pilots to fly the F-22s in those operational tests.
Luedke, who will not participate, says he expects the F-22s to win handily.
"The F-15 and F-16 pilots will be doing their best to win, but they're going to have a very hard time," he said. "The F-22's avionics let the pilot see everything around him for hundreds of miles, but his opponents can't see the F-22. It's not really a fair fight."
Paul Metz, a former Lockheed test pilot who flew the maiden flight from Marietta in 1997, compares stealth to a suspenseful scene in the movie "The Silence of the Lambs," in which FBI agent Clarice Starling is hunted in a darkened basement by an attacker equipped with night vision goggles.
"I've been out on the test range [in an F-22] and told the F-15s where to look for me," Metz says.
"They'd focus their radar on the F-22 but they wouldn't see the plane until it flew right by. You can't imagine how unnerving that is to an adversary. He knows you're out there, but he can't find you, and he'll keep on searching until the moment he blows up."
Six Lockheed and eight Air Force test pilots are flying F-22s almost daily at Edwards, and they have logged more than 2,000 hours so far. They are supported by a platoon of engineers -- some on temporary assignment from Marietta and others who work for other contractors.
They have spotted some problems including brake overheating, avionics glitches and a "fin buffet," or vibration, in the F-22's tail at certain speeds. Luedke says engineers have identified the causes of those problems but haven't decided the best methods to remedy them.
Fixing the avionics -- the plane's various electronic instruments and computers -- is likely to be the most complex task.
When avionics problems crop up now, pilots must restart the entire system as if rebooting a personal computer. Avionics tests are about halfway complete, and Luedke said the process will speed up now that all the test aircraft are in place.
"There are some bugs that need to be worked out," he said. "But we haven't seen any showstoppers."
Shot down in Congress
As invincible as the F-22 appears in the air, it has nearly been shot down several times in Congress, where detractors have long regarded the plane as a symbol of Pentagon excess.
In 1999, the House eliminated funding for the first operational aircraft. The money later was restored after a full-court press by Lockheed, the Air Force and their political allies.
The Air Force has shown dogged persistence in shepherding the F-22 through more than a decade of political minefields. The plane's supporters are fond of saying the Air Force would rather give up the Air Force Academy than the F-22. But Congress has steadily whittled the number of F-22s it plans to fund, to 339 from more than 1,200. Now the Pentagon is considering a further cut to 180 planes.
That long-term number may be meaningless because Congress makes purchases in annual allotments that change from year to year. But every time the planned total is cut, it inflates the per-airplane cost because development money and fixed expenses are spread across a smaller production base.
That makes the program a fatter target.
"The F-22 is in for a real fight," said Loren Thompson, defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, a Washington policy center. "Since there's no pressing threat, the mind-set is cut, cut, cut."
Also, many wonder whether the F-22, conceived in the mid-1980s to counter the Soviet Union, is the right weapon for a world in which the chief adversaries are terrorists and their shadowy sponsors.
'Totally irrelevant'
Everest Riccioni, a retired test pilot and aircraft concept designer for the Air Force, has criticized the F-22, saying it "is really not a very spectacular increase in capability" from the updated F-15s it will replace. He said the plane won't be as stealthy as hoped and is "totally irrelevant" to future wars.
There was little need for a cutting-edge fighter in Afghanistan where Cold War-era B-52 and B-1 bombers and non-stealth Navy attack planes flew with impunity.
Meanwhile, pilotless drones capable of firing missiles and dropping bombs are rapidly being developed. Such craft fired missiles in Afghanistan, and Boeing's X-45, an unmanned stealth plane designed to shoot down other jets, has begun flight tests at Edwards.
But Thompson calls them "paper airplanes" that will always be relegated to niches, such as reconnaissance or patrolling remote areas.
Pilotless fighters "are a lot of nonsense," he said. "They're just the latest trendy idea, and we'll be on to something else in five years."
The Air Force insists the F-22 is still a much-needed replacement for the F-15, designed during the first Nixon administration. And even if the enemies aren't obvious now, Lockheed's Mullin is convinced the F-22 will eventually prove itself, just as the F-117 did in the Gulf War by knocking out heavily defended targets in Iraq.
"We didn't build the F-117 because we were worried about Saddam Hussein, but it turned out to be a pretty effective weapon against him," Mullin said.
"We can't know when we'll face a situation that will require the F-22. But if we wait until we're confronted, it's too late. We won't have time to develop the technology or train people to use it."
'The ultimate fighter'
Mullin left the F-22 program in 1991 and became president of Lockheed's Skunk Works, the company's experimental desing center. It is one of the most prestigious and technically demanding jobs in aerospace.
The frugal founder of the F-22 team, who drives a Ford pickup and has lived in the same suburban California home since 1968, says he's bitterly disappointed that delays have caused F-22 costs to skyrocket.
Mullin prefers to reflect on the early achievements, especially the final day the prototypes flew at Edwards.
On the evening of Dec. 28, 1990, the high desert was uncharacteristically still and windless.
Both F-22 prototypes had been flying since early morning, collecting as much data as possible before the Dec. 31 fly-off deadline.
One jet was zooming from the runway surface almost straight up to 50,000 feet and making punishing turns that crunched the pilot into his seat at nearly nine times his normal weight. The other was tracing huge oval contrails in the cobalt sky at more than twice the speed of sound.
"Three of us were in the control room looking at the raw data in real time and the results were just astounding," Mullin recalled. "Every 20 or 30 minutes we'd hear another sonic boom that just confirmed what we already knew. The competition was over. We had done everything we promised to do and more. We had nothing left to prove. I drove home and told my wife to make a double martini because it was time to celebrate."
Mullin says he's tried not to second-guess F-22 managers or influence their decisions in the years since then, and he doesn't lobby politicians.
He believes that the fighter he struggled to create is a national treasure.
"The F-22 is the ultimate fighter," he said. "Someday, the airplane's unique capabilities are going to be widely known. And when that happens, the F-22 will leave its mark on history."
The bad news is aircraft like the X-45 -- unmanned combat air vehicles. UCAVs will within several decades replace most manned tactical aircraft. Already, trained pilots are being sent to "fly" UAVs from ground stations around the world. The pilots are bitter and disillusioned. But the future is clear. The pilot community will continue only in logistic and combat-support aircraft.
One of these days we are going to facing China in a possible war. The more advanced equipment we have to throw against them the more likely they will back down,or it will make it easier for us to take them down.
The Northrop F-23 was the direct competitor to the Lockheed F-22 and lost the fly-off. There were only 3 built and they are in museums. Which super-expensive aircraft are you talking about?
OK... And when a threat arrives, we just have to spend 20 years of R&D and then we'll be ready. /sarcasm. When I look at the F-22, and think of a possible opponent... I think of the chicoms.
And they will be using Russian equipment to counter them.
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