Nellis mission: Get Raptor pilots ready for the hunt

Jace Radke

Monday, Jan. 20, 2003 | 9:31 a.m.

Twelve years ago Lt. Col. David Rose was flying missions over Iraq during Operation Desert Storm in an F-15 Eagle when he was forced to back down from a MiG 29 Fulcrum fighter jet.

If Rose had been flying his new $100 million FA-22 Raptor, the encounter would have had a different ending, he said.

"I couldn't complete my mission because the Iraqi planes and missiles were too much for my F-15," Rose said while standing in the new Raptor hangar at Nellis Air Force Base during Friday's operation activation ceremony for the new fighter. "The MiG was trying to draw me into the SAMs (surface-to-air missiles) around Baghdad, and I had to raise my skirt and leave.

"I lost a lot of heartbeats that night. If I'd have been in an F-22, I'd have seen the MiG sooner, and would have been able to get close enough to kill him before coming in range of the SAMs."

Rose, 41, is currently the only pilot stationed at Nellis who is certified to fly the Air Force's newest aircraft, but that will soon change. By the end of the year 16 pilots with Nellis' 53rd Wing will be qualified to fly the Raptor, officials said.

The pilots and the 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron will then begin to develop the operations and tactics manuals that pilots will use to optimize the Raptor's potential.

Eight Raptors are scheduled to arrive at Nellis this year, and by 2008, 17 Raptors are expected to be stationed at Nellis. The nine additional planes will go to the base's Weapons School, where pilots will receive the equivalent of Ph.D-level training for the plane.

Lockheed Martin, Boeing and more than 1,000 subcontractors and suppliers are to build a total of 300 Raptors by 2013 at an inflation-adjusted price of $43 billion, Nellis officials said.

The Raptor at Nellis is the 12th FA-22 produced so far. The first one has been retired at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, and the other 10 are being flight tested at Edwards Air Force Base, near Barstow, Calif.

Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, Fla., will be the home for basic pilot training for the Raptor, and by 2004 a wing of 72 combat-ready Raptors should be forming at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. By 2005 the Raptor should be integrated into the military and mission-ready, Nellis officials said.

To take care of the Raptor wing, a hangar, fabrication shop, maintenance shop and parts warehouse were built at Nellis at a cost of $18.6 million.

Tech Sgt. Gary Auzenne of the 57th Maintenance Squadron will serve as a chief of one of the crews responsible for the upkeep of the Raptors at Nellis.

"These are going to be a lot easier to maintain than other planes because there is a diagnostic system that we can download onto a computer that will actually tell me what's wrong," Auzenne said. "After 13 years of using a wrench and a hammer I'm going to have to get integrated with computer software."

The Raptor features stealth capabilities and the ability to travel at supersonic speeds without the use of fuel-guzzling afterburners. That increases the plane's range and effectiveness, Lockheed Martin spokesman Gary Caires said.

The jet can fly across the 3.5 million-acre Nevada Test and Training Range in seven minutes, carrying a 20 mm Gatling gun, two AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles and six AIM-120C missiles.