AP IMPACT: Air Force insiders foresaw F-22 woes

KADENA AIR BASE, Japan (AP) — Years before F-22 pilots began getting dizzy in the cockpit, before one struggled to breathe as he tried to pull out of a fatal crash, before two more went on television to say the plane was so unsafe they refused to fly it, a small circle of U.S. Air Force experts knew something was wrong with the prized stealth fighter jet.

Coughing among pilots and fears that contaminants were leaking into their breathing apparatus led the experts to suspect flaws in the oxygen-supply system of the F-22 Raptor, especially in the extreme high-altitude conditions in which the $190 million aircraft is without equal. They formed a working group a decade ago to examine the problem, creating an informal but unique brain trust.


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F-35 and F-22 fly together for the first time

Images of F 35 And F 22 Fly together. Images has taken from internet.

F 22 Update

NASA Decodes Trouble With F-22

 

Rather than receiving too little oxygen, the pilots of one of the world’s most advanced fighter aircraft could be taking in too much, according to a NASA assessment of the F-22 ’s life support system.
Pilots of the Raptor have for years experienced breathing difficulties and something now called “ Raptor cough.” The Air Force launched serious investigations into the problem in 2008, after pilots reported an increasing number of “hypoxia-like symptoms.”
Since that time, the Air Force has pointed to a “mosaic” of interrelated problems in the cockpit.
Independently, the NASA Engineering Safety Center conducted its own assessment, and principle engineer Clinton Cragg presented the findings during a House Armed Services Committee hearing Sept. 13. The assessment found that a high concentration of oxygen at low altitudes can lead to “absorption atelectasis,” in which too much oxygen can wash away necessary nitrogen within the lungs and cause lung tissue to collapse. The effects of high oxygen levels are compounded by the aircraft’s “inevitable acceleration,” Cragg said.

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Airforce Officials Admit Oxygen Problem Mistake

AF admits F-22 mistakes to Congress

 

Air Force leaders admitted to Congress Thursday the service was wrong not to immediately install a backup oxygen system and is only now getting around to making fixes to the F-22’s oxygen schedule recommended in 2005.
The Air Force has spent the past two years trying to determine why their F-22 pilots suffer hypoxia-like symptoms in flight with many reporting feeling light-headed, weak and nauseous. Service officials have repeatedly grounded the F-22 fleet as the fifth generation fighter still flies under altitude and distance restrictions because of fears for pilots’ safety.
Air Force Maj. Gen. Charlie Lyon, Air Combat Command’s director of operations, Clinton Cragg, principal engineer at NASA’s Engineering and Safety Center, and retired Air Force Gen. Gregory Martin, head of Air Force Scientific Advisory Board study on the F-22’s problems, each testified before Congress on the steps the Air Force has taken to make the F-22 safer. Cragg joined the hearing because NASA, along with the Navy and Marine Corps, has aided the Air Force in its research.

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Romney's F22 Dream

Romney wants to buy more F-22s

By Michael Hoffman Monday, September 10th, 2012 5:54 pm
Posted in Air, Election

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Saturday he would buy more F-22 Raptors as part of his plan to reverse many of the defense cuts planned by the Obama administration.
Romney told a Virginia Beach, Va., television station he would not include the military in the spending cuts he is proposing to cut down the U.S. deficit.
“Rather than completing nine ships per year, I’d move that up to 15. I’d also add F-22s to our Air Force fleet. And I’d add about 100,000 active duty personnel to our military team,” Romney said in the interview. “I think the idea of shrinking our military to try and get closer to balancing our budget is the wrong place to look.”

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Air Force places F-22 blame on valve

Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Lyon, the director of operations for Air Combat Command, told the Pentagon press corps Tuesday the service never found its “smoking gun” in its search to figure out what was causing hypoxia-like symptoms when flying the F-22. Throughout the presentation, though, he placed blame squarely on a valve that inflates the Combat Edge upper pressure garment.
He listed connectors and hoses in the cockpit during the press conference. However, it’s the valve that is getting replaced. Testing on the valve is also the update Defense Secretary Leon Panetta wants to receive before lifting altitude restrictions on the stealth fighter fleet.

Read more: http://defensetech.org/2012/08/01/air-force-places-f-22-blame-on-valve/#ixzz22gWJdZxj
Defense.org 

USAF to Fix F-22 Raptor Onboard Oxygen Generator Issues by Year's End

Faulty valve could contribute to hypoxia-like symptoms experienced by some pilots

The United States Air Force's premier air superiority fighter is the F-22 Raptor. However, the F-22 has had problems over the last few years with pilots at times experiencing hypoxia-like symptoms during flight. The F-22 fleet was grounded while an investigation into the problem was conducted.

Ultimately, USAF found no hard evidence on what was causing the symptoms in some pilots and the aircraft were returned to the skies with no fixes applied.


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F-22 Raptor Loses $79 Billion Advantage in Dogfights: Report

The United States has spent nearly $80 billion to develop the most advanced stealth fighter jet in history, the F-22 Raptor, but the Air Force recently found out firsthand that while the planes own the skies at modern long-range air combat, it is “evenly matched” with cheaper, foreign jets when it comes to old-school dogfighting.
The F-22 made its debut at the international Red Flag Alaska training exercise this June where the planes “cleared the skies of simulated enemy forces and provided security for Australian, German, Japanese, Polish and [NATO] aircraft,” according to an after-action public report by the Air Force. The F-22 took part in the exercise while under strict flying restrictions imposed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in light of mysterious, potentially deadly oxygen problems with the planes — problems that the Pentagon believes it has since solved.


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Critics question AF’s F-22 solutions

Questions over the Air Force’s claim they have solved the F-22 oxygen problems are starting to get louder.
First, Flight Global’s Dave Majumdar wrote an article citing anonymous F-22 pilots concerns that the service’s scientists and engineers have falsely blamed the Combat Edge upper pressure garment. Majumdar quotes one F-22 pilot saying: “There’s one thing I know for certain: The Combat Edge isn’t the culprit.”
The pilot goes on to say he thinks Air Force leaders are desperate to try and show the service is getting closer to figuring out why so many pilots have reported hypoxia-like symptoms when flying the F-22 over the past two years. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz told the Pentagon press corps soon after Defense Secretary green lighted an F-22 deployment to Japan that the service was confident they had found the problem.

Read more: http://defensetech.org/2012/07/31/pilots-question-afs-f-22-solutions/#ixzz22JOuHJoA
Defense.org

IN FOCUS: F-22 pilots and engineers not convinced USAF has found root cause of Raptor's oxygen woes

A number of pilots and engineers are not convinced that the US Air Force has found the root cause of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor's oxygen woes despite the service officially naming the Combat Edge upper pressure garment and its associated systems as the culprits.
"There's one thing I know for certain: The Combat Edge isn't the culprit," one F-22 pilot says. "But they're trying to show positive momentum."
On 24 July, USAF chief of staff Gen Norton Schwartz told reporters that the Combat Edge upper-pressure garment and its associated breathing regulator/anti-g (BRAG) valve, hoses and connectors are to blame for the a series of "hypoxia-like" incidents have plagued the service's F-22 fleet since 2008.

©USAF

Schwartz added that the service must pay more attention to man-machine interfaces. He further added that the USAF's physiology expertise has atrophied over the course of the years.
Schwartz said that the service's experts did not fully understand the stresses on the human body at the altitudes and g-forces where the Raptor operates. Moreover, during the Raptor's original developmental and operational testing, important details were missed, Schwartz said.
But despite publicly disclosing what it believes to be the root cause of the Raptor's problems, the USAF says that it has not yet finished a written report that summarizes all the various tests, analysis and findings to support its conclusions.
Kevin Divers, a former USAF rated physiologist and F-22 flight test engineer, disputes Schwartz's assertions. Divers was the life support test-pilot vehicle interface officer responsible for testing and certifying both the original contractor furnished flight gear and the current flight gear on the Raptor fleet.
"To assume that important details were missed in the original developmental and operational testing is a very ignorant statement to make when I have approached the air force many times to give them insight into important details from that timeframe. If they had taken me up on my offer to help it should have made this whole investigation faster and cheaper for the USAF and the taxpayer" Divers says. "It is fair to say things were missed, but it isn't fair to give the Secretary of Defense and members of Congress the impression that the air force has used all of its available and capable resources to get to what I believe is a very flawed and misdirected conclusion. The USAF is still missing important details by ignoring those of us who believe in the airplane and know that we can help."


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Under restrictions, F-22 fighters land in Japan

Kyodo News via AP A U.S. F-22 stealth fighter prepares to land July 28 at Kadena Air Base, Japan.

TOKYO — A group of U.S. Air Force F-22 stealth fighters arrived in Japan on Saturday in what the service hopes will be a step toward proving that its prized aircraft are safe after a mysterious oxygen problem that was making pilots sick.
The F-22s arrived at Kadena Air Base and were expected to remain on the base, on Japan’s southern island of Okinawa, for several months. Japanese media said eight of the aircraft had arrived by Saturday night. Another four were expected to arrive later. Base officials were not immediately available for comment.
The F-22, manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corp., is the Air Force’s most advanced stealth fighter. It was built to evade radar and is capable of flying at faster-than-sound speeds without using afterburners.
But the fleet has been under tight flight restrictions since mid-May because pilots were reporting dizziness and other symptoms of hypoxia.


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Learning F-35 Lessons From F-22 Oxygen Errors

The Air Force says it has found the problem causing its F-22 pilots to suffocate in flight. Service officials are blaming it on a valve in the upper pressure garment vest and an air filter that was restricting oxygen volume.
The search for what caused the hypoxia-like symptoms for F-22 pilot took almost two years. It turns out the Pentagon is developing another fighter generation fighter jet. You might have heard of it, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. In Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz’s last press conference Tuesday as the service’s top officer, he was asked what gives him confidence something like this won’t happen to the F-35 — an aircraft with a development history littered with problems.
To his credit, Schwartz didn’t try to pretend more problems are not forthcoming for the Joint Strike Fighter.
“There’s no such thing as engineering perfection,” Schwartz said. Without test failures you’re “not really advancing the state of the art.”

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Panetta Approves Plan To Lift F-22 Limits

The U.S. Air Force is deploying a squadron of F-22s to Japan within days, a show of confidence that the service has identified the cause of oxygen problems that have forced pilots of the stealth fighters to fly only at lower altitudes and remain within 30 minutes of a landing strip.
Pilots will soon deploy to Kadena Air Base, Japan, Pentagon spokesman George Little said Tuesday.
The Air Force has determined the oxygen deprivation reported by pilots was caused by a faulty valve worn by pilots during high-altitude flights and a filter installed to measure air quality. Valves on the vests will be replaced and the filter has been removed, Little said.
Pilots will fly the cross-ocean flight to Kadena at low altitude, which does not require the vest to be worn, and will stay near landing strips as a precautionary measure.
“This is a phased approach, this is prudent, it is recommended by Air Force leadership, and the secretary approved the recommendations,” Little said.

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Faulty vest valve blamed for F-22 pilots' hypoxia symptoms

The F-22 Raptor.

(Credit: CBS)

The U.S. Air Force says it is it has identified the cause of potentially deadly oxygen deprivation problems experienced by pilots flying the F-22 Raptor fighter jet for years.
A faulty valve in pressure suits worn by pilots at high altitudes caused more than a dozen pilots since 2008 to experience dizziness, disorientation, and even blackouts, Pentagon spokesperson George Little told reporters today.
"I think we have very high confidence that we've identified the issues," Little said, according to an ABC News account of the news conference, before announcing the suspension of flight restrictions put in place on the $79 billion fleet in May.
"The valve was causing the vest to inflate and remain inflated under conditions where it was not designed to do so, thereby causing breathing problems for some pilots," Little said.

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