It’s official: Raptor operations begin

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LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. (ACCNS) --  The 1st Fighter Wing celebrated the Takeoff to Raptor Initial Operating Capability today, marking the beginning of F/A-22 operations here.

Although Langley just received its first two Raptors in January, the planning process began several years ago.

Six years to be exact, according to Lt. Col. Sheryl Hutchison, chief of the 1st Fighter Wing F/A-22 integration office.

That is when the site survey team assessed our facilities and developed the budget for everything that needed to facilitate the bed-down, she explained.

Since then, the wheels have been in motion for Langley to host the first operational Raptor squadron, and the integration office at Langley has been instrumental in making that happen.

The 1st Fighter Wing F/A-22 Integration Office exists to help prepare the base to receive the Raptor and get to an initial operating capability by December, said Maj. Kevin Dolata, the integration office deputy chief.

Basically, this office serves as the middleman between the 1st Fighter Wing and higher headquarters, and helps to resolve any issues with the bed-down process.

We work directly with the systems program office at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, explained Senior Master Sgt. Mark Wilder, former integration maintenance superintendent.

This office is comprised of hundreds of military members, government civil service personnel and contractors who work solely to prepare bases for the bed-down of the F/A-22. They were vital in preparing Nellis AFB, Nev., as well as Tyndall AFB, Fla., for their Raptor integration.

Within that office, a specific site activation team is dedicated purely to Langley and the efforts here.

The site activation team comes here biannually for meetings, and any specific issues we have here -- we call and talk to them to resolve those, explained Sergeant Wilder.

Besides working with the site activation team and systems program office, the integration office also works directly with other bases that may have faced the same problems.

Tyndall and Nellis have already been through and dealt with some of these issues so we can ask them for help and not have to make the same mistakes they did, said Major Dolata.

While that expertise and guidance has been very helpful, Langley is unique in that it is the launch point for the first operational Raptor squadron Nellis and Tyndall AFB are solely for test and development, and training respectively.

To become a fully operational squadron, Langley needed several new facilities.

Construction began for six new buildings with the official groundbreaking ceremony April 8, 2002. Langley now has a new flight kitchen; a new base operations building; a low-observable composite repair facility; three new operations/aircraft maintenance unit buildings; a new airfield lighting vault and a new simulator building all for a grand total of about $130 million.

The flight kitchen is an easily accessible dining facility that provides hot and cold meals for on-duty maintenance and operations personnel.

A new base operations facility was required because the hangar housing the old facility was demolished in order to make way for the new squadron operations/aircraft maintenance unit hangars. It was completed in May 2003.

The low-observable, composite repair facility is a three-bay maintenance facility with two bays dedicated to on-aircraft low-observable and composite material restoration. The third bay is usable for non-toxic aircraft structure maintenance or as a wash rack. The facility has rooms suitable for off-aircraft composite repair and classrooms for maintenance training as well and was occupied in May.

Chief Master Sgt. Chester Sutphin, the integration office superintendent, was one of the original planners who sat down with the architects in 2000 and began to design the ops/AMU buildings.

We looked at the facilities requirement plan as a baseline and then designed our hangars, making them a little bigger, explained Chief Sutphin.

Each building houses a six-bay hangar with offices for the fighter squadron and AMU attached on the flightline side of the building. The fighter squadron occupies the second floor, with the AMU on the first floor. The 27th moved into their new building in May, and the 94th just relocated to their new facility in December.

The simulator building houses facilities to teach pilots how to fly the aircraft in combat. This building, which has four full mission trainer devices and four brief/debrief classrooms, was ready for use in October.

With the facilities completed and in use, Langley received its first official F/A-22, Raptor 4005, Jan. 7, but the jet serves as a maintenance trainer only and will not be flown again. Raptor 2029, Langleys second jet, a loaner from Tyndall AFB, arrived Jan 18.

Seven jets, Raptors 3041-3047 are built and going through final modifications, flight testing and coating.

In order to ensure the jet is ready for use, it must first be inspected and evaluated for any final modifications. When those issues are resolved, the jet must then have at least three flights, flown by the contractor, before it is given to a military pilot who must fly it and accept it on behalf of the government. Finally, it must be coated (painted) with a special low-observable final finish before it is ready.

In the maturing process, each jet must have at least four flights before it will be accepted, and depending on how well the plane evolves and matures will determine when we get our first Langley jets, Sergeant Wilder said.

The first Langley Raptor, Raptor 3041, should arrive sometime in May with the additional Raptors arriving at a rate of about two a month.

Raptors 3047-50 are about 90 percent done, according to Sergeant Wilder and the bodies of Raptors 3051-58 have already been built.

Our first 18 jets are well on their way, he said, and we hope to have them all here by December.

Having the jets here and ready for use has been the goal of the 1st Fighter Wing F/A-22 integration office for quite some time.

We are the ones who deploy, explained Colonel Hutchison. We have to take the F/A-22 from being a science project into a war-fighting machine that Langley can deploy and take to the front line.

While Langley has already come a long way, there is much more work to be done.

The next step will be identifying requirements for deployment, said Colonel Hutchison.