Operational
December 14th, 2005 - 2:18 pm
That’s from a letter sent today from USAF General Ronald E. Keys to the chief of the Air Force. The F-22A Raptor is now officially operational.
Hats off to Will Collier and all the crew at Lockheed-Martin, and all the other men and women at all the companies who made this thing fly.
UPDATE: Somebody complained that I didn’t post any pretty pictures. John Noonan has them, along with lots of useful links. But click mostly for the pretty pictures.
Way to go, Will!
The F22 is Officially Operational
According to USAF General Ronald E. Keys (thanks to Stephen Green for the heads up). Should be a nice aid if we have to take out Iran’s new air defense systems. Although I honestly doubt we would have needed it anyway.
Lock and Load.
“If”?
F-22A Raptor is now officially operational…
F-22A Raptor is now officially operational
I know of two components I designed which are used in each Raptor.
That
Can we have a last hurrah for the F-15 Eagle, which maintained air superiority for the US for 30 years? (Plus, it was made in my hometown, St. Louis).
F-15, Hell Yeah!
That all time air-to-air kill ratio of 100 and something to zero is just phenomenal.
But there
Thanks be to all involved who put such a splendid weapon in the Air Force’s hands.
I appreciate the kind words, but my contribution has been pretty tiny. It took thousands of smart people busting their collective rears and almost 25 years to get to this point; it’d be pretty crappy of me to take any substantial credit.
We got one hell of a jet out of all that, though. As a pilot buddy of mine put it, from the Raptor’s cockpit, “You own the sky.”
Is Iran listening?
Hello…anyone home?? Does anyone have the fax number for the government of Iran? They may need a copy of this.
What? No pictures! For shame for shame.
cool.
pdf file, need a new version as pdf crash my browser everytime.
Another kick ass tool in the holster of democracy.
This, my friends, is the way to spend taxpayer dollars.
Congratulations and here’s the GPS coordinates for Tehran…
Let me also add, I hope an F-22 never drops a bomb or fires a missile in anger.
And I hope the Raptor is retired with respect and appreciation for a job well done, 25,30 or 50 years from now, and replaced by a fighter whose capabilities we can
Lock and load, baby! Lock and load…
If I were a pilot on the other side of an aerial fight with the USAF, I would rather just torch my own plane on the ground rather than go head to head with even one Raptor. I remeber reading somewhere that in one of the run-up exercises a single F-22 took on 8, that is eight F-15C’s and would have turned all 8 of them into smoking holes int he ground if real missles had been used. That is impressive.
I haven’t heard about 8 Eagles against 1 Raptor but the Air Force has admitted to at least Five: http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123007733
That sound you just heard was every “threat” aviator in the world soiling thier flightsuits…
Mmmm…thrust vectoring.
To the rest of the air forces in the world who wish us harm, “Good night, and good luck.”
Congratulations! We count on guys like you to make sure our pilots never find themselves in a fair fight.
Cost be damned. This is what our tax money is for — the best weapons possible in the hands of our military. Bravo.
Be as humble as you want, Will, but we’ll thank you all the same. Yeah, you’re one out of thousands that worked on this, but it doesn’t get done without folks like you.
You wouldn’t decide a soldier wasn’t worth thanking for his service just because he was assigned to a Georgia motor pool rather than Iraq. We aren’t going to short change you either. Thank you, Will.
to all the people that are complaining, especially the marine on the officersclub: it’s not a waste of money as long as it keeps absolute air supremacy. Call me when you want to fight under an unfriendly sky.
No matter how much money you spend on land stuff, without control of the air it’s a really crappy job. Ask the Iraqis how much fun it is to fight planes and helicopters using tanks.
Big ups to Will and everyone involved. Now if only we could get 200 of these shipped to Israel stat, along with a few refueling planes, and 20 Spirits. That would clean up some messes right quick.
Israel can’t afford F-22s, too expensive. We can barely afford them as it is.
Still, one of the guys posted on our boneyard post that they were getting ready to mothball F-117s.
Israel could definitely use a squadron or so of those right about now (although I will caveat that by saying by the time they’d be able to stand up a squadron of nighthawks, Iran would already have the bomb…so too late on that front).