90th FS, Elmendorf AFB, Reaches IOC With The F-22A Raptor

Ceremonies were held at Elmendorf air force base yesterday to celebrate the arrival of six new F-22A Raptors at the base, brining the total aircraft currently stationed there to eight. The first two Raptors arrived back in May during the change of command ceremony for training and maintenance evaluation ahead of the scheduled force. The 90th FS is scheduled to receive it's full compliment of 20 Raptor by next summer while the 525th FS, which will also stationed at Elmendorf once reactivated will receive it's full compliment of 20 additional Raptors by the latter part of 2009. At that point Elmendorf will be the largest single operator of Raptors, with 40 aircraft, in the Pacific and outside the contiguous United States. By the way, these are the new Block 30 Raptors.

8/8/2007 - ELMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska (AFPN) -- It was a historic day for Elmendorf as the base officially welcomed the first of its F-22 Raptor fleet during a ceremony here Aug. 8.

Elmendorf became the second operational base and the first Pacific Air Forces installation to receive the Air Force's new superiority fighter.

"These incredible airframes are ushering in a new day in the Land of the Midnight Sun," said Gen. Paul Hester, PACAF commander. "The unmatched capabilities of this superb airplane are simply unbelievable. It furnishes our Airmen with unrivaled air supremacy and provides us with the most lopsided and unfair advantages ever seen in the air power age."

Link

Official Lockheed Press Release

Other Source

[edit on 8-8-2007 by WestPoint23]

[edit on 8/13/07 by FredT]

Just to add clarity to this post, it is important to understand that the "Block 30" is a huge jump in capabilities from the other Raptors.

Block 30 improves the hi-res SAR radar mode first introduced on the Block 20 along with other ISR enhancements such as improved side-looking passive radar, continuous satellite connectivity relaying ELINT data to comanders on the ground - AND a greatly enhanced ability to attack ground targets, particularly enemy air defenses.

Word on the street is that the SIGINT/ELINT capabilities are supposed to be able to "sniff" out even passive air defense systems by identifying the tell-tale electronic signatures between the different components of an integrated Air Defense system. Just to make it even clearer, it is rumored the Block 30 can not only tell that you are listening to your IPOD but it can tell what songs you have on it. Hope the RIAA doesn't hear about that...

Sweet i just want one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the block 30 update i was not aware
CHEERS

Excellent post as usual intelgurl. I knew the Block 30 contained significant improvements to it's radar and sensors suite but I was not aware of the specifics. Once they implements TNT and configure the AESA for high speed communications the F-22 will become an official on the scene "Battle Manager" greatly enhancing the situational awareness of other assets.

As a side note, I have to correct some of the information in my opening post. During the August 8th ceremony only four of the Raptors that landed were "new" to Elmendorf. Raptors 05-4087 and 05-4090 were the first to arrive on 20 April 2007 as the initial maintenance trainers. Tail number 05-4093 and 05-4095 both arrived 15 June 2007 to complete the maintenance four ship. As such only Raptors 05-4096, 05-4097, 05-4098 and 05-4099 arrived 8 August 2007 for the fir time at Elmendorf. 05-4087 and 05-4095 did not take part in the ceremony and tail number 090 and 093 launched from Elmendorf to intercept the arrival from Langley so they could land in a six ship formation.

Yep, I saw this in our local paper here...I Will be looking for them flying over my home...

Originally posted by intelgurl
Just to make it even clearer, it is rumored the Block 30 can not only tell that you are listening to your IPOD but it can tell what songs you have on it. Hope the RIAA doesn't hear about that...

I know they have been spending alot of time and effort developing this sort of invasive electronic attack capacity. Part of the overall network centric warfare plan. Its quite an advantage if you can invade the OPFOR's systems, d/l the data then destroy them.

WP the picture is very impressive of the a/c on the taxi way

Originally posted by FredT
Its quite an advantage if you can invade the OPFOR's systems, d/l the data then destroy them.

Indeed, especially if you can do the latter electronically via the long range EA capability of the AN/APG-77(v)1 radar. I suspect one the ares which also received an upgrade on the Block 30 was the electronic attack capability of the Raptor.

Originally posted by intelgurl
Just to add clarity to this post, it is important to understand that the "Block 30" is a huge jump in capabilities from the other Raptors.

Block 30 improves the hi-res SAR radar mode first introduced on the Block 20 along with other ISR enhancements such as improved side-looking passive radar, continuous satellite connectivity relaying ELINT data to comanders on the ground - AND a greatly enhanced ability to attack ground targets, particularly enemy air defenses.

Is that mostly software or hardware improvements?


Just wondering, are those features limited to the APG-77 and the F-22 airframe, or can the APG-81/79/63(vXX) expect to get some of these enhancements in the future?

[edit on 13/8/07 by kilcoo316]

Originally posted by kilcoo316
Is that mostly software or hardware improvements?

I'm not speaking for intelgurl but according to "Dozer" most of these improvements are due to software upgrades. As for other AESA radars, they already have some similar capability in ISR, electronic attack and data relay. However given that the F-22 features advanced specific systems such as the ALR-94 I don't think other platform will match some of it's capabilities in this realm.

Oh, and the side looking radar...


Anything to do with distributed T/R nodes for the radar?


[I remember there was talk of the F-22 being able to take smaller arrays into the engine intakes and in-front of the wing leading edge spar.]

My husband is one of the few F-22 avionics techs and is in the 90th. We live on EAFB.
Monday the 20th will be the 90th Fighter Squadron's 90th anniversary, and they're having an F-22 aerial demonstration to celebrate. Of course only military families are invited, but I'm sure the rest of Anchorage will be able to hear them.

To the person that read about them in the paper, the jets don't normally fly over the town. Their training takes place over the bush and water 90% of the time, and therefore will probably not fly over your house.

I don't really know anything about all the technical mumbo jumbo, but I do know that during a training game, ONE F-22 took down ALL the F-15s in the sky.
The 22s are not functional as a squadron yet, but will be soon. We've only got 8 so far, the base is still dominated by 15s.

I can see the obvious reasoning behind getting the F-22's out there, but I'm curious as to whether or not Russia's latest actions have had anything to do with the stationing in Alaska. Perhaps the CIA was doing it's job and had some advance warning about Russia's plans to start sending bombers our way like in the Cold War.

The jet was designed to take on the Russians originally, just seems so fitting that the largest operating base will put them in the perfect position for that.

Originally posted by cyberdude78
I can see the obvious reasoning behind getting the F-22's out there, but I'm curious as to whether or not Russia's latest actions have had anything to do with the stationing in Alaska. Perhaps the CIA was doing it's job and had some advance warning about Russia's plans to start sending bombers our way like in the Cold War.

The jet was designed to take on the Russians originally, just seems so fitting that the largest operating base will put them in the perfect position for that.

Quick jump over the north pole takes you to just about anywhere north of the equator.

F-22 has rewritten the book on fighters

We just went to watch the demonstration yesterday morning, stood there in the rain for about a half an hour across the street from the fence across the flightline.
The first go was aborted before takeoff, not sure why, but my husband suspected it had to do with a failed generator. They switched jets and fired up, tested the wings and stuff. I'd never seen the horizontal stabilizers work before, but I actually though they broke it for a second, because one of them dropped so drastically downward. From our angle it actually looked like they were waving a blanket through the air, they have so much movement!
The actual demonstration was absolutely fascinating. If it wasn't so dang loud, I could TOTALLY see how people could mistake jets for UFOs. They even create their own clouds with changes in air pressure. nearly the whole jet would be covered in a slightly disc-shaped running fog. We tried to video tape the show, but with the rain and everything, I doubt it came out very well.

These jets are crazy, at times they look like they're going to fall out of the sky because they run nearly silently and do all sorts of weird flips and rolls through the sky, but they stay nearly in the same spot they began turning in. It was almost like watching a noiseless helicopter with no blades at times.
Then they'd turn the afterburner on and leave two tiny black trails off the wings, and you'd know to cover your ears.


Anyway, that's how the day went, for anyone interested in their movements and such.

And though my husband can't comment on anything about Russia or anything else that's going on, I have my own speculations. We don't talk about it though, because I don't want him to lose his job.
The 22s aren't doing anything with Russia though, we only have 8 so far and they just kind of run around playing for now, lol

Just to add some details...

The F-22A Raptor demonstration that was held at Elmendorf AFB on 20 August 2007 was performed by Maj. Paul "Max" Moga, currently the only qualified Raptor demonstration pilot. Initial plans called for tail number
05-4096 to fly in the demo but it ground aborted due to an avionics problem, 05-4098 took it's place. The weather wasn't good, it was raining and there was a cloud basin at about 8 thousand feet. Still, the demonstration lasted for about 12 minutes and I'm told it was very impressive with a spectacular takeoff. "Max" flew the jet level at 50 feet on burner for about 6 thousand feet down the runway then instantly pitched up 90 degrees or so and did a vertical climb to about 5 thousand feet. At which point he leveled off on the thrust and the jet seemed to hover in place for a few seconds until the nose pitched down.

This was not a media event however but there was a base photographer present and some of his pictures have been released. Although there were spectators (military and civilian) who took video and pictures of their own, I figure we'll see some of those pretty soon too.

Here is a shot from Elmendorf's website.

Link

[edit on 22-8-2007 by WestPoint23]

I remember one came in for the night when I was at Dyess, I swear the engines sound funny. We were on top of the wing taking out life rafts when we heard it and everyone looked at each other with the "what the hell" looks till it did a flyby. Beautiful aircraft, especially in the air.