WASHINGTON — The Air Drive
awarded Lockheed Martin a $10.9 billion contract to modernize its F-22 Raptor fighter jet.
The huge indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity deal for the F-22 Program Workplace’s Superior
Raptor Enhancement and Sustainment, or ARES, program will cowl as much as a decade’s price
of sustainment and modernization of the fifth-generation fighter.
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The work involved taking all of the jets through “six unique maintenance
machines for structural repair, modification, coatings restoration,
and aircraft damage repair,” according to the Air Force, as well as performing “structural
modifications to increase total flying hour serviceability on each aircraft by 8,000 hours.”
The Air Force originally designed the F-22 Raptor to have an 8,000-hour lifespan,
so this effectively doubles the lifespan of the world’s first fifth-generation fighter jet.
The extra service life this upgrade entails will add decades to the F-22 fleet’s lifespan.
The Air Force believes the Raptor will be in service at least until 2060,
or more than 40 years after the last jet rolled off the production line.
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While the F-22 airframe is perhaps the most capable “chassis” in service in the USAF,
with vectored thrust and supercruise capability, its stealth nature makes
it hard to add on additional sensors and pods without compromising the stealth characteristic.
While much attention has been focused recently on the F-35 and F-15X,
not much has been given to the U.S. Air Force’s premier air superiority fighter, the F-22 Raptor.
While the Raptor was one of the most advanced aircraft in the world when it entered service in
the early 2000s, sensor, radar, and datalink technology have all advanced since then.
The Raptor has received relatively few upgrades compared to legacy fourth-generation F-15 and F-16
aircraft and now is significantly outdated in some ways. For example, F-16s, F-15s,
and F/A-18s are all equipped with the JHMCS missile cueing technology, which allows a pilot
to lock onto an aircraft just by looking at it. The F-22 currently does not have this capability.
The USAF, until now, has been largely pursuing a strategy of upgrading the F-22 via software,
allowing the F-22 to more effectively use sensors it already has while incorporating
minor hardware upgrades to allow for the integration of new weapons.
The answer is complicated. While the F-22 airframe is perhaps the most
capable “chassis” in service in the USAF, with vectored thrust and supercruise capability,
its stealth nature makes it hard to add on additional sensors and pods without
compromising the stealth characteristics, limiting its ability to be upgraded. The
shutdown of F-22 manufacturing facilities in 2011 also limited the upgrade potential of the F-22.
So how does the military plan to solve this? The latest upgrade for the F-22 comes in two parts:
hardware and a software upgrade. The upgrades are called Baseline
3.2B and Update 6. They have a couple of goals: integrate the
latest air-to-air missiles and improve the networked warfare capability of the F-22.
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These upgrades are the first step to fully integrating the AIM-9X and AIM-120D
air-to-air missiles into the avionics of the F-22. The AIM-9X was planned to be
integrated onto the F-22 in 2014, but the upgrade has been continuously pushed back.
The missile itself was finally integrated in 2017,
but the JHMCS that is meant to be paired with it was not integrated.
The latest upgrade will finally add a JHMCS-style helmet to the F-22. Conversely,
other USAF and U.S. Navy aircraft have been using AIM-9X with JHMCS since the early 2010s.
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The upgrades also add new crypto technology to the F-22, a critical
upgrade given how the F-22 is expected to work in hostile electronic warfare environments.
The success of the F-35 as a targeting aircraft of sorts that uses its superior
sensor capability to create a battlefield picture and then pass it onto older aircraft
probably prompted the USAF to install an enhanced datalink in the F-22.
The combination of the new datalink and new missiles will put the F-22 on parity
with modernized fourth-generation aircraft in weapons and networked
warfare capability. The F-35 still remains ahead in sensor technology.
While such upgrades have been planned since 2013, they only recently have been fully
funded and given priority with increased budgets in FY ’19. If all goes well,
the F-22 will remain on the cutting edge of air superiority into the 2060s,
at which point a sixth-generation fighter is planned to take over.