U.S. Delays F-22 Raptor Fighters Arrival In Japan

[Ryan Ruck]

U.S. Delays F-22 Raptor Fighters Arrival In Japan

The arrival of 12 U.S. F-22 fighter planes at a U.S. air base on Japan's southern island of Okinawa was delayed on Sunday without word on a new date for their first deployment outside the United States.

The U.S. Air Force's newest fighter planes had been scheduled to arrive at the weekend at the U.S. Kadena Air Base.

But a statement from the Air Force in Okinawa said the aircraft had turned back to Hawaii for operational reasons, without elaborating. They were still scheduled to be deployed.

The three-month deployment of the stealth fighters comes as diplomats struggle to reach agreement at talks in Beijing aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear arms program, although military officials have said there was no direct link to the negotiations.

"What the F-22 deployment does is ... make the (U.S.-Japan) alliance stronger, and that is a factor for dealing with the complexities of North Korea," U.S. Forces Japan Commander Lieutenant-General Bruce Wright told journalists in Tokyo last week.

The Raptor -- said to be the most expensive fighter ever built -- is a "very formidable asset, with very formidable capability compared to any other fighter," Wright said.

The planes are able to gather data from multiple sources to track, identify and kill air-to-air threats before being detected by radar, and have significant surface-strike capability, according to the U.S. Air Force Web site.

Japan is looking to replace its F-15 fighters and Wrignt said the F-22 was one option.

On Saturday, over 200 people gathered for a peaceful protest outside the air base, with signs reading "Raptor, Go Home". Residents of Okinawa often complain of crime, noise, pollution and accidents associated with U.S. bases stationed in the southern prefecture.

[Ryan Ruck]

Lockheed's F-22 Raptor Gets Zapped by International Date Line

Six Lockheed F-22 Raptors have Y2K-esque glitch of their own over the Pacific

Lockheed’s F-22 Raptor is the most advanced fighter in the world with its stealth capabilities, advanced radar, state of the art weapons systems and ultra-efficient turbofans which allow the F-22 to "supercruise" at supersonic speeds without an afterburner. The Raptor has gone up against the best that the US Air Force and Navy has to offer taking out F-15s, F-16s and F/A-18 Super Hornets during simulated war games in Alaska. The Raptor-led "Blue Air" team was able to rack up an impressive 241-to-2 kill ratio during the exercise against the "Red Air" threat -- the two kills on the blue team were from the 30-year old F-15 teammates and not the new Raptors.

But while the simulated war games were a somewhat easy feat for the Raptor, something more mundane was able to cripple six aircraft on a 12 to 15 hours flight from Hawaii to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. The U.S. Air Force's mighty Raptor was felled by the International Date Line (IDL).

When the group of Raptors crossed over the IDL, multiple computer systems crashed on the planes. Everything from fuel subsystems, to navigation and partial communications were completely taken offline. Numerous attempts were made to "reboot" the systems to no avail.

Luckily for the Raptors, there were no weather issues that day so visibility was not a problem. Also, the Raptors had their refueling tankers as guide dogs to "carry" them back to safety. "They needed help. Had they gotten separated from their tankers or had the weather been bad, they had no attitude reference. They had no communications or navigation," said Retired Air Force Major General Don Shepperd. "They would have turned around and probably could have found the Hawaiian Islands. But if the weather had been bad on approach, there could have been real trouble.”

"The tankers brought them back to Hawaii. This could have been real serious. It certainly could have been real serious if the weather had been bad," Shepperd continued. "It turned out OK. It was fixed in 48 hours. It was a computer glitch in the millions of lines of code, somebody made an error in a couple lines of the code and everything goes."

Luckily for the pilots behind the controls of the Raptors, they were not involved in a combat situation. Had they been, it could have been a disastrous folly by the U.S. Air Force to have to admit that their aircraft which cost $125+ million USD apiece were knocked out of the sky due to a few lines of computer code. "And luckily this time we found out about it before combat. We got it fixed with tiger teams in about 48 hours and the airplanes were flying again, completed their deployment. But this could have been real serious in combat," said Shepperd.