No idea what happened in this case, but let's say the results once discovered will pergulate through the fleet, meanwhile all my thoughts to families & friends. I've seen ( very good ) service Test Pilots flicking furiously through their notes in the hotel, and discussing such things with flight test engineers the evening before a day of test sorties, when the day ahead releasing / firing wapons was already enough on their plate wthout a different start routine - OK nothing like combat, but a different & almost as pervasive stress, having to put it bluntly to prove both the aircraft & themselves.įrom what I've read & heard from truly great Test Pilots, a PIO is all too easy to get sucked into by modern FBW aircraft - we've seen the prototype F-22 video. The F-22 costs 143 million apiece according to the Air Force (although its critics claim the real cost is far higher) and before this latest crash, the Raptor had a Class A mishap rate of six to seven per 100,000 flight hours, according to the folks at Strategy Page. Root cause of F-22 Raptor hypoxia identified, confirms USAF The US Air Force (USAF) has confirmed that it has identified the root cause of 'hypoxia-like' incidents that have been afflicting its fleet of Lockheed Martin-built F-22 Raptor fighter jets, a senior service official has announced.
All modern fighters have various start modes, ranging ( in the case I knew, the Harrier GR5/7/9 with sub ' A ' models in between, from 'ground battery start, ground APU start, ground external power suppport & so on, quite a few different modes - with such a complicated electronic aeroplane as the F-22 one might do well to be a bit wary, even after test flights.