Raptor Fighter Jet F-22 Performance

A long road led to that Sunday morning flight in 1997. The US Air Force identified a requirement in 1981 for a new air superiority fighter to replace the F-15-which then had been in service for just seven years. The competitors in the Advanced Tactical Fighter competition were selected on Halloween in 1987. The YF-22 and YF-23 prototypes were flown in 1990, and the Lockheed-Boeing-General Dynamics team won the ATF contest in 1991.
After nearly 44,000 wind tunnel test hours, 13,000 material sample tests, six years of development and a trio of program rephasings mandated by Congress, the F-22 was finally airborne.
Wearing his lucky Super Chicken T-shirt under his flight suit, chief test pilot Paul Metz pulled the Raptor’s nose up and quickly gained speed and altitude, even with the landing gear down. Jon Beesley, flying the safety chase aircraft, put his F-16 in afterburner to keep up with the Raptor.
After two circuits on a triangular route around north Georgia, Metz touched down fifty-eight minutes later. As he rolled up the taxiway, he turned the jet slightly, tapped the brakes and the jet bowed to the appreciative crowd. The maiden flight was the first of 3,496 flights and 7,616 test hours to come in the F-22’s engineering and manufacturing development phase. The Air Force would declare the F-22 operational in 2005.
“The very existence of this airplane-your airplane-has altered the strategic landscape forever,” said Lockheed Martin CEO Robert J. Stevens. The date was May 2, 2012, and the occasion was the delivery of an F-22 Raptor to the U.S. Air Force. There was special significance attached to this aircraft. It was the last of 195 F-22s that Lockheed Martin had produced for the Air Force during the previous 15 years, and it represented the completion of the world’s only operational fifth generation stealth fighter fleet.
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This is an Aerospace engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft, focused on designing aeroplane and space shutlle and it is a study of all the flying wing used within the earth's atmosphere. Also dealing with the Avionic systems that includes communications, navigation, the display and management of multiple systems. Also dealing with Aircraft mishap such as Accident and Serious Incident.
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