AP: Air Force foresaw F-22 woes but nixed fixes as too costly

"The schedule would provide less oxygen at lower altitudes than the current schedule, which has been known to cause problems with delayed ear blocks and acceleration atelectasis,'' the technical term for the condition that leads to the coughing, according to the minutes from RAW-G's final meeting.

RAW-G members had spent two years pushing for the change in the oxygen schedule the amount of oxygen pumped into pilots' life-support systems but the necessary software upgrade never came through.

"The cost was considered prohibitive in light of other items that people wanted funded for the F-22,'' said Kevin Divers, a former Air Force physiologist who spearheaded RAW-G until he left the service in 2007 and the group disbanded.

Divers believes the cost would have been about $100,000 per aircraft.

The link between oxygen saturation at lower altitudes and the recent spate of hypoxia-like incidents at high altitudes remains a matter of debate, and it is likely that there are other contributing factors. Both the Air Force and the NASA, however, now concur that the F-22's oxygen schedule needs to be revised.

At a House subcommittee hearing this month, Clinton Cragg, the chief engineer for NASA's Engineering and Safety Center, said the current schedules provide too much oxygen at lower altitudes as RAW-G warned and also agreed with RAW-G that testing was insufficient "even back to the beginning of the program.''

Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, a spokesman for the Air Combat Command at Virginia's Langley-Eustis Air Force Base, the home base for the F-22s deployed in Japan, said the RAW-G group was not meant to last indefinitely. He said it was set up to help officials at Tyndall get up to speed on the medical aspects of flying the F-22, and disbanded "after several meetings and a safe transition to regular F-22 operations at Tyndall.''

But even in the last days of the group, its members were identifying more work that needed to be done. In an email to Divers before RAW-G's final meeting, Wyman said health hazards for F-22 pilots and ground crew needed more study.

"I am interested in the potential physiologic/health issues related to flying and fixing the F-22s,'' he wrote. He added that increased gravitational forces during accelerated turns, high speeds and high altitudes, noise and the "low observable'' materials used to give the aircraft its stealth qualities "might lead to new health issues.''

By then, the F-22 was just one of the aircraft RAW-G was concerned with. Minutes from the final meeting include "action items'' identifying potential issues with the F-35 and the CV-22 Osprey, and a suggestion that RAW-G's work be carried on with higher-level oversight so that it would have more clout. But after Divers left the service, no one took up the torch.

The Air Force says it believes improvements now being put into place make the planes safe to fly under limited restrictions. It is now refitting all pilot life support gear, redesigning the vests so that modified versions can be introduced in the fall, and adding the automated backup oxygen system in the cockpit by the end of the year.

In the meantime, the F-22s in Japan must fly under 44,000 feet so that the flawed vests will not be required, and are on a 30-minute "tether,'' meaning they must be within 30 minutes of an emergency landing site.

"While we cannot eliminate risk from flight operations, we are confident the F-22 is safe now and on a path to being as safe as any other fighter we fly,'' Sholtis said.

The Air Force says there have been no breathing-related incidents in the F-22 fleet since March 8, though the aircraft has marked more than 9,000 sorties, or 12,000 flight hours, since then.

"We won't ever bury anything if there are issues, but so far, none,'' said Brig. Gen. Matthew Molloy, an F-22 pilot and commander of the 18th Wing on Japan's Kadena Air Base. "This airplane is absolutely vital to our national security.''

The F-22's woes have been especially troubling for the Air Force because it is in many ways its showcase aircraft and its most controversial. At $190 million apiece, not counting development costs, it was lambasted in Congress as an overpriced luxury item not suited to current conflicts.

But the flurry of investigations into its safety problems have also revealed a more fundamental issue within the Air Force itself: decades of budget-cutting and outsourcing that severely compromised its expertise on what kinds of physiological problems pilots might face when flying in the extremely demanding conditions posed by its most advanced aircraft.

"Over the past 20 years, the capabilities and expertise of the USAF to perform the critical function of Human Systems Integration have become insufficient,'' Gregory Martin, who led the study into its oxygen problems for the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board investigation that began in 2011, told the House subcommittee.

Martin said the program's decline cost the Air Force expertise on life support systems, altitude physiology and pilot health and safety. He said that was compounded by "inadequate research, knowledge, and experience for the unique operating environment of the F-22.''

Maj. Gen. Charles Lyon, the Air Combat Command's director of operations, concurred with those conclusions at a news conference last month. "We probably overshot the mark on how much downsizing we did in this study of physiology,'' he said.

Divers considers the demise of RAW-G to be emblematic of that decline.

"The RAW-G became a brain trust, for sure, and it pushed various things that otherwise would have been completely ignored or not even brought up as an issue,'' Divers said. "All of that died in 2007."

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[davidjones11]

Another example of billions for defense on systems that never worked as advertise, yet NO money for the Health Care of the American people. Remember President Dwight Eisenhower gave the nation a dire warning about what he described as a threat to democratic government. He called it the military-industrial complex, a formidable union of defense contractors and the armed forces. We are paying the price for it now. The only people who come out a winner are the shareholders & the military-industrial complex. We the taxpayers are the cash cow that they love to milk. Why should they care -- its not their money. Meanwhile, the poor get poorer, middle class gets the shaft , people lose their jobs & their health care. The flip side is that the shareholders get dividends and CEO's get millions in bonus payments. And the only thing you don't hear yet from the pretenders to the POTUS is what Marie Antoinette once said before she lost her head -- "Let them eat cake..." And they want to spend more $$$$ for defense and close down the EPA, Social Security, Dept. of Educ., NOAA, and about 1/3 of other governmental departments. Nice way to add to the unemployment role.

[marine1957]

"Penny-wise and pound foolish" - typical mentality of our government.
1-million-dollar solutions deemed too expensive by politicians are paid several times over by the 5-million-dollar cost of studies, and then the original 1-million-dollar solutions are finally being implemented for a total cost of 6-million-dollars!
Those politicians should have been made to fly in the flawed aircraft until a fix had been fully implemented.

[alphaa10000]

This result is proof we spend more money on our political battles than military competence.

The $5 million spent represents a struggle for control of an embarrassing issue, and handled at the expense of pilots.

As still more evidence of a political, not technical problem, the definition and resolution of the problem began a decade ago.

[formerlyluvnut]

by takacrat September 27, 2012 1:04 PM EDT
F-18
----------------

Nah; it's sweet but, nah.

[smartalecq]

it's expensive because a F-22 screw or spring cost $10,000. military projects are over-inflated. this is how we are going to loose to china. we can build better planes; but they can make it a tenth of the cost.

it's the same problem with healthcare. the hospitals and providers charges you $200 for a piece of cotton or $500 for medicine.

I think, insurance companies has setup a system of inflating prices; so people can't afford healthcare without buying their product.

how? the hospital bills 3 times the cost of the medical procedure. but, insurance companies would only pay 1/3 of that price. if you pay cash, you pay 3 times the actual cost. insurance companies who hold the power in this relationship, pressures hospitals and providers to bill this way.

tip: when paying cash for a medical procedure, tell them that you are paying cash and would like to bargain down the price to 1/3 of the bill. they will give it to you.

[john92021]

my friend had a heart attack with no insurance. His bill was $150,000. He settled for $25,000. I have found that a doctor procedure (paid in cash)will cost you about the 20% that it costs with insurance.

[formerlyluvnut]

As far as I am concerned nothing will ever top the F15. Awesome, just awesome.

[takacrat]

F-18

[john92021]

In the meantime, the F-22s in Japan must fly under 44,000 feet so that the flawed vests will not be required, and are on a 30-minute "tether,'' meaning they must be within 30 minutes of an emergency landing site.

that's like saying we drive the Ferrari around the block at 40 MPH and have had no problems. If you can't use it, what good is it?

[alphaa10000]

bmallen3 said, "Hey genius, under war conditions all restrictions are off. 30 minutes equates to about 300 miles, not exactly much of a restriction for just training flights..."
--------

But that means combat merely removes the restrictions, it does not resolve the problem, does it?

So, in your own words, "Why bother and comment...?"

[alpinequeen]

Reminiscent of the 1947 Arthur Miller play, All My Sons, about defective parts sold to the U.S. Army Air Corps, which was based on a true story.

[Observer1051]

For more than 4 decades it has been KNOWN that the pilot is the weakest link in these fighter aircraft. (Passing out issues, G-force issues, etc...) And yet, during the development of this aircraft (and I suspect others), it would appear that these issues were overlooked. ALL AT TAXPAYERS EXPENSE!
As a TAX PAYER, I am all FOR the development of the fastest, highest, safest, and best aircraft in the world, but I also expect those responsible for developing them do so WISELY! It seems that was not done with this aircraft! It is a shame, if not criminal that people have died as a result of this basic FAILURE...

[jscott418-21618367473133020464]

Another waste of taxpayer dollars. Build a flawed plane that pilots don't want to fly and then proceed to not spend the money to fix them. Typical example of how government does not get how important it is to spend tax payer money wisely. In any government military spending is non productive for a economy. It does not do anything but create government funded jobs that may help the people that benefit from those paychecks. But its not a product that makes money. Now if we built planes that we not only used but we also sold them to other Countries with a profit. Then it would be a more productive investment. Russia learned a long time ago that too much military spending destroys your economy and creates big deficits in government.

[karek40]

The hierarchy of decision making within those organizations controlled by the government is; 1. Political 2. Fiscal 3. Technical one and two always trump three. Simple fact. When (as in this case) the technical becomes an embarrassment (it becomes political) then the funds will be there to correct the technical problem. There are numerous historical cases to validate the hierarchy from the origination of the CAA (FAA) to many events in Vietnam.