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F-22 Message for Washington Critics

The F-22’s performance on its first foreign deployment should go a long way toward silencing critics who insist that the aircraft is too complicated to hold up to the rigors of real-world operations.

On a three-month deployment to Kadena AB, Japan, 12 F-22s turned in a mission capable rate of 71 percent, a readiness rate of 98 percent, and a utilization rate of 23.6, which is “pretty incredible for any fielded weapon system,” 27th Fighter Squadron commander Lt. Col. Wade Tolliver said.

The fighters were based on the island of Okinawa. It was the acid test of the new system’s deployment abilities.

The 12 aircraft flew more than 600 sorties during the visit, verifying the Raptor’s ability to deploy over very long distances and perform well on the other end. The deployment from Langley AFB, Va., to Japan took nearly 12 hours of flying.


The F-22 made its point at Kadena. (Staff photo by John A. Tirpak)

In Japan, the F-22s flew not only against the F-15s that are stationed at Kadena but also against Japan Air Self-Defense Force F-4s and F-15s and United States Navy and Marine Corps F/A-18s stationed in Japan.

The visit also allowed the F-22s to work with E-3 AWACS, Marine AV-8B Harriers, and KC-135 tankers, aircraft that usually are not available to the Langley-based squadron, Tolliver reported.

“One of our goals here was to educate the region on the F-22,” Tolliver said. That was done through the flying training as well as “three open house tours” for US and Japanese military and dependents. More than 4,000 visitors to Kadena got to see the F-22 up close.

Tolliver said each deployment—groups of F-22s have gone to Red Flag-Nellis, the Northern Edge exercise in Alaska, and weapon trials at Eglin AFB, Fla., and Tyndall AFB, Fla.—has led to more “lessons learned” about what it takes to deploy a Raptor unit.

“Every time we deploy, we learn quite a bit about what we need, or even what we don’t need,” Tolliver noted. “We learn which spare parts to carry, how many people do we really need to maintain operations, etc. This deployment is no different.” So far, after each deployment, “we got better at it.”

Tolliver said the F-22’s ability to generate sorties routinely went “better than I personally expected,” given that the unit was so far from its support base and regular maintenance facilities.

Two things he would have liked to see go better, though. One was that the unit didn’t get to participate in any large force exercises. The other was a software glitch during the flight to Kadena that wound up grabbing headlines.

When crossing the international dateline, the F-22s suffered software problems that led Tolliver to turn the aircraft around and land in Hawaii.

“Our jet is very integrated, and everything in it talks to each other,” he said. As it turned out, a time change in one system led to computer disagreements with other elements and manifested as program crashes in the airplane.

In Hawaii, Tolliver said, he was “amazed at the turnaround time for a fix.” Contractors and blue-suits alike figured out the problem and solved it in a couple of days.

“That’s why we fly airplanes,” Tolliver asserted. “You can’t make stuff like that up. You don’t know, until you deploy ... what you don’t know. You can simulate all you want, but until you get your butt in that airplane and you physically do it, that’s the only [way] you’re really going to know: Can you do it? ... Can you generate sorties? Does your supply chain work? And that’s why we do this.”

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By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN, Associated Press Writer

MOGADISHU, Somalia - At least one U.S. warship bombarded a remote, mountainous village in Somalia where Islamic militants had set up a base, officials in the northern region of Puntland said Saturday.

The attack from a U.S. destroyer took place late Friday, said Muse Gelle, the regional governor. The extremists had arrived Wednesday by speedboat at the port town of Bargal.

Gelle said the area is a dense thicket, making it difficult for security forces from the semiautonomous republic of Puntland to intervene on their own.

A local radio station quoted Puntland's leader, Ade Muse, as saying that his forces had battled with the extremists for hours before U.S. ships arrived and used their cannons. Muse said five of his troops were wounded, but that he had no information about casualties among the extremists.

A task force of coalition ships, called CTF-150, is permanently based in the northern Indian Ocean and patrols the Somali coast in hopes of intercepting international terrorists. U.S. destroyers are normally assigned to the task force and patrol in pairs.

CNN International, quoting a Pentagon official, also reported the U.S. warship's involvement. A Pentagon spokesman told The Associated Press he had no information about the incident.

"This is a global war on terror and the U.S. remains committed to reducing terrorist capabilities when and where we find them," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.

"We recognize the importance of working closely with allies to seek out, identify, locate, capture, and if necessary, kill terrorists and those who would provide them safe haven," Whitman said. "The very nature of some of our operations, as well as the success of those operations is often predicated on our ability to work quietly with our partners and allies."

At an international conference in Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters who asked about the Somalia reports on Saturday, "Frankly, I don't know exactly what was going on. I've been on the road. And I wouldn't be commenting on operational activities anyway."

Puntland's minister of information, Mohamed Abdulrahman Banga, told the AP that the extremists arrived heavily armed in two fishing boats from southern Somalia, which they controlled for six months last year before being routed by Ethiopian troops sent to prop up a faltering Somali government.

"They had their own small boats and guns. We do not know exactly where they came from — maybe from Ras Kamboni, where they were cornered in January," he said.

Local fishermen, contacted by telephone, said about a dozen fighters arrived Wednesday, but Puntland officials said the number could be as high as 35.

The United States has repeatedly accused Somalia's Council of Islamic Courts of harboring international terrorists linked to al-Qaida and allegedly responsible for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The U.S. sent a small number of special operations troops with the Ethiopian forces that drove the Islamic forces into hiding. U.S. warplanes have carried out at least two airstrikes in an attempt to kill suspected al-Qaida members, Pentagon officials have said.

In Mogadishu, unknown gunmen killed a government official, Hassan Ali Sa'id, in the capital's southern neighborhood late Saturday as he was about to enter his house. Sa'id was district commissioner of the Howlwadaag area.

"We heard two shots and we came out and we saw our neighbor lying in the street and a car disappearing," said Sa'id Ahmed Yonis.

Sa'id is the second district commissioner killed in Mogadishu in the past month

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Clouded Leopard said:

DefenseTech had an article. Apparently the Navy is designing a torpedo to be dropped from the air that has a glider attached. This not only allows it to fly a distance, but also gives it a softer landing on the water.

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Norfolk-based ship fires on pirates off Somalia
By LOUIS HANSEN, The Virginian-Pilot
© June 7, 2007

The Norfolk-based amphibious ship Carter Hall fired on pirates off the coast of Somalia as they overtook a Danish cargo ship, a Navy official said Wednesday.

The Carter Hall fired several warning shots over the Danish vessel Danica White on Saturday and then destroyed three skiffs used by the pirates, said the Navy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter.

The hijackers took the ship from international seas and slipped into Somali territorial waters, where the United States does not have jurisdiction, The Associated Press reported.

The Carter Hall is part of a multinational naval task force assigned to patrol off the Horn of Africa. The dock landing ship, which supports amphibious assaults through landing craft and helicopters, deployed from Norfolk Naval Station.

Cmdr. James E. McGovern, a Virginia Beach native and 1988 graduate of Norfolk State University, is the ship's captain, according to the ship's W eb site.

The ship is equipped with two 25 mm machine guns, two 20 mm close-in weapons and six 50-caliber machine guns.

Lars Thuesen, head of the Danish Foreign Ministry's consular department, told a Danish news agency that authorities have been unable to contact the cargo ship and the situation could take weeks to resolve, according to the A P.

A spokesman for the ship's owner, H. Folmer & Co., said Saturday that the Danish crew was on its way to the Kenyan port of Mombasa from Dubai when it was seized by pirates Saturday or late Friday.

International law obliges countries to combat piracy in international waters. Several locally based ships in the 5th Fleet have engaged pirates as part of an international task force.

The destroyer Gonzalez and cruiser Cape St. George engaged and captured 12 Somalis in March 2006 when the foreign seamen fired on U.S. sailors aboard small boats.

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Everyone in the Navy has the potential to lead. We have to pull that potential out of our Sailors. My emphasis is on our people, leadership and accountability. Those are three crown jewels of our Navy.

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Pace has served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff for six years, first as vice chairman and then as chairman. He was the first Marine to hold either post, according to the Department of Defense's Web site. He was sworn in as chairman in September 2005.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs is the principal military adviser to the president, the defense secretary, the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council.

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Mullen has been chief of naval operations since July 2005. Before then, he was commander of the NATO Joint Force Command Naples, Italy, and commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe, according to the Navy's Web site.

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Gates also announced that the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, is retiring. Gates said he had offered another senior assignment to Giambastiani, but he chose to retire.

The defense secretary said he will recommend Marine Gen. James Cartwright, now commander of U.S. Strategic Command, to replace Giambastiani.

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