RAPTOR, A DINOSAUR BY ANY OTHER COLOR!

RAPTOR, A DINOSAUR BY ANY OTHER COLOR!

(Global Security/Examiner/Frazer Chronicle)

Whenever I think of a Raptor, I think of the N.B.A.'s Toronto Raptor's basketball team, or the lizard-skinned, big clawed dinosaur that stood somewhere around 6' in height. In actuality, the real raptor is the size of a chicken, covered with feathers, and wasn't as smart as the Jurassic Park movie made them. They didn't hunt in packs, couldn't turn door-knobs to open doors, and weren't near as smart as the movie made them.

The raptor in today's United States Air-force referees to the stealthy combat jet plane actually called the F-22 Raptor. It's super stealthy, super fast and super expensive and seemingly, now has a super danger in the quality of oxygen fed to the pilots in the cockpits.

The vitals of this truly amassing plane are quite awesome, ceiling, more than 10 miles, speed, Mach2-plus, (more than 1300 miles per hour, 70,000 pounds of thrust from 2 Pratt & Whitney f119-PW-100 turbofans with afterburner and thrust - vectoring nozzles, "other than that there are two of these engines, I have no clue what I just wrote down," but the system(s) makes the plane fast as hell.

The armament for this flying "battle wagon," 20-mm cannon with 480 rounds, 2 sidewinder heat seeking missiles, 6 AMRAAM radar-guided missiles, or 2 1000 pound satellite - guided bombs and 2 AMRRAM missiles. Hey, I don't understand all the jargon, I just report it, and needless to say the raptor can knock the fleas of a gnats butt at 600 yards.

Until a year or two ago, a pilot's biggest fear was putting a scratch in the F-22 Raptor, "you can't use 'bondo' in a scratch on plane that costs $339 million dollars. That's right folks; this dinosaur bird is the most costly fighter of any airborne plane in the world. The B-2 bomber costs $2.2 billion, but it's a bomber, and not in the same class as the F-22.

There are "about" 183 F-22 Raptors either on the ground or in the air at any time during a 24 hour period in the United States today. What are they doing up there, well mostly having war games, or super fast surveillance.

Nobody in the world has a plane like the F-22 Raptor, nobody is even close. Did you ever play 1-1 basketball with a kid 10 years old when you were 18.....you won every time, the 10 year old was no competition. It's the same for the United State's Raptor and the rest of the world, America wins every time.

The F-22 Raptor is like Burger King (you can have it your way). The F-22 is virtually invisible to radar, super-computers designed the airframe with materials, angles, curves and surfaces that reflect or absorb radar signals, yet are strong enough to take plenty of punishment.

Engineers have developed a new kind of radar that allows the F-22 to track enemy aircraft and locate ground targets without revealing its own location. Computers operate the plane and the cockpit's 4 flat screen displays show the pilot where friendly jets and enemy fighters are located, available weapons and other information. Each pilot can “customize” the displays to his liking.

Obviously the F-22 Raptor does more than any other fighter plane in the air today, or any other plane in the history of air combat, unless you believe in the Starship Enterprise and Captain James T. Kirk, or the Klingon's "cloaking devise".

Lockheed-Martin is the lead contractor for the aircraft with Boeing handling about a 3^rd of the work. The Raptor is assembled in Marietta, Georgia, from sections built there, Texas and Washington state. There is a plant in Pinellas Park, Florida which assembles the planes canopy and about 1000 subcontractors in 42 states that supply parts for the jet.

The Air Force quotes the "flyaway costs", the price for only the airframe, engine, electronics and maintenance equipment, as $133 million, but that figure does not include research, development, and testing costs, which are also footed by the taxpayer.

Government auditors and taxpayer watchdog groups prefer to include all costs and come up with a hell-of-a lot different figure then either the Pentagon or the Air Force. The total cost for just one of these flying fighters, nick-named after an extinct chick sized bird, $339 to $361 million dollars.

And now, after all the research, after all the testing and more than 30 years of efforts on many people's parts, it seems as if the lack of oxygen has put the entire fleet of three hundred something million dollar fighter jet in peril.

Last year the entire fleet of F-22’s was grounded over the problem of clean, fresh, breathable air for the pilots while flying the super jet. From September 2011 until December 2011 the planes sat idle on the ground while tests were conducted to figure out what was going wrong.

A new charcoal filter was introduced into the air system and the planes were put back into the air, but all the filters did was cause the pilots to cough, the dizzy feelings, the disorientation was still felt.

Maybe like the chicken-sized raptor dinosaur, the F-22 is also a dinosaur.....but at a hell-of-a lot bigger price tag. Keep up the good work Pentagon.....your sure to break the bank sooner or later.