Pilots Call It "Absolute Dream"

How much do F-15 drivers want to try the F/A-22 Raptor? Ask Lt. Col. Ray O'Mara, USAF.

"I would put body parts on sale on eBay if I thought it would do me good to be able to get to fly this airplane."

O'Mara commands the 1st Fighter Wing F/A-22 Integration Office at Langley AFB (VA). "From a pilot's perspective, it's an absolute dream," he says. "The things that this aircraft can do, the speed that it can fly, the maneuvering capability that it's got, are just incredible."

O'Mara's wing will be the nation's first to begin converting from F-15Cs to F/A-22s by the end of the year. O'Mara himself is like a kid at Christmas.

But there's a Grinch out there. The Air Force had planned to buy 750 Raptors. That number was cut to 277 and now, the Pentagon says it can only afford 218 of the next-generation warplanes.

The Raptor is still being rapped by the likes of defense analyst Patrick Garrett, who calls the Raptor "a new toy for the Air Force." While "pilots are hot to trot to get into the cockpit... and drop a bomb or two," he says, there are lingering questions about whether the Raptor is even a necessary expense at this point. Garrett says the Iraqis did not get a single aircraft up in the air against the United States during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

But cooler minds at the Pentagon seem to prevail, even though the General Accounting Office -- the investigative arm of Congress -- has ordered the Air Force to come up with a full-blown cost accounting before the Raptor is put into full production.

"The reason we even get to this point of building the F/22s is there's a threat out there," says Brig. Gen. Kelvin Coppock, who leads more than 16,000 intelligence operations people. "Our adversaries are continuing to develop capabilities that are trying to counter the capabilities that we have."

Who are these bad guys? Coppock won't identify them, saying their identities are classified. But, he says, "it's not hard to imagine who those adversaries are. We have to improve what we can do against our adversaries because we don't want a fair fight," Coppock said. "We want to be so overwhelming to whoever is threatening our values and our way of life that they decide they don't want to do that because they know if they do it will be catastrophic upon them."

FMI: www.langley.af.mil/1fw.shtml, www.gao.gov/new.items/d04391.pdf