Airmen undergoing F-22A Raptor maintenance training now will be using their own dedicated stealth fighter for training instead of “borrowing” an operational Raptor. The Air Force delivered an F-22A that had been used as a test aircraft to the F-22 schoolhouse at Tyndall AFB, Fla., where it will serve as a ground instructional trainer aircraft. First, though, Tyndall must reconfigure the fighter from its test condition, removing special sensors, connectors, and wire bundles—anything that would hamper training to work on production aircraft.
Today’s armament maintainers are tasked with performing flightline (O-Level) maintenance with an assortment of legacy test sets that greatly limit the ability to quickly and efficiently verify armament system readiness, diagnose failures, and ultimately return the aircraft to full mission...