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Report: F-22s back in the skies without incident
The redeployment of Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor is going smoothly, according to The Associated Press.
The Raptors are being deployed to Japan for six months in their first overseas mission since the fleet was grounded last year over multiple instances of pilots developing oxygen depravation, a condition known as hypoxia.
According to information made public by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) in June, the F-22 had 10 times the number of hypoxia incidents of any other aircraft in the Air Force inventory, with 26 incidents per 100,000 flight hours. There was also a crash in Alaska in 2010 that took the life of Capt. Jeff Haney, the pilot. However, the Air Force determined that pilot error was to blame for the crash and that hypoxia was not involved.
The Air Force was unable to determine the root cause after a seven-month investigation, but eventually resumed flights. As a result, some pilots refused to fly the plane and members of Congress to fiercely criticize the Air Force.
The F-22s are currently flying under their altitude ceilings so as to avoid using flight vests, and they are staying close to emergency landing sites. There have been no further incidents, according to Brig. Gen. Matthew Molloy, commander of the 18th Fighter Wing, which is stationed at Kadena Air Base.
The deployment to Kadena on the island of Okinawa is meant to display confidence.
However, Okinawa has an uneasy relationship with the elements of the U.S. military that it hosts; its governor, Hirokazu Nakaima, has repeatedly protested the recent deployment of the MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft to the U.S. Marine Corps’s Air Station Futenma, also located on the island, over concerns that the aircraft may not be safe. The prefectural government has also passed two resolutions opposing the Osprey’s deployment.
