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.
The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.