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Air Force to drop ‘A’ from F/A-22

By Gopal Ratnam and Michael Fabey
Times staff writers

Three years after the Air Force added an “A” to highlight the F/A-22 Raptor’s ability to drop bombs, the service is dropping the extra letter from the stealthy jet’s designator.

The plane, which is expected to officially enter service in the coming weeks, will henceforth be called the F-22A — with the trailing letter indicating a first variant, not an extra role.

Gen. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, who is said to have been unhappy with the F/A-22 moniker, announced the renaming in a Dec. 12 speech to an Air National Guard senior leadership conference in Baltimore, Md.

The decision was made in a recent meeting of senior service officials, said Loren Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Institute, who was familiar with the deliberations. The decision was unanimous among Air Force and senior Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Thompson said. An Air Force spokesman said the renaming decision will be formally announced in coming days. He also said that the service intends to continue with plans to develop the aircraft’s ability to strike ground targets. The Raptor first dropped Joint Direct Attack Munitions in tests last year.

The Air Force has traditionally labeled its fighter aircraft with the “F” prefix, even ones with some air-to-ground capabilities. The Raptor had been called the “F-22” since its first flights as the prototype YF-22A in the early 1990s.

In September 2002, Gen. John Jumper, then-Air Force chief of staff, added the “A” to emphasize the aircraft’s ground-attack capabilities. The switch came as the airplane was being assailed by critics inside and outside the Pentagon as too expensive for the post-Sept. 11 world.

“This isn’t your father’s F-22,” then-Air Force Secretary Jim Roche said in a 2002 interview.

Since then, several Air Force officials have called the aircraft even more flexible and capable than the F/A designator indicated. Classified capabilities, unknown to the American public and U.S. lawmakers alike, mean that the plane might as well have been called the FB-22 bomber, F/E-22 surveillance plane, F/EA-22 electronic attack aircraft, or even an RC-22 signals-intelligence platform, they said.

In recent months, the plane once again faced criticism as part of the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and was expected to face some cuts in order to make way for the Pentagon’s Joint Strike Fighter. But those fears have subsided and the Air Force is likely to get its expected fleet of 180 aircraft.

Thompson said Air Force officials were feeling a “little expansive” after the Raptor survived attacks during the QDR debates; they decided they didn’t need the extra “A” to persuade the administration and Congress to buy the airplane.

Staff writer Laura Colarusso contributed to this report.