1/72 Lockheed-Martin

F-22X Space Raptor

by Justin Davenport

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Silly Week 2006

 

The United States Air Force had long studied the idea of extending its power into near space, beginning in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. The Dyna-Soar project was actually begun and astronauts were being trained to ride a small reusable lifting-body craft into orbit before it was canceled in 1963, coinciding with the run-up to Vietnam. The Space Shuttle had been designed mainly to meet military specs, including the ability to launch heavy reconnaissance satellites from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, and one reason the shuttle was so heavy and large was the wing structure the military demanded to allow a large cross-range when the shuttle de-orbited (to allow for a wide selection of landing sites). The shuttle did launch some military payloads but its unique capabilities were never used to the fullest before the military gave up the shuttle and launched its remaining spy, communications, and navigation satellites on Titan and Delta vehicles. Other studies came and went, and the F-15 ASAT project was successfully tested before being scrapped, and while the Air Force developed evolved versions of its Delta and Atlas vehicles as well as smaller launchers like the Taurus, Falcon 1, and Pegasus that could be launched on shorter notice, with less manpower, the Air Force had not really developed a true space combat capability.

The events of August 2008 changed all that. The brutal Stalinist regime in North Korea was on its last legs as growing public unease about the ever-present famine and lack of opportunity and personal freedoms triggered riots that even Kim Jong-Il’s well-oiled propaganda machine could not gloss over. The North Koreans had launched their first satellite seven months before, an event that alarmed Asia and knowledgeable national security officials worldwide. Now North Korea’s small but growing nuclear arsenal was about to become a worldwide threat. On August 28, a Tae-Po Dong launch vehicle lofted a satellite into a polar orbit that turned out to contain four re-entry vehicles armed with 1 megaton nuclear warheads. The North Korean regime announced that they now had the power to destroy any city worldwide with less than 15 minutes’ warning time. At the same time they began advanced preparations for a lightning invasion of South Korea and ordered a national mobilization. 

On September 5, the Korean DMZ was breached as hundreds of North Korean battle tanks and armored vehicles poured into South Korean territory. South Korean refugees quickly choked all roads south and the city of Seoul fell into chaos due to the surprise invasion. Incheon International Airport was a scene of confusion as people attempted to get on the last plane out. The South Korean Government barely escaped to Pusan before the city of Seoul fell two days after the invasion. On September 9, as North Korean forces consolidated their hold on Seoul and all areas 100 miles south of the border, Kim Jong Il made an ultimatum to the world: all areas on the Korean peninsula still “occupied” by U.S. and allied forces would be ceded to the “rightful Korean government” by September 11 or “the nuclear flame would consume the capitalist dogs on the Korean peninsula and their own homelands”. The world’s attention had been on the Middle East until a few days before, but now Kim Jong Il had everyone’s undivided attention. U.S. intelligence services frantically redoubled their attempts to discover the whereabouts of North Korea’s bombs, and some analysts believed that the recently launched satellite with re-entry vehicles aboard, which had been classed as a reconnaissance satellite, was carrying part of the nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile, U.S. and South Korean forces attempted a counter-attack, and on the evening of September 10 the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions dropped on Pyongyang en-masse to try to take down Kim Jong-Il’s regime before it could issue nuclear orders. Unfortunately, Kim Jong-Il was able to trigger orders to launch the warheads on Washington, New York, Honolulu, and San Diego before the Airborne troops took him out. Orders had been issued to launch five Tae Po Dong IRBM’s to Pusan, Tokyo, Osaka, Guam, and Okinawa as well, and four of those missiles launched successfully before a B-2 led air strike could take the newly discovered silos out. The satellite launched its re-entry vehicles, and NORAD quickly determined that four re-entry vehicles had separated from the satellite and were headed for the United States. Air raid sirens sounded and the President was awakened from his early-morning sleep and hustled to Marine One, and briefed on the situation. The President hurriedly boarded the E-4B NEACP aircraft and the plane took off just in time, just before the Nation’s capital was destroyed. The New York warhead had missed Manhattan and exploded over eastern Long Island, while San Diego and Honolulu suffered the same fate as Washington. South Korea lost its government and its largest un-occupied city, while Osaka and Okinawa got direct hits. The Tokyo warhead missed the city and exploded in Tokyo Bay, and Guam became the largest surviving U.S. base in the Pacific outside of Alaska.

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The Korean peninsula fell to civil war and chaos while the U.S. Government picked up the pieces and the American people rallied behind the recovery effort. The new Secretary of Defense ordered a crash program to develop a fighter capable of taking out satellites orbiting the earth, up to geosynchronous orbit. Lockheed Martin’s F-22 was deemed suitable for the effort, as its performance was much higher than any other fighter in the inventory. Lockheed Martin built six test airframes based on the YF-22 prototype moldline (the aerodynamics of the prototype were more suited to the flight profile than the production version) and outfitted the F-22X, as it was called, with a large fuel tank on the top of the fuselage. This fuel tank would contain cryogenic propellant for the time-tested RL-10 rocket engine in the back of the tank, the same engine that powered the X-15 so long ago. The F-22X also featured two RCS quads mounted on the wingtips, which contained small integral fuel tanks with the propellant used by the quads. These quads would control the direction the craft was flying in during exo-atmospheric operations. The weapons bay on the bottom of the fuselage would accommodate two small satellite launchers, or two anti-satellite rockets, or a large laser also under development that promised to extend the F-22X’s destructive reach to points up to 40,000 miles from earth. The first prototype was unveiled in November 2010 and began taxi trials on the right-wing pylon of a B-52H a month later. Flight trials were successful and the F-22X was declared operational in January 2012, just in time for the Chinese civil war.

The F-22X flight profile begins when the plane is mounted onto a modified B-52H wing pylon, with the pilot in the cockpit. The B-52 takes off and climbs to 41,000 feet, then releases the F-22X at a point determined by the space intercept officer located in the B-52’s cockpit. The F-22X’s jet engines start at that point and the plane does a zoom-climb up to 70,000 feet under full afterburner. At 70,000 feet the pilot switches on the RL-10 and turns off the jet engines. The F-22X climbs under rocket power to 220,000 feet, when the cryogenic fuel runs out and the RL-10 is shut down. The F-22X continues climbing on its sub orbital trajectory (due to the momentum from its powered climb) at Mach 4.2 until it reaches approximately 370,000 feet - past 70 miles altitude. Near the apogee of its climb, the F-22X opens its weapons bay and the pilot launches the payload. For satellite launches, the pilot uses the RCS jets to keep the plane pointed due east or to the north or south (depending on the satellite’s trajectory) and the satellite is launched into a low earth orbit (for reconnaissance) or geosynchronous orbit (for communications or navigation). If the mission involves the destruction of an enemy satellite, the pilot uses the RCS jets and on-board targeting system to point the craft in the proper direction where the satellite will be when the weapon reaches it, with assistance from the Space Intercept Officer on the B-52. After the payload is launched, the pilot oversees the operation and also begins preparation for re-entry and landing. After the F-22X reaches apogee, the pilot places the F-22X in entry orientation (nose high, facing the landing site) and the plane falls back into the discernible atmosphere, with black ablator coatings protecting the radome and the leading edges of the wings and vertical tails. At 70,000 feet the pilot switches the jet engines back on and flies the plane back to base for a normal landing. Inflight refueling is available for normal jet operations below 41,000 feet, and is needed for some missions. For ferry flights (I.e. from Edwards to Guam), the F-22X is carried underneath the B-52.

The F-22X first fired shots in anger in March 2012 when the Chinese launched a satellite into geosynchronous orbit that began firing kinetic-energy warheads at Navstar GPS satellites and some geosynchronous orbiting communications and weather satellites covering the Pacific. An F-22X launched from Guam destroyed the Chinese satellite before it could knock out too many U.S. satellites, though some services were affected for a while. The Syrian Government’s nuclear-blackmail attempt the following month was also cut short by the F-22X as one launched from Ascension Island destroyed a satellite with a nuclear warhead that the Syrians had launched just sixty minutes before - it was Syria’s first indigenously launched satellite and its last. But the F-22X’s most famous action happened in August 2012 when astronomers spotted a nickel-iron asteroid the size of a small house that would strike the earth near Salt Lake City in one week and cause mass casualties in the area when it hit. The comet fragment that struck Tunguska, Siberia in 1908 was of a similar size and no one wanted a repeat. The city and surrounding regions (Ogden, Provo, Park City, Tooele) were evacuated while three B-52’s and F-22X’s were readied for a hastily-arranged last ditch deflection attempt involving the newly certified space laser weapon. The three F-22X’s worked together and fired their lasers at the asteroid when it came to within 40,000 miles of the earth and the asteroid was successfully deflected to the point where it missed the earth altogether by 400 miles, though there was a 25% power loss in one of the lasers during the firing. Other famous F-22X exploits include the setting of new aircraft altitude records (74 miles) and speeds (Mach 6.5 at 185,000 feet, with a special ablator covering the whole craft).

The F-22X modeled here is the prototype. The topsides of the prototype were colored gunship gray and the belly was colored dark ghost gray, with a flat black ablator coating on the nose, cockpit canopy frame, and leading edges. The cryogenic fuel tank was sprayed with orange insulation material and part of the tank was left unpainted to save weight, and the RL-10 engine is a gunmetal color, along with the RCS nozzles. The prototype had no markings of any kind, but subsequent production aircraft had standard USAF and SPACECOM (Space Command) markings, and are painted in the same scheme otherwise. All F-22X pilots wear orange partial-pressure flight suits designed for high-altitude use and undergo astronaut training at Edwards Air Force Base before entering squadron service. Two squadrons of 12 F-22X fighters and B-52H bombers each are in service; one squadron is based at Edwards Air Force Base and the other is based at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam to cover the Pacific theater and China.

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THE MODEL

I used the Thunder Squadron 1/72nd scale YF-22 for this project, and I cut up part of an Academy 1/288th scale Space Shuttle fuel tank for this bird. I also used a main engine from one of my Revell 1/144th scale Space Shuttle kits and the RCS quads came from Revell’s 1/144th scale Space Operations Center space station kit. I used Evergreen sheet styrene to fair the tank into the airframe. I’d first gotten the idea for the project a few years back but only now got around to it with Silly Week approaching. I finished the kit in one night, using brush painting (MM Acryl, Polly, and Tamiya acrylics - Gunship Gray, Light Ghost Gray, Night Black, Yellow Ochre for the fuel tank, Milwaukee Road Orange and White for the pilot, and Tamiya Gunmetal for the engines). Though this was a snap-tite bird I also used some Testors tube glue, Tamiya liquid cement, and 20 second CA.

This was a great way to pass a weekend.

Justin

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Photos and text © by Justin Davenport