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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