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All ground-based static tests required before the F-22 can enter production were successfully completed last December. This achievement satisfied one of the eleven criteria the Defense Acquisition Board will use to decide whether the F-22 program will be allowed to enter low-rate initial production. The last static test necessary to satisfy the DAB criteria, a test of the forward fuselage inlet duct, was completed by the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company facility in Marietta, Georgia, on one of two non-flying aircraft airframes specifically built for this testing. The loads applied were based onpressures the F-22 could experience in flight during operational use.
The full-scale ultimate static test program consists of nineteen air vehicle-level conditions and a set of local conditions. The air vehicle-level tests, the first phase of the test program, were designed to test the strength of the primary components of the aircraft with the forces and pressures it could experience in actual flight. Limit load tests, completed in 1999, tested the aircraft to 100 percent of simulated flight conditions. When analysis of the test results is complete, the F-22s will be allowed to fly above current flight limitations in the “clean wing” configuration (that is, without external fuel tanks or munitions). The second phase of the test program, the remaining local level tests, is designed to exercise the localized structure of the aircraft to ultimate load levels.
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