{"id":17844,"date":"2012-05-22T00:30:02","date_gmt":"2012-05-22T03:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=17844"},"modified":"2012-05-21T01:48:42","modified_gmt":"2012-05-21T04:48:42","slug":"f-22-controversy-expands-with-panetta-maintainers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/22\/f-22-controversy-expands-with-panetta-maintainers\/","title":{"rendered":"F-22 Controversy Expands with Panetta, Maintainers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has restricted the flight envelopes of the F-22 Raptor and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.af.mil\/news\/story.asp?id=123302134\">ordered the Air Force<\/a> to<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>take additional steps to mitigate risks to F-22 pilots, George Little, acting assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Panetta reportedly directed the Air Force to &#8220;expedite&#8221; the installation of a backup oxygen system, though that system won&#8217;t be ready until later this year anyway &#8212; and it will take nearly a year and a half to modify all the Raptors.<\/p>\n<p>The Air Force as much as admitted its most recent response was a reaction <!--more-->to the 60 Minutes interview by two Raptor pilots who had refused to fly the F-22 due to its oxygen system problems.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Panetta made this decision in part due to the reluctance of some pilots to fly the aircraft, Little said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Secretary Panetta believes the department must do everything possible to ensure pilot safety and minimize flight risks,&#8221; Little said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>More pilots reportedly came forward <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stripes.com\/news\/air-force\/problems-prompt-panetta-to-restrict-flights-of-f-22-raptors-1.177366\">after the 60 Minutes segment<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>After the segment aired, other F-22 pilots have contacted Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill), a former Air National Guard pilot, and Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) to address concerns about the F-22.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The <em>Air Force Times <\/em>said it was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.airforcetimes.com\/news\/2012\/05\/air-force-7-airmen-take-f-22-hypoxia-fears-to-lawmaker-051512w\/\">actually 7 airmen<\/a>, including &#8220;a couple&#8221; of flight surgeons and likely some maintainers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has restricted the flight envelopes of the F-22 Raptor and ordered the Air Force to take additional steps to mitigate risks to F-22 pilots, George Little, acting assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said&#8230; Panetta reportedly directed the Air Force to &#8220;expedite&#8221; the installation of a backup oxygen system, though that system won&#8217;t be [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[3244,1157,134,343,5285,2971,1977,3274,2,156],"class_list":["post-17844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-60-minutes","tag-adam-kinzinger","tag-air-force","tag-f-22","tag-fighter-pilot","tag-george-little","tag-leon-panetta","tag-mark-warner","tag-military","tag-raptor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17844\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}