A Highly-Modified Boeing 757 Pivotal To Enhance The F-22 Raptor 5th Generation Stealth Aircraft
May 30 2017 - 0 Comments
By David Cenciotti
The Flying Test Bed routinely flies with real F-22 Raptors both at Edwards and Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada in order to gain an early look at F-22 mission software.
N757A is a highly modified and instrumented Boeing 757 that has been retrofitted to act as an F-22 flying laboratory. Also referred to as the Flying Test Bed (FTB), the aircraft (the first B757 ever produced), is used to perform flight test of F-22 avionics and sensors in an open-air, operationally representative environment.
https://theaviationist.com/2017/05/30/a-highly-modified-boeing-757-pivotal-to-enhance-the-f-22-raptor-5th-generation-stealth-aircraft/The weird 757 Flying Test Bed was used to test the Raptor’s avionics in flight, before the first Raptor ever flew: this was critical to speed up the development of F-22’s avionics – “more highly integrated than anything in existence” – enabling extensive in-flight testing, evaluation and troubleshooting while reducing risk and costs.
