TYNDALL AFB, Fla. –
Lt. Col. Michael Hoepfner, 94th Fighter Squadron director of operations, couldn’t see the small piece of equipment he was aiming for 20 miles away and 50,000 feet down, but that didn’t stop him from putting a Joint Direct Attack Munition right on top of it.
The drop, made June 5 during the squadron’s deployment to Hill AFB, Utah, was the first of its kind. It was the first time an operational fighter had dropped a JDAM at that altitude at supersonic speeds, a feat no other fighter on Earth can emulate.
“We have more standoff than anyone else right now,” Colonel Hoepfner said. “We’re getting very close to being able to drop bombs outside someone’s maximum range. When we can do that, we’ll be even more formidable.”
Standoff is the range from which a bomb can be dropped and still hit it’s target. At 1.5 mach and 50,000 feet, that stand-off range is about 20 miles.
“If you can achieve the mission at X miles at .9 mach, that’s good,” Colonel Hoepfner said. “But if you can drop it at further range, you can prevent them from stopping you.”
As for the challenge of dropping a bomb from so high, so far away and so fast… well… there really isn’t one, the colonel said.
“It’s pathetically easy,” he said. “That’s the beauty of a JDAM. You can deploy it and still look out for outside threats.”
The JDAM was recently cleared to be dropped at that speed and altitude by Air Force testers at Edwards AFB, Calif. When the 94th heard about that while dropping JDAMs at Hill, they jumped.
“We were cleared for 1.5 mach at greater than 40,000 feet,” Colonel Hoepfner said. “Until then, no operational F-22 had ever dropped a supersonic JDAM.”
Colonel Hoepfner said officials at Hill worked with them to make the drop possible.
“The System Program Office let us use that envelope and the range safety squadron did some quick work on the safety footprint at the range in two days,” he said.
When the drop was authorized, news spread fast to the weapons crews.
“We told them they were doing new envelope drops, and they were pumped about it,” said Chief Master Sgt. Jim Barnes, 27th Aircraft Maintenance Unit NCOIC.
Colonel Hoepfner said it’s not just about being higher and faster. The effects on the bomb itself make it more lethal.
“The potential and kinetic energy on the bomb is exponentially higher,” he said. “That gives it further range and higher energy on impact.”
Translation: More speed + higher altitude = bigger boom.
Chief Barnes saw a more important advantage.
“The farther away you are, the faster you’re going, the less likely it is the pilot will encounter problems from the ground,” he said.