F/A-22 RAPTOR TEST FLIGHTS HALTED FOR INVESTIGATION.

Byline: Staff and Wire Services

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - F/A-22 Raptor flight tests have been temporarily curtailed at Edwards Air Force Base while investigators seek the cause of a crash in Nevada.

While the Nevada crash involved a plane based at Nellis Air Force Base, Edwards officials decided to limit flights of their eight Raptors temporarily as a safety precaution.

``A small number of low-priority test missions might be delayed a week or two,'' Edwards spokeswoman Lt. Col. Kerry S. Humphrey said Tuesday.

Monday's crash destroyed the $130 million airplane but the pilot ejected and suffered no serious injuries, officials said. The jet crashed near a runway while taking off from the base outside Las Vegas.

The Air Force did not say what might have caused the crash.

The Raptor that crashed was one of eight assigned to the 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron at Nellis. Others are being tested at Edwards and flown at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida.

The planes are expected to enter combat service next year.

The first F/A-22 destined for a combat squadron came off Lockheed Martin's Georgia assembly line in October.

The crash was the first for an F/A-22, officials said, though a YF-22 prototype crashed at Edwards in 1992. The 1992 crash, which the pilot survived, was blamed on the pilot's failure to turn off a thrust-vectoring system during landing.

The F/A-22 Raptor, intended primarily as a stealthy replacement for the F-15 Eagle, was built to shoot down other planes as well as to attack targets on the ground. Unlike its predecessor, the F/A-22 can fly at supersonic speeds for long ranges.

The decision to curtail flights is not technically considered a ``grounding,'' because grounding refers to halting flights because a problem is expected, Humphrey said. This is a ``stand-down,'' done as a precaution while more information is obtained, she said.