Aussie top gun rapt with F-22s

Paul ‘Diceman’ Anderton is one of the few to fly the costliest, most hi-tech fighter jet ever made.

Flight Lieutenant Paul Anderton in front of a F-22 fighter jet at Amberley base in Queensland. Picture: Glenn Hunt

As one of the “Dicemen” of the 90th Fighter Squadron, Flight Lieutenant Paul Anderton is among the elite pilots of the US Air Force.

Currently on exchange with the squadron at their Elmendorf-Richardson base in Alaska, the 36-year-old Sydneysider is only the fourth Australian to hop into the cockpit of an F-22 Raptor, the most expensive and sophisticated fighter jet ever made.

After flying F-18 Super Hornets in the Royal Australian Air Force for eight years, including on two overseas deployments, he said the chance to pilot an F-22 in the US was the ultimate honour.

“The F-22 is unparalleled, it ­really performs like a dream,” Flight Lieutenant Anderton saidat the RAAF base at Amberley, in Queensland, where he is involved in the joint US-Australian exercise Talisman Sabre.

“The Hornet is very capable but has less performance in the air and it’s noticeable, that difference. G (force) is probably the most ­obvious thing. The Raptor will get to a higher G and stay there.”

The 90th Fighter Squadron was officially nicknamed the Dicemen in 1924 after very few ­casualties and losing just one plane in World War I. Flight Lieutenant Anderton wears his lucky dice with pride but is well aware ‘‘chance’’ has nothing to do with flying missions in an F-22.

Work days are long, generally 11 to 12 hours, with very little of that time actually spent in the air. The bulk of the squadron’s work is painstakingly planning and preparing for missions, and then dissecting their performance in a long debrief.

“The hour in the air is hair on fire. It’s hard to make a quick decision at that time so it comes down to the preparation prior, the muscle memory you’ve built over time, a common mental model so everybody in the air understands what the mission is right now, what the priorities are,” he said.

“We like to think of going out and each person spending $150,000 an hour in the jet and trying to make that worthwhile.”

When his three years with the Dicemen finishes next year, it will be back to Australia where Flight Lieutenant Anderton hopes to join the F-35 program.

Despite conceding the move might be like going from a Ferrari to a BMW, he said flying in the RAAF was more than “just how the aeroplane performs”.

“The mission you’re achieving in either of those aircraft is what it’s all about, and both are equally capable in their own right.”

He does confess to loving the sheer power of takeoffs in the Raptor, “when you give the jet everything it’s got”.

“Roll down the runway, accelerate quickly, get the gear up and then point straight at the sky and go as high as you like. That’s pretty hard to beat,” Flight Lieutenant Anderton said.

“It has a training limit of 60,000 feet (18.2km) but, really, you can go as high as you like in this aeroplane.”

Had he not realised his dream of joining the air force, Flight Lieutenant Anderton said he would probably be a stay-at-home dad to his two children.

“(Being a pilot) is all I ever wanted to do,” he said. “My Dad flew planes recreationally and my Grandad was in the air force in World War II, in the reserves.

“He had a plane so I grew up going for flights with him as a boy and got bitten by the bug early.”

The movie Top Gun may have also played a role despite hitting the screen when Flight Lieutenant Anderton was just three.

Credited with triggering a rush in enlistments with the navy and air force, he admits to being a fan. “I could recite every line of that movie when I was young,” he said.