Planes do not appear downrange magically. Air Combat Command airmen are constantly working to keep aircraft ready to deploy if needed — and that need has been constant for decades.

It may look like maintainers can have planes ready to deploy with a couple days' notice, but keeping planes ready to go takes three to four months of constant work, said Senior Master Sgt. Aaron Cowan, of the 94th Aircraft Maintenance Unit at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia.

"We are a round-the-clock organization: 24 hours a day you can find us at work taking care of aircraft," said Cowan, the noncommissioned officer in charge of production for the 94th AMU.

In addition to performing scheduled maintenance on 23 F-22s, the airmen of the 94th AMU are ready with a moment's notice to send planes to war, Cowan said.

"We identify which jets are known good fliers, known aircraft that don't have issues," he said. "We look at them first. Then we look at the major inspections that are coming due to make sure those aircraft don't have any major maintenance coming due while they're actually deployed. Generally, from the 23 aircraft, we'll whittle down to about 12 jets."

Once the planes going downrange have been identified, ACC maintainers make sure they have everything they need for the operations, Cowan said. For Operation Inherent Resolve, the F-22s needed for combat had to be able to carry small-diameter bombs.

"That eliminated about half of my aircraft right there because we were in the middle of the upgrade to the aircraft at that time," Cowan said. "So we looked at that; we looked at engines to make sure they were able to meet the entire six-month deployment requirement as well as the rest of the inspection items to make sure that they would be good throughout the trip."

The 94th AMU maintainers also had to be trained to do the mission, so they went through several exercises in which they practiced loading and downloading weapons on planes and launching aircraft quickly, he said.

"We keep these aircraft ready to go to war, ready to do their mission at moment's notice," Cowan said.

In September, the F-22 made its combat debut when it was used in airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria. Since then, it has been tasked with being part of most strike packages into Syria. ACC declined to say how many F-22s are participating in Operation Inherent Resolve or where they are flying out of. The Wall Street Journal has reported that F-22s based in the United Arab Emirates were used in the early stages of the fight against IS.

Gen. Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, head of ACC, recently explained why the F-22 is so valuable for combat operations in Syria.

During one mission that lasted more than 11 hours, an F-22's main objective was changed five times, Carlisle said in a June 1 speech at Arlington, Virginia.

The fighter flew surveillance missions tracking Islamic State fighters on the ground, used its advanced sensors to direct other planes for other airstrikes and escorted bombers to their targets, he said. The F-22 refueled midair seven times in one mission.

"It's amazing what the airplane can do," Carlisle said.

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