According to the Air Force, RAW-G was created at the suggestion of Daniel Wyman, (created in 2002) then a flight surgeon on Florida’s Tyndall Air Force Base, where the first F-22 squadron was being deployed. Wyman is now a brigadier general and the Air Combat Command surgeon general.
By the time RAW-G got going, some pilots were already experiencing a problem called “Raptor cough” — fits of chest pain and coughing dating back to 2000 that stem from the collapse of overworked air sacs in the lungs.
The group concluded that the F-22’s On-Board Oxygen Generation System — or OBOGS — was giving pilots too much oxygen, causing the coughing. The more often and higher the pilots flew after being oxygen-saturated, group members believed, the more vulnerable pilots affected by the condition would be to other physiological incidents.
RAW-G recommended more tests and that the F-22’s oxygen delivery system be adjusted through a digital controller and a software upgrade.
“The schedule would provide less oxygen at lower altitudes than the current schedule, which has been known to cause problems with delayed ear blocks and acceleration atelectasis,” the technical term for the condition that leads to the coughing, according to the minutes from RAW-G’s final meeting.
RAW-G members had spent two years pushing for the change in the oxygen schedule — the amount of oxygen pumped into pilots’ life-support systems — but the necessary software upgrade never came through.