This is the most advanced fighter jet ever
built, without any competition ever showing up since it first took flight in 1997. It
in fact wasn’t until 2023 that the F-22 Raptor had its first ever air-to-air combat,
where she shot down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina, and she came
out of that dog-fight without a scratch! The fact that the US government never approved
to sell this aircraft to any other countries, even the United States’ closest allies, speaks
volumes as to how amazing of an aircraft it truly is. The F-22 Raptor as you can see is
super maneuverable! No really, she is super maneuverable. At the same time, she has the
stealth capabilities of an F-117 Nighthawk. But how thrust vectoring technology
makes the F-22 more stealthy, the real reason why the aircraft has a golden
canopy, why the US exports the F-35 but still has a ban on F-22 export, even though
the F-35 in some ways is more advanced, and why despite being the goat, the F-22 Raptor
is no longer produced, is Not What You Think! It’s the combination of three areas
that makes the F-22 Raptor so unique: speed & maneuverability,
stealth, and advanced avionics. It’s not just that the F-22 can fly
supersonic. The Raptor was the first American fighter with the ability
to supercruise. In this context, supercruise is defined as the ability to cruise at
Mach 1.5 or more, but without using afterburner, and for extended periods in combat
configuration. But why is this important? Prior to the F-22, virtually all fighter jets
could only cruise at under Mach 0.9 while carrying a normal weapons load. They could fly supersonic,
but only with the afterburners. The thing is, the afterburner plume reflects radar signals
and creates a significant infrared signature, and for a stealth aircraft like the F-22, that’s
a big no no. Supercruise allows the Raptor to be supersonic without making it shine on enemy
radars. But how did the F-22 accomplish this? The speed advantages of the Raptor is
thanks to two massive Pratt & Whitney F119 engines. Each engine can
deliver 35,000 lbf of thrust. A derivative of this engine was
later used to power the F-35 Lightning by producing up to 43,000 lbf
of thrust. But aside from the raw power, each Raptor’s engine also has a nozzle
that is capable of thrust vectoring. Thrust vectoring started
out as a solution to VTOL; Vertical Take-Off and Landing. The British
Harrier was the first fighter jet that used thrust vectoring. By directing the
engine thrust downward, the aircraft could get off the ground vertically.
But the Harrier’s thrust vectoring was not intended to influence the
maneuvering of the aircraft in flight. It wasn’t until the 1990 that an experimental
jet fighter was designed specifically to test fighter thrust vectoring technology. Designed
and built under a joint US and German program, the X-31 could safely perform maneuvers that
would be impossible or deadly for any other aircraft to do, and it was all thanks to thrust
vectoring and the advanced onboard computers that controlled the airplane. We already have a
detailed X-31 video that I’ll link at the end. It was with the help of lessons learned
from the X-31 and also programs like HARV, where a modified F/A-18 Hornet used thrust
vectoring and actuated forebody strakes, that the the ultimate fighter, the
F-22 Raptor, was designed and produced. The F-22 can perform maneuvers like the
cobra and the j-turn. These maneuvers allow the aircraft to evade homing missiles
launched from enemy air defenses and fighters. Of course, the F-22 pilot is unlikely to
find themselves in such dangerous situations, because the Raptor is stealthy as … fffog! When it comes to stealth, the designers of the
F-22 already had a lot of experience. Since the 1980s, Lockheed had already been experimenting
with stealth in the F-117 Nighthawk platform. Back then, the understanding of
stealth was based on the theory that sharply angled panels could
deflect and disrupt radio waves, resulting in an inaccurate signal picture
for the observers at the radar station. But stealth technology is not just one
thing. It is a set of technologies, used in combinations, to greatly reduce
the distances at which a vehicle can be detected. This includes reducing the radar
cross-section, but also lowering acoustic, thermal, and other aspects. By the late
1980s, radar-absorbing materials had become available to the US defense contractors. This
meant that stealth aircraft such as the B-2 and later the F-22 could have curved
surfaces, which was more aerodynamic. The first order of business is to shape
the aircraft so that no energy can reflect straight back to the source. That’s why
you won’t find any 90 degree angles on the F-22. Right angles send radar signals
straight back to where they came from. This is also why you don’t typically
see any weapons carried by the F-22, as they could reflect back the radar signal.
You don’t see the weapons, because they are all hidden inside the aircraft’s internal weapons
bay, which only open up for a moment to launch the weapon and then close back up, similar
to how the B-2 Stealth bomber drops bombs. The canopy of an aircraft, if not treated,
would allow radar energy into the cockpit, where it could in turn be reflected off all the
stuff inside and back to radars. To prevent this, the F22 canopy is coated with a
thin layer of Indium Tin Oxide, which happens to give the canopy a golden tint.
This leaves the canopy see-through to the pilot, but opaque to radar, and the shape of the
canopy reflects the signals away from the radar. After that, LO or Low Observable coatings is part
of what makes the Raptor stealthy. Every night, after the jets come back to the base, they are
parked in hangars. Each Raptor is then inspected for about 45 minutes, to look for and mark any
new damages to the stealth coating. Fixing the LO coating consists of picking panels, painting,
sanding and using sealants to cover gaps. Because radar absorber materials require a lot of
maintenance, their application has been limited to only places on the airframe where they're
needed the most. Unlike the B2 stealth bomber which requires climate controlled hangers
to maintain its delicate stealth properties, the F-22 can be worked on in any
average hangar. And even then, about 50 percent of the maintenance performed
on the F-22 is related to repairing the LO stealth coatings that are damaged when the
aircraft is opened up for routine maintenance. But what about the flight control
surfaces? Wouldn’t they reflect signals as they move? Even though some
signals may bounce back from the flaps, this exposure is minimized with the help of thrust
vectoring, because by directing the jet exhaust, less flight control surface movements are
required. And that’s why thrust vectoring not only makes the F-22 more maneuverable, but
also more stealthy. It’s these features and much more that makes the radar cross-section the
F-22 to be the size of a small, steel marble. The Raptor is even visually kinda stealthy,
especially when looking at it head-on. The third and final edge the F-22 has over
almost any other fighter is its avionics suite, with only its close relative, the F-35
having better electronics due to being newer. The F-22's onboard radar and targeting system
are so advanced that give the Raptor “first-kill opportunity”. This means the aircraft will
see and shoot down its target before the target is ever aware of the F-22’s presence.
Combine the first-kill opportunity and the stealth, and chances are, the Raptor would
never have to use its supermaneuverability to avoid being shot. But hey, at least it can
put on a great performance at the air shows. But let’s take a step back. Why does this airplane
even exist? With the US fighting exclusively asymmetrical wars since the 1990s, there haven’t
been any worthy adversaries for the F-22. The thing is, the need for such an aircraft came
during the 1980s, when the Soviet Union had begun ramping up their air combat capabilities
with aircraft like the Beriev A-50, Mig-29, and Su-27 fighters, with the last two
being classified as supermaneuverable. Up until then, American fighters like the
F-15 and F-16 held massive maneuverability advantages over Soviet fighters. These
American fighters did not fear detection from Soviet ground-based radars during dogfights,
believing they could dodge surface-to-air missiles using their flares and high-G turns.
Once it seemed like Soviet technology was catching up, the effort to create a
fighter to surpass the opponents began. By the 1990s, two potential fighters
were proposed by two of the biggest military defense contractors:
Northrop Grumman and Lockheed. Northrop offered up the YF-23, a large
but highly sophisticated aircraft with no horizontal stabilizers
and a diamond-shaped body. Lockheed, on the other hand, with much
of its stealth wisdom coming from the F-117 program of the 1980s, proposed the YF-22, which had a more conventional format.
Unlike the diamond wings of the YF-23, the YF-22 had trapezoidal wings and large,
independently moving horizontal stabilizers. Northrop’s YF-23 was faster and
stealthier, but Lockheed’s YF-22 could carry more munitions internally, and
was more agile for potential dogfights. So what tipped the scale toward Lockheed which
eventually won the contract In April of 1991? See, Northrop was already having cost
overrun issues on the B-2 bomber project, and that tipped the decision
toward Lockheed. Ironically, Lockheed’s F-22 ended up being
quite an expensive project. Only eight months after the F-22 was
announced as the new air superiority fighter of the US Air Force, America’s biggest
rival, the Soviet Union, collapsed. Suddenly, the US Air Force found itself funding the purchase
of 750 state-of-the-art planes with no enemy on the horizon. Over the years of development and
testing leading to its official introduction in 2005, the Air Force would lower the amount
ordered from 750, all the way down to 195. As the F-22 production wound down
in 2011, the total program cost was estimated to be about $67.3 billion, with
$32.4 billion spent on R&D and testing, and $34.9 billion on procurement
and military construction. The incremental cost for an additional F-22
was estimated at $138 million in 2009. The F-22 program also took a hit when the Navy
announced their pull-out from purchasing any F-22 naval variants and the reasoning was
simple: they were too expensive to procure, and their cost per hour of flight time
was 70,000 dollars. For comparison, the estimated cost to operate
an F-35 is $44,000 per hour In October 2018, 8 to 12 Raptors were damaged
at Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, when they took a direct hit from Hurricane
Michael. That was a sizable chunk of the F-22 fleet that was damaged, but
they have been repaired since. The US Government also prohibited the sale of the
Raptor to any foreign countries due to the sheer technological secrecy of all of the Raptor's
systems and performance. Shortly after the completion of the F-22 development program, the US
Department of Defense announced the Joint Strike Fighter program which would eventually result in
the F-35. While very visually similar to the F-22, the F-35 would become a slower, less agile
“jack-of-all-trades” type of aircraft, that would not be as avionically complex or stealthy
as the F-22, allowing for international export. All that said, the sun is already
setting on the Raptor's dominance, but not because of rival aircraft
like Russia's su-57 or China's J-20. It is the Raptor’s own replacement that
the United States is currently working on, under a program called Next Generation
Air Dominance or NGAD. This is a sixth generation air superiority platform designed
to be highly integrated with drone support and the most modern avionics, and is estimated to be
ready for service by 2030. And maybe even then, the F-22 will remain the fastest, most
maneuverable stealthiest aircraft of all time. If you are curious how one failed sensor made
the X-31 fall like a leaf out of the sky, make sure to check out this video.
