F-22 Raptor

The world's first operational fifth-generation fighter, combining all-aspect stealth, supercruise, thrust vectoring and fused sensors — the US Air Force's premier air-superiority asset since 2005, with a combat record that runs from the opening night of the ISIS air war to the 2025–26 stand-off with Iran.

Overview

The Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor is a single-seat, twin-engine air-dominance fighter built for penetrating counter-air operations against the most advanced surface-to-air systems and opposing fighters of its era. It is the only combat aircraft to combine very-low-observable (stealth) shaping, sustained supersonic cruise without afterburner (supercruise above Mach 1.5), two-dimensional thrust-vectoring nozzles for exceptional high-alpha agility, and an integrated avionics suite that fuses data from its own AESA radar, passive receivers and off-board feeds into a single pilot-centric picture. The US Air Force (USAF) accepted 187 operational jets between 2002 and 2012; with production capped at 195 airframes (including eight test articles), the fleet is both the service's most potent air-superiority weapon and a shrinking, high-demand asset that is only now receiving the mid-life upgrades needed to keep it viable into the 2040s.

Development

The Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) programme was launched in the early 1980s to replace the F-15 Eagle in the air-to-air domain, with a new class of fighter that would dominate future air battles through stealth, speed and sensor integration. Lockheed’s YF-22 prototype first flew on 29 September 1990 and beat Northrop’s YF-23 in a fly-off the following year, leading to a full-scale engineering-and-manufacturing-development phase. The first representative F-22 test aircraft lifted off on 7 September 1997, and the programme sailed through low-rate production approval in 2001, full-rate production in 2005, and initial operational capability on 15 December 2005. Air & Space Forces Magazine traces the type’s design heritage and production chronology, noting that early plans for roughly 750 aircraft were repeatedly cut as post-Cold-War threat assessments evolved and cost pressures mounted. The final tally was 195 aircraft: the last F-22 rolled off the Marietta, Georgia line in December 2011 and was delivered to the Air Force in May 2012. A 2024 Government Accountability Office review of the subsequent push to retire 32 non-combat-coded Block 20 jets flagged that the USAF had not fully modelled the training and operational consequences of the proposed divestment, a factor in Congress repeatedly blocking any retirements through at least FY2027. GAO

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