Last week, the Pentagon released its budget request for 2023, which—among a long list of other changes to the force—calls for the retirement of more than thirty Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptors, widely believed to be the most capable air superiority fighter on the planet. Because the United States ended the F-22’s production run after just 186 aircraft were delivered, this cut represents nearly one-fifth of all Raptors in existence.
The F-22 is a purpose-built air superiority fighter designed specifically to be able to dominate the most advanced fighters fielded by America’s competitors. And despite being the oldest 5th-generation design on the planet, the F-22 Raptor’s unique combination of high performance, sensor range, and extreme low observability has made it the benchmark for air superiority fighters in the modern era.
While the F-22 retains the edge in air combat today, the Air Force is looking toward the future—and its air superiority fighter system in development under the banner of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. According to the Air Force, retiring 33 of their oldest F-22s will free up about $1.8 billion over the next eight years that can be used to update the remaining 153 jets in the F-22 fleet to an even higher standard, without cutting into funds they believe are best set aside for NGAD.
Related: Why can’t America build any new F-22 Raptors?
The F-22 is the stealthiest fighter on the planet…
The F-22 is likely the stealthiest entrant in its class, with a radar cross-section (RCS) said to be five or even ten times smaller than its more advanced sibling, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (at .0015 square meters). Both American stealth fighters are thought to be head-and-shoulders above their foreign competitors on the low-observability spectrum, with the J-20 said to carry a likely RCS that’s about comparable to the 1980’s era F-117 Nighthawk (around .025 square meters) and Russia’s Su-57 much further toward the observable side of the spectrum with an RCS thought to be about .5 square meters.
In other words, from head-on, the F-22 appears to be about the size of a marble on radar screens, while the Su-57’s cross-section is almost as large as 13 standard iPads.
Of course, radar cross sections aren’t static things—the F-22, like all stealth fighters, is designed to minimize its radar return from head-on, so its radar return will grow depending on the angle from which it’s being observed. However, these factors are true across all stealth aircraft, not just the F-22, and it’s a safe bet that the Raptor can sneak past enemy radar better than just about any other fighter platform anywhere on the globe.
The advantage this degree of stealth can provide in combat can be seen clearly in a 2013 incident in which an American F-22 approached a pair of Iranian F-4 Phantoms harassing an American MQ-1 Predator drone. The F-22 pilot, Lt. Col. Kevin “Showtime” Sutterfield, was able to take his F-22 right up to one of the Iranian fighters entirely undetected, fly below the offending jet to inspect its weapons load, and then pull up alongside the Phantom to tell him, “you really oughta go home.”
The panicked Iranian pilot, along with his wingman, suddenly realizing they were in the presence of an aircraft full generations ahead of theirs in capability, both bugged out despite their numbers advantage.
Related: The 4 other proposed fighters based on the legendary F-22
…But it’s also incredibly expensive to operate
America’s stealth fighters represent the most advanced tactical aircraft operating in the world today, so it likely comes as no surprise that they’d be more expensive to fly than jets that rely on older technology. But even with this appreciation for cutting-edge tech, you might be surprised to learn just how much more expensive stealth can be.
The F-16 Fighting Falcon, the workhorse of the U.S. Air Force and arguably the most successful 4th-generation fighter on the planet, costs Uncle Sam around $8,278 dollars for each hour a single fighter is in the air when you consider everything from fuel to maintenance and labor between flights.
The F-35 gets a lot of guff for being such an expensive program, but the F-22 is actually a great deal more expensive to fly and maintain per aircraft (due in some part to the small number of F-22s in existence). According to Defense Department figures released in 2018, the Air Force’s fleet of F-35As each cost about $28,455 per hour to fly, while the F-22 Raptor rings in at $33,538 per hour. It’s worth noting that independent analysts have called both figures into question for being too low, but even at face value, the F-22 is awfully tough on the budget.
A great deal of this expense can be blamed on the aircraft’s fragile radar-absorbent coating. Stealth airframes are designed to deflect radar waves away, but that alone isn’t enough to defeat or significantly delay detection. As a result, stealth aircraft are covered in a special class of polymer-based materials that literally absorb a reported 80% of electromagnetic energy (radar waves) that come into contact with it. This material gives low-observable aircraft a huge boost in stealth, but it’s also very susceptible to damage caused by heat… the sort of heat fighters are regularly exposed to while flying at supersonic speeds. Repairing damaged radar-absorbent materials is a painstaking and expensive process, and the F-22 has proven particularly susceptible to this longstanding issue.
Related: NATF-22: The sweep-wing F-22 Congress wanted for carrier duty
The Air Force only wants to retire its oldest F-22s
Originally, the U.S. Air Force had plans to purchase a whopping 750 F-22 Raptors from Lockheed Martin, and for a time, it even intended to buy another 150 FB-22s, a fighter-bomber based on the F-22 design. However, by 2006, the United States’ defense priorities had shifted away from deterring near-peers and toward the ongoing Global War on Terror. America’s combat operations had little need for air superiority fighters let alone stealth, so the F-22 was unceremoniously canceled after just 186 airframes were delivered, with a vast majority of its production infrastructure re-allocated toward Lockheed’s next stealth fighter, the air-to-ground oriented F-35.
But that often-touted figure of 186 F-22s is actually rather misleading. Fighter production is done in stages, called Blocks, with adjustments and improvements made between each block. Lockheed Martin delivered around 36 Block 20 F-22s to the Air Force first, which don’t carry all of the necessary systems for combat but are close enough to be useful for training. From there, Lockheed began production on Block 30 and Block 35 combat-coded F-22s that were actually meant for combat operations.
Some F-22s have been destroyed since (at least four), while others have aged out of service, bringing the total tally of available fighters even lower. In the past, some have proposed upgrading the Air Force’s Block 20 training Raptors into combat-ready aircraft, but the cost of doing so was seen as too high to make sense.
Now, the Air Force wants to retire these Block 20 F-22s, which were not capable of seeing combat anyway, to reallocate the money it would have used to maintain these fighters toward updating their existing combat-ready F-22 fleet. This will mean increasing the wear and tear on America’s combat-coded F-22s, as they’ll have to be used for training as well, and each hour these aircraft fly is—in a very real way—one hour closer to extinction.
The F-22 was originally designed to fly for 8,000 hours per airframe (though modernization efforts are said to have doubled that), but with so few F-22s left in existence, it seems the Raptor is clearly now living on borrowed time.
Related: How America almost got a beefed-up F-22 bomber
The F-22 may retire as the king of the skies, but the NGAD has its eye on the crown
It seems very likely that the F-22 Raptor may retire without ever firing a shot in anger at an enemy aircraft, which may sound like a failure when discussing high-dollar weapon systems, but could really be seen as an empirical victory. Advanced systems like the F-22 Raptor are intended to serve as deterrents for would-be competitors. Victory for the F-22, in that regard, wouldn’t be racking up kills in the skies over World War III, but rather, playing a role in preventing the outbreak of such a war to begin with.
Retiring the remainder of the F-22’s training fleet will undoubtedly expedite the Raptor’s departure from service, as the same number of flight hours are spread across fewer total airframes. But even as the sun sets on this legendary fighter, the future of America’s air superiority efforts remain bright.
The next fighter the Air Force will task with establishing dogfighting dominance, under development within the NGAD program, is expected to build upon the Raptor’s edge over its competition, yielding not one aircraft, but rather a system of them purpose-built to retain America’s air superiority crown. NGAD is expected to consist of an advanced piloted stealth fighter as well as a constellation of uncrewed drones, or unmanned combat aerial vehicles, that will use artificial intelligence to take their cues from the pilot. These drones will extend the aircraft’s sensor reach, offer increased and modular payloads, and even protect the piloted aircraft from attack.
Read more from Sandboxx News
Feature image: U.S. Air Force photo by Kevin Robertson
Why not upgrade the non coded f 22s to fighting codes what ever that really means lol
Listen it’s all about money the f 35 is the greatest flying computer ever made!
War bird no most of what we have have no gun or can’t engage other planes yet
They also need codes!
It’s a flying sensor and it greatvat that but russia fears the f 22 like you wouldn’t believe !
They scraped the enterprise before it made it to port to make sure we bye new carriers
I’m sure it cloud have been used for some thing !
The military industrial base is your major enemy and you all know it!
Maybe stop sending billions to Ukraine or training their neo-Nazis beforehand and we can pay to keep up our own current fleet of 5th gen fighters.
You understand that the plane is to be replaced, right?
Also, the idea that this is happening because the US is “running out of money” because “Ukraine” is really absurd. Trust me, we have other areas to cut beyond foreign aid—and the aid to Ukraine is actually cost effective for the US because it reduces Russia’s military capacity, meaning less need to deploy in Europe long run allowing us to focus on China.
What this leaves out is that Obama scuttled the factories for producing F22s because he thought the F35 could replace it and was afraid of industrial espionage around 5th gen fighters; a lot of defense analysts did, not understanding the F-22’s unique value as an air superiority fighter. As a result, the Block 20’s are more valuable for spare parts.
I love the Raptor. The NGAD will likely be even better.
SANDBOXX of course never mentions that former President Obama was obsessed with killing the F-22 program, enough so that the Air Force COS resigned in protest over the blindness of the move.
How petty was Obama about it? On a visit to Elmendorf AFB in Alaska (which has two operational F-22 squadrons) Obama demanded they take the F-22s out of the hanger for his speech.
So if the US gets into a scrap that involves heavy air-to-air combat and there’s a, well, unusual amount of American casualties in that confict, you’ll know where to send the invoice to.
He killed the f 22 so Iran china Russia cloud have the upper hand
He should have been jailed !
Obama was a moron on matters of foreign policy. Obama lovers, look at Syria and Libya. I am not going to say the main wasn’t profoundly intelligent, but the Obama lovers must face facts—he was to foreign policy and military what Trump was to media relations.
I think he did it because he didn’t know enough about air combat and figured “the F35 can make up for it.” There were a bunch of people around Washington at the time suggesting we did not need the F22 because we had the F35. It was foolish.
I still have friends in the fighter pilot ranks, and I understand the reason for retiring the F-22s. It is sad, but completely correct given the vision for fighting future wars. You can’t afford to risk one as a bomber, and just a few can act as forward airborne command and control for a fleet of F-35s and F-15s acting as “missile mules, thus guaranteeing us air superiority against our most capable potential adversaries. If you can buy and operate four planes half as good for the same money, then get four instead of the one.
The decision which continues to irk me was regarding the F-16XL. The up front purchase price would only have added about $1-2 million in capital allocation on a $64 million aircraft; you gain 70% in range, 100% in gross weight load, and supercruise (supersonic without afterburner) capability loaded in air to air mode with something like 16 missiles (a better “missile mule” than the F-15EX) – all for about the same operating cost as the basic F-16.
IMHO, every F-16 after the Strike Fighter competition should have been with the XL wing – even though (correctly) the F-15E was better suited to night and weather missions intended for the Strike Fighter role.
We can send billions to Ukraine, but dont have the money to fly the best fighter plane every built? These a-hole “generals” are only looking for their post-retirement pay day by ensuring the military re-invest in new fantasy defense contractor programs instead of maintaining the force that we have. Stop letting these scumbags retire and make 7 figures and ensure their interest isnt their own financial situation.
Not only that, how absurd is it to start retiring the best fighter planes we have when we’re on the cusp of WW3? These generals should be ashamed. Its outrageous.
Obama was a moron on matters of foreign policy. Obama lovers, look at Syria and Libya. I am not going to say the main wasn’t profoundly intelligent, but the Obama lovers must face facts—he was to foreign policy and military what Trump was to media relations.
I think he did it because he didn’t know enough about air combat and figured “the F35 can make up for it.” There were a bunch of people around Washington at the time suggesting we did not need the F22 because we had the F35. It was foolish.
The planes being retired are training aircraft incapable of fighting in that war. In fact, I wonder if they are doing it to have spare parts on hand for maintenance.
Defense procurement does not make sense now and it never has. It is no surprise that the layman does not understand the pluses or minuses of these decisions.
These must be the same fools who are retiring all the B-1’s and pouring billions in the B-52 engine and electronics upgrades. The B-1’s have structural issues that have been identified and can be fixed. The B-1 OUTPERFORMS the B-52 by a wide margin – Speed, ceiling, bomb load, etc, and it’s electronics and engines are in fine shape, especially relative to the B-52.
So they send these planes to the boneyard when the Chinese are expanding their armed forces the way they are – amazing.
I agree. Hey i’m sure it’s gonna happen. This administration left 17,074 pieces of equipment in Afghanistan so mothballing should not be a problem to them. Hell, we are even afraid to test our own devices with these guys leading from behind.
So sad – The USAF “saves” $1.8BB in order to boneyard these fantastic planes. Big deal! We have already spent more than $3BB on Ukraine!!! In 2 months!!!
I wish I could get my hands on the necks of these fools making these decisions.
Upgrade these planes and do NOT retire them!!!
Russia is our enemy. Why on earth wouldn’t we spend $3Billion to severely weaken them whilst not risking any western lives? Whats the alternative? Let Putin invade whomever they want without recourse? Sounds like a terrible idea. The US GDP is $20.94 trillion by the way, $3Billion sounds like a scary number but in US terms that is really small potatoes.
I always find it funny when articles like this say things like this one said, ” it’s going to cost uncle Sam ” , as if he has any money. This government produces nothing but chaos, and steals our money to pay for it. Full of thieves and liars, spending our money like they earned it. Anyway, great article. The F 22 is a straight up killer, it’s awesome !!
So, let’s see if I understand this – we’re fighting Russia, so we need lots of F-22s, and oops, now we’re fighting terrorists, so we don’t need F-22s anymore, and oops, now we’re back to fighting Russia again but the F-22 fleet is too small because we reduced it to fight terrorists, so we’re going to send a good portion of the F-22s we already have to the boneyard, add training flight hours to the other F-22s, and replace them all with a paper airplane sometime in the distant future. But don’t worry, the new airplane will be great, and we’re going to buy lots of them.
Does that about cover it?
It’s astonishing the way the Pentagon just throws away our money. “The F-22 – wonder plane – give us money! The LCS – wonder ship – give us money! Oh wait, we’re just going to toss them away after billions spent. Thanks!”.
I use to trust senior military leadership but they’ve demonstrated over and over again that they are more “Corporate Bean Counters” than warrior. Balancing spreadsheets has greater value than winning battles. The emphasis has become social justice issues and Accounting, which is a sad testament to what was once the greatest military on the planet. Now, no one is sure if we can beat the Chinese much less take on two near peer adversaries.
Someone needs to start firing these fools at the USAF. Enough of these childish games. If you need more money you ask for it like adults, make your case. No these fools just slash and cut for shock effect. They’ve tried it with every platform seemingly and now they are taking the premier air supremacy aircraft on the planet and retiring them….because we will get something better WHEN !?!?! Tired of this nonsense and Congress should be too. Maybe cutting back a few more of their pet projects will give them the clue they need.