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  • It is a war plane light years ahead in its design.

  • A supersonic killing machine built to become the stealth fighter of the 21st century,

  • packing a deadly array of state of the art missile systems.

  • It excels at both close-in dog fighting and precision strike ground attacks.

  • Invisible to enemy RADAR, it can intercept and strike any target without warning.

  • America's newest super weapon,

  • the F-22 Raptor next on Modern Marvels.

  • 1981, in his first press conference as president of the United States.

  • Ronald Wilson Reagan offered a deal to the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

  • If Soviet's SS-20 missiles aimed at Western Europe were removed,

  • America would not deploy its Pershing II cruise missiles to counter the threat.

  • Throughout the 1960's and 70's, the Soviets developed

  • different missiles to attack in different altitude bags.

  • You couldn't fly under the missile threat.

  • You couldn't fly over the missile threat.

  • You had to deal with the missile threat.

  • One way to do that is to make suppression of enemy air defenses,

  • that is, destroying the missile sites and the radars, the most important mission for the air force.

  • By the 1970's, air dominance had re-emerged as a top priority.

  • And the US Air Force is committed to building its first pure air superiority fighter.

  • An aircraft that would eventually become the F-15 Eagle.

  • But just as F-15s became operational in 1978,

  • alarming new evidence suggested that the new fighter's superiority might only be temporary.

  • US reconnaissance satellites passing over a Soviet flight test center north of Moscow

  • discovered new Soviet fighters being tested.

  • One was the agile fighter, the Mikoyan MiG-29.

  • But the other king(?) as a huge shock to western analysts,

  • it was bigger than the F-15 and far bigger than any previous Soviet-built fighter,

  • the Sukhoi T-10 prototype.

  • At that time, the Soviet Union initiated

  • some very aggressive programs to come up with counters

  • and both Mikoyan and Sukhoi, both of design bureaus, initiated new aircraft development efforts.

  • And it appeared that they were (?)attractive with(?) field some very advanced fighters.

  • If the MiG-29 had concerned the American military establishment,

  • the existence of the Sukhoi T-10 set alarm bells ringing.

  • These are very good aircraft,

  • they're aircraft that play in the same league

  • as some of the top NATO aircraft like Phantom, and ultimately like F-15.

  • The goal is world peace ...

  • Just weeks into his first term, America's 40th president

  • increased US defense spending by 32.5 billion dollars,

  • and began the re-armament of the United States on a colossal scale.

  • In 1981, the Cold War was getting very warm.

  • As Reagan ingression(?) and squared off,

  • the US Air Force concluded that it urgently needed the replacement for its F-15,

  • an advanced tactical fighter, or ATF, that would have no equal.

  • As American planners started to develop a concept of air and land battle to fight WWIII,

  • the US Air Force starts to think about the kind of a equipment it wants to have

  • when it comes time to fight a war.

  • At that time, in the secret of black world, the advanced military aviation development,

  • one technology had emerged at the forefront,

  • stealth.

  • During that period, the late 1970's of course,

  • and what we call the black world, the alias in the world of secret programs,

  • there was a great effort going on to come up with counters to these new Soviet weapon systems

  • that could enable us to knock out their SAM system

  • and that of course uh... led to the development of the F-117.

  • Analysis of air to air combat in Vietnam, called the Red Baron study,

  • had kicked start the race for stealth

  • An operational analysis study showed that in Vietnam

  • that most aircraft were killed by other aircraft that they hadn't seen.

  • So from this you get the idea that if the aircraft doesn't see it, it has a tremendous advantage.

  • Air combat data from WWII and Korea reinforced it's need for invisibility.

  • So from this, in a process of operational analysis, the US Air Force learns

  • that what you really need to do is be invisible to the enemy.

  • And that means that

  • an aircraft is designed to be as near as possible invisible to an enemy fighter aircraft.

  • Its geometry is designed to give it a very low profile as to make it very invisible

  • to an oncoming fighter aircraft using high-frequency fighter aircraft RADAR.

  • The principle of stealth technology is to literally make an airplane invisible to the enemy.

  • An aircraft's shape must reflect incoming radio waves

  • away from the enemy radar rather than towards it

  • To further obscure the war plane's visibility,

  • an aircraft is being covered in materials that absorb radar signals

  • In turn, this reduces its visibility on a radar screen.

  • Leading the way in stealth technology was Lockheed Martin's Skunk works.

  • In the late 1970's, the stealth wasn't widely known outside of a few companies.

  • in the ability to integrate stealth technology, shaping for stealth and materials.

  • It was really only well known in 2 companies that was Lockheed and Northrop.

  • In 1977, amid unprecedented security,

  • Lockheed flew a prototype of the world's first stealth fighter.

  • And by the 1980's, during Operation Just Cause,

  • its F-117 helped to destroy general Noriega's regime in Panama.

  • Now the US Air Force decided that any new fighter must incorporate stealth technology

  • and identified 2 other areas in which a future air superiority fighter should excel.

  • Well, at that stage of the game, it was clear

  • that the Air Force wanted the stealthy fighter.

  • It was also clear that they wanted uh...an airplane

  • that was super cruise, in other words,

  • supersonicly without lighting off the after burners,

  • and they didn't want to sacrifice any of the classic fighter maneuverability

  • So they want the fighter that, besides all the new technology,

  • would maneuver as well or better than the F-15.

  • In October 1982, representatives from aircraft manufacturers met with the US Air Force,

  • and began to identify the specific must-haves for the new fighter.

  • It must be a supersonic cruise aircraft with a combat radius of 7 to 900 miles

  • with reduced observables if possible.

  • The aircraft would have to be able to operate on a 2,000-foot runway,

  • and must be easier to maintain than a F-15.

  • The challenge was issued.

  • Now it was up to the finest aviation manufacturers in the world to respond.

  • The Advanced Tactical Fighter Program was about to begin,

  • and the Raptor, America's fifth-generation fighter, was about to be hatched.

  • The F/A-22 Raptor is so stealthy, it appears the size of a bumblebee when detected by radar,

  • even though it's more than 62 feet long with a wingspan of 44 feet.

  • By 1983, U.S.-Soviet relations had reached a new low.

  • Following Leonid Brezhnev's death, the politburo, now controlled by ex-KGB boss Yuri Andropov,

  • was labeled by Reagan as the focus of evil in the modern world.

  • Continuing his policy of rearmament,

  • Reagan announced plans for the Strategic Defense Initiative,

  • better known as Star Wars.

  • Moscow reacted furiously.

  • [speaking Russian]

  • That August, when Korean Airlines flight 007, on its way to Seoul from New York,

  • strayed several hundred mile off course into Soviet airspace, Russia acted.

  • A fighter was sent up, and the civilian airliner with 269 people on board was shot down.

  • The shooting down of KAL 007 sent shock waves around the world,

  • straining international relations almost to a breaking point.

  • What can we think of a regime that so broadly trumpets its vision of peace

  • and global disarmament and yet so callously and quickly

  • commits a terrorist act to sacrifice the lives of innocent human beings?

  • Reagan's reaction to the crisis strengthened U.S. conviction that stealth

  • would now be the prime requirement for America's new fighter.

  • Some senior people in the Pentagon looked at the stealth requirements

  • and decided they were inadequate, and they radically changed them.

  • So stealth became a really major, dominant requirement in the program.

  • In this politically charged climate, the U.S. Air Force created its Advanced Tactical Fighter,

  • or ATF, System Program Office.

  • Based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio,

  • Colonel Albert C. Piccirillo was placed in charge of the division.

  • One of the things we really wanted was the ability to leverage stealth in a high-performance fighter,

  • and we also wanted this high-performance fighter to still be capable of good close-in,

  • within visual range, maneuvering capability.

  • In fact, we wanted more than just existing capability in some areas.

  • Manufacturers were invited to submit concepts for an aircraft

  • with an operational radius of 800 miles,

  • enough to allow it to operate over the entire central region of Europe

  • from bases in central England

  • It should have low observable characteristics

  • and be able to cruise at Mach 1.5 for an astonishing 600 miles.

  • We weren't building an airplane for the 1990s, although that was what we were trying to do.

  • We were really building a fighter for the 21st century

  • that could take on all of the advanced threats that the Soviet Union was likely to throw at us.

  • All of the teams had their work cut out for them,

  • but on top of this, the military added another complicating factor.

  • At the end of the concept demonstration phase,

  • the decision was made by the Air Force to launch a demonstration validation

  • phase of the program that would involve building two flight demonstrators,

  • YF-type airplanes, that would then be evaluated.

  • They didn't have to have full armament.

  • They didn't have to have avionics.

  • They didn't have to have stealth coatings.

  • But essentially, they were going to go out and show us what you can do.

  • But building prototype aircraft was expensive, and no one manufacturer could afford it on their own.

  • They all know that they must invest so much money in developing

  • that if they don't get the contract,

  • they're going to be so out-of-pocket. It's going to hurt the company badly.

  • Each manufacturer would submit a design for the demonstration valuation,

  • or Dem/Val, competition

  • but agreed that the winning company would be the prime contractor

  • and its partners subcontracted to produce major components.

  • Everybody's investment will be at least partly repaid

  • because everybody gets a piece of the action.

  • Seven designs for the air force competition were submitted for final evaluation.

  • All of the seven contractors came in with designs

  • that were very feasible and that could have been built.

  • The question was which were the best

  • and then how did we determine that they really were good enough.

  • Two manufacturers with strong experience in stealth technology,

  • Northrop Grumman with its B-2

  • and Lockheed Martin with its F-117, led the way.,

  • Northrop's advanced tactical fighter, or ATF, design

  • was for an alien-looking aircraft with diamond platform wings and huge V-tails.

  • It was a design that stressed speed and stealth.

  • Northrop came in with an airplane that really, from the very beginning,

  • looked just like the YF-23 that eventually was built and flown.

  • Lockheed's entry echoed that of the F-117.

  • Its vectored thrust, arrowhead shape, trapezoidal wings,

  • and four tails ensured that the aircraft would be maneuverable.

  • The fact was that Lockheed and Northrop had significant advantages

  • in the fact that they had built stealth aircraft and flown them.

  • It's a big credibility factor there.

  • On October 31, 1986, both Lockheed and Northrop's ATF designs were declared the winners.

  • Under the terms of the Dem/Val competition, each team would build two aircraft.

  • At the end of the process,

  • one of two designs would become America's new advanced tactical fighter.

  • Costing billions of dollars,

  • the new fighter would make a technological leap into the 21st century

  • The F/A-22's RADAR system gives the aircraft a 'first-look, first-shot, first-kill' capability.

  • That means it can see an enemy plane first, fire a missile and destroy the target

  • without the other pilot ever knowing.

  • And in 1990, just months after the disintegration of the Soviet Union,

  • the shapes of the two rival designs were finally unveiled.

  • Now, ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present to you the YF-22A

  • prototype for U.S. air superiority in the 21st century.

  • On behalf of the entire team, I am honored to present the YF-23.

  • Northrop's version, called the YF-23, closely resembled its original design.

  • Well, it was a most unusual-looking aircraft, very futuristic.

  • It had twin V-tails as opposed to what's called a cruciform,

  • twin verticals and twin horizontals.

  • It had a large trapezoidal wing, and it had a very slender shape

  • when looked at from the edge-on view.

  • In contrast, Lockheed's design, called the YF-22, seemed surprisingly conventional

  • with four tail surfaces, vectored thrust, a broad, solid body, and a conventional wing.

  • But unlike Lockheed's other stealth aircraft, the F-117, radar-absorbent materials

  • were not applied over the whole of the F/A-22

  • but used selectively on its edges, cavities, and other crucial surface areas.

  • You walk around the airplane, everywhere you look,

  • what you see is something that's designed to do the job in the most efficient and effective way

  • and no wasted space, no wasted capability.,

  • It's truly an airplane that's intended and has been optimized for its job.

  • The F-22 carries its weapons internally.

  • Four weapons bays are hidden in the central mid-body section.

  • Six missiles can be carried in the ventral bays, which are covered with bifold doors.

  • The side bays will each hold one Sidewinder missile carried on a trapeze launcher.

  • The mid-body section also houses the fighter's landing gear and complex inlet ducts.

  • Right from day one on the F-22,

  • we decided to put S-shaped inlet ducts on it,

  • so the airplane is built with S-shaped inlet ducts

  • so that there's no way a radar is ever seeing the forward face of the jet engine.

  • Attached to the mid-body is the forebody,

  • which accommodates the cockpit and advanced avionics.

  • Both the YF-23 and the YF-22 are impressive-looking machines,

  • but their performance still needs to be tested.

  • The most crucial stage of the competition is still to come: the flight testing.

  • Northrop was first in the air.

  • In August 1990, the YF-23, flown by Paul Metz, went airborne.

  • The test was a huge success.

  • But Lockheed was quick to respond,

  • and on September the 29th at Edwards Air Force Base in California,

  • chief test pilot Dave Ferguson prepared the Raptor for its maiden flight.

  • And I thought, "The only thing in this airplane, that's ever flown before is me,"

  • and I think in the back of my mind I was saying,

  • "Please fly; please fly," when I pulled the nose up, and it just lifted off.

  • I was fully aware we had a wonderful-flying airplane,

  • and the handling qualities in the takeoff and landing,

  • or power approaches we call it, were just absolutely superb.

  • When I landed and Sherm met me at the airplane, I said, "H"H, ss, we really have a winner here."

  • The way the F-22 performed was no surprise to anybody who was involved in the program, not at all.

  • I mean, my money has been on the F-22 from early 1985,

  • and it will be there till I'm gone.

  • Over the next three months, the Raptor underwent a whole series of tests.

  • The air force required both teams to give them performance projections,

  • and then they were going to actually compare that with what the airplanes actually did in flight,

  • subsonic, supersonic at different altitudes, and so forth.

  • The winner of this stage would earn a contract for 650 aircraft.

  • The decision would hinge not just on what the contractors promised

  • but on the air force's confidence in their ability to deliver.

  • We expected to get a lot of flying done in the 90 days.

  • We actually got 72 flights out of two airplanes in 90 days.

  • And that is about as good as you can do.

  • During flight testing, the Raptor had beaten Northrop's YF-23 in a number of crucial performance areas.

  • We'd focused on the supersonic testing, including supercruising,

  • and we did something that Northrop didn't do, and that is, we did launch a couple of missiles.

  • We launched a Sidewinder out of the internal side bay on our prototype airplanes,

  • and we launched an AMRAAM, long-range air-to-air missile, out of the internal weapon bays.

  • The YF-22 had clearly shown that in every category, it was far superior to any existing fighter.

  • The air force was very impressed by what Lockheed had done.

  • Their flight test program was very aggressive.They flew hard and fast.

  • They flew many more hours and sorties than Northrop did,

  • and all of that gave the air force confidence that they knew what they were doing,

  • high confidence that they could build a superior airplane.

  • But it would be events in 1991 that would carve out the Raptor's future.

  • 22 minutes after midnight on January 17, 1991,

  • Lockheed's stealth F-117 spearheaded U.S. strikes against Saddam Hussein's regime.

  • The performance of Lockheed's stealth bombers during Operation Desert Storm

  • gave the company and its aircraft some priceless publicity.

  • I think, clearly, Lockheed was benefited in 1991 by the Gulf War,

  • where the F-117 was the star performer.

  • And there were skeptics of stealth even as late as that.

  • That had to be beneficial to the program.

  • But another aircraft also emerged from the Gulf War with a glowing reputation.

  • The F-15, the aircraft destined to be replaced by the ATF,

  • emphatically confirmed its status as the foremost air-superiority fighter in the world.

  • Now it appeared that the need for an advanced stealthy fighter,

  • the F-22, might be totally unfounded.

  • See, it's not like the F-15 wasn't any good. It's a good aircraft. It's still a good aircraft.

  • It will be a good aircraft for years to come.

  • You could even just tool up the factory and keep new F-15s

  • Why not?

  • Hey, I'm going to bring him up now.

  • But not everyone agrees.

  • The big weakness in their argument is,

  • they are making a statement about world conditions today

  • and what the threats are today.

  • The real issue is what capability you want for 2025 or 2030.

  • The people who say you don't need this,

  • they think the world is not going to change in the next 20 years,

  • and that is a hell of an assertion.

  • By April 1991, bogged down by the F-15 debate,

  • the U.S. Air Force prepared to announce the winner of the advanced tactical fighter contract.

  • But would the Raptor emerge from the controversy unscathed?

  • The F/A-22 was the first fighter aircraft with the ability to 'supercruise.'

  • That means it can fly at a velocity of one and a half times the speed of sound or greater,

  • without needing to engage afterburners.

  • Lockheed announced that it intended to locate the F-22's headquarters in Georgia,

  • where the Raptor's forward fuselage would be built.

  • General Dynamics would build the F-22's mid-body section in Fort Worth, Texas,

  • and Boeing would manufacture the wings and tail in Seattle, Washington.

  • But just eight months after the contract was awarded, the program hit its first major snag.

  • We lost one of the YF-22s.

  • Fortunately, the test pilot, who's a good friend of mine then and now,

  • walked away unharmed.

  • During preliminary testing, the unthinkable happened.

  • A YF-22 flown by Tom Morgenfeld crashed just after takeoff.

  • As this unique footage shows,

  • the aircraft's thrust vectoring system forces it to belly-land on the runway.

  • A key element of the Raptor's design, thrust vectoring,

  • uses movable exhaust nozzles to alter the angle of thrust from the two Pratt & Whitney engines.

  • As the Raptor makes its low-level flyby,

  • Tom Morgenfeld keeps the stick forward to keep the nose down,

  • but as the landing gear is retracted, the thrust vectoring engages

  • and pushes the aircraft towards the tarmac.

  • As the pilot struggles to correct this change in direction,

  • the Raptor seesaws.

  • The fundamental error there had nothing to do with the airplane.

  • It had to do with the fact that you don't fly a green airplane

  • and fly it at low speeds at low altitudes.

  • The cause of that accident was stupidity on the part of the management.

  • It had nothing to do with technology.

  • Despite the loss of the stealth aircraft, the program had achieved its major goals.

  • 10 million man-hours of analysis, 4,000 hours of radar testing,

  • and hundreds of hours of flight testing had gone into the development of the aircraft

  • --even before construction was given the go-ahead.

  • In fact, the F-22 accomplished more flight testing than any other fighter prior to full-scale production.

  • The first F/A-22 built for the U.S. Air Force was unveiled in a ceremony on April 9, 1997,

  • at Lockheed's headquarters in Marietta, Georgia.

  • Now air force pilots would get the opportunity to check out the new aircraft for themselves.

  • I would call the Raptor the Miss America of all aircraft.

  • It's got the talent. It's got the bikini contest won. It's beautiful.

  • It's got all the capabilities. It really wins the show in every aspect.

  • The airplane is eye-watering.

  • It does everything the pilot asks of it, and it is very good at what it does.

  • First flown by the air force in 1997,

  • pilots at Edwards Air Force Base have exceeded 2,000 flight-test hours in more than 900 missions.

  • The first time I went out, one F/A-22, me, against four F-16s.

  • And they told me what they were going to do.

  • They were going to do everything possible to defeat my systems.

  • And I watched exactly what they did the entire time and shot them off.

  • It was almost too easy, and I was almost laughing in the cockpit.

  • A key breakthrough in the Raptor's design:

  • its advanced cockpit and integrated avionics systems.

  • I think really where the Raptor gets its amazing capability

  • is the fusion of all of the different sensors on the aircraft.

  • You have a tactical scope

  • that combines the information of all the other sensors on the aircraft

  • into one display for the pilot.

  • So as a pilot, you don't have to sort through the radar or another sensor

  • to see what's going on around you.

  • Information is power, and the way this airplane displays information to you,

  • it gives you knowledge of the battle space.

  • It's all about seeing what's out there in front of you and being able to make decisions

  • about what to engage, when to engage, and how to engage it.

  • I'd say integrated avionics, does two things for me.

  • Number one, it makes me a lot safer.It gives me less chance to crash my jet.

  • It also makes every pilot who flies this aircraft more deadly.

  • Instead of having to do six or eight steps to achieve a kill,

  • you really only have to do one.

  • The Raptor carries a formidable array of ordnance.

  • All of the raptor's weapons are housed inside the aircraft.

  • Two bays at the bottom of the plane use a pneumatic-style hydraulic launcher

  • that literally punch the missiles or JDAMs out of the aircraft

  • with a force of 40 Gs.

  • And two side bays house air-to-air missiles.

  • Here, a trapeze launcher moves the missile outside, the airframe very rapidly

  • a fraction of a second before the missile is fired.

  • And to complement the Raptor's armament of eight missiles,

  • the fighter also has a gun.

  • At one point in the evolution of the Advanced Tactical Fighter Program,

  • the U.S. Air Force had raised the question of eliminating the gun to save weight.

  • I think that the designers of the F/A-22 realized the mistakes of the past,

  • like the F-4 initially being designed without a gun,

  • and realized that you should never say never about a threat that you're going to face

  • or a situation you're going to find yourself in, and so the Raptor has designed itself a gun.

  • Will anybody get close enough for us to use the gun?

  • Well, hopefully not.Probably not.

  • By the late '90s, pilots in the Raptor program were convinced

  • that their aircraft was made of the right stuff

  • and would easily be able to outperform and destroy any other fighter in existence.

  • It is the sum of the parts that makes the F/A-22 so capable.

  • Probably most important in my eyes is the stealth.

  • Having an aircraft that nobody can see is just a tremendous, tremendous advantage.

  • The speed, the maneuverability, the precision, all of those factors are incredible also.

  • So when you put everything together, the Raptor's just incredible.

  • But this belief was exclusively based on controlled flight and missile firing exercises.

  • What the Raptor's pilots really needed was combat experience,

  • and they were about to get it.

  • America's untested fifth-generation stealth fighter was about to go head-to-head

  • with a combat-seasoned air-superiority fighter: the F-15 Eagle.

  • The Pentagon recently estimated that the total development and production cost

  • of its current plan for 279 raptors would come to nearly $72 billion.

  • Before the F/A-22 Raptor enters operational service with the U.S. Air Force in the fall of 2005,

  • it will have completed thousands of hours of vigorous combat testing.

  • But since Desert Storm, critics of the F-22 program

  • claim that the F-15 Eagle, destined to be replaced by the Raptor,

  • already has the attributes necessary

  • to remain the world's preeminent air-superiority fighter well into the new millennium.

  • It is a view dismissed by the U.S. Air Force.

  • If you look at the F-15 and the F-18

  • and compare it with existing fighters that are sold around the world today,

  • you'll find that today we're almost at parity.

  • If we ever run up against an enemy

  • that has the ability in terms of the aircrew to use those enemy fighters,

  • we will have a tough time with the current generation.

  • The F-15 is a great aircraft, and in air-to-air, it is outstanding.

  • However, with the production of new fighters that are being produced today

  • and also some surface-to-air threats,

  • there are situations in the F-15 that would make me nervous.

  • In March 2003, supporters of the F-15 got the opportunity to see

  • whether or not the Eagle was still the best fighter in the sky.

  • Five F-15s would go head-to-head with a single Raptor.

  • Although no missiles would be used during the exercise,

  • the sorties were closely resemble actual combat.

  • No mercy would be given by either side.

  • This was a kill-or-be-killed exercise.

  • There were five adversaries and me.

  • And my biggest concern was running out of weapons too soon.

  • All five F-15s were flown by experienced F-22 pilots.

  • One by one, the Raptor brought them down.

  • I could never see them.I never knew that they were there, and I died.

  • You got someone locked.

  • High point.

  • E2.

  • Roll left.

  • I could hear him on the radio calling his simulated missile shots fox two ... uh

  • and knowing that this was getting really unnerving

  • because I could also tell his range was closing rapidly on me.

  • Splash, Splash.

  • I don't think anybody ever saw me the entire time that while we were out in the airspace.

  • Bandit, Bandit.Fox.Fox.

  • Could not find him no matter what I did

  • and the next time was when he flew directly over the top of my airplane and I saw him visually.

  • And 3, 2, 1, snap.

  • I know firsthand from flying the Raptor against other aircraft

  • and flying other aircraft against the Raptor that it's like clubbing baby seals.

  • It's so easy.

  • First indication you have that an F/A-22 is out in your area of responsibility

  • is when you are in your parachute heading down towards earth

  • and your jet is falling a little bit faster than you are.

  • In combat testing with F-15s,

  • the F/A-22 Raptor had emphatically proven its doubters wrong.

  • There have been times when the Raptor has gone up two vs. 8 F-15s.

  • And it ends up being boring for the adversaries because no matter what they do, they die.

  • Having flown the F-15 and now having flown the Raptor and seen combat,

  • I would not want to be on the receiving end of what the F/A-22 is capable of.

  • We will take on anything, any combination of the latest aircraft

  • that we can throw at ourselves, and we usually win.

  • To date, 27 F/A-22 Raptors have been delivered to the U.S. Air Force

  • and are in limited operation at Edwards, Nellis, and Tyndall Air Force Bases.

  • Many more will follow.

  • The air force has agreed to a final production run of almost 300 aircraft.

  • I think 300 F/A-22s will tip the scales of any conflict in our favor.

  • I think that any country who sees 300 F/A-22s flying towards it

  • has got to get a little nervous.

  • Lockheed expects a full production rate of 60 aircraft a year,

  • and with components and parts coming from 46 states,

  • the F/A-22 is truly a national effort.

  • Costing a massive $93 million each,

  • the Raptor is certainly the world's most expensive fighter aircraft,

  • but for many, it is money well spent.

  • Yeah, this is something special.This is not like an F-15 on steroids or an F-16 on steroids.

  • This was the real thing with a leap of technology

  • that's orders of magnitude better than what we have now.

  • The interesting thing about the F-22, though, is that it is a fixed volume

  • with an infinitely increasing ability in terms of its computer capabilities.

  • If you think about the airplane, it has fixed holes in the sides of the fuselage

  • where computers sit today.In the future, there will be more computer capacity

  • that requires less power going in that same physical hole.

  • So the F/A-22 over the course of its life will only become a more and more flexible

  • and more and more potent machine as computer capacity increases.

  • America's F/A-22 Raptor was created out of the Cold War fear

  • that Russian-made fighters would sweep aside the F-15.

  • But the world has changed since the frigid days of the Cold War.

  • The Soviet Union no longer exists,

  • and the F-15 has more than earned the fear and respect it commands

  • as the current frontline fighter for the U.S. Air Force.

  • But the Raptor, Lockheed's F/A-22, looks set to carry U.S. Air Force doctrine well into the 21st century.

  • I'd be terrified to go into the arena with something like that.

  • I really would.I've been on the receiving end of it in testing

  • and mentally translated to myself to what if this was combat,

  • and it is an unnerving and a disquieting feeling

  • to fly in the same airspace with one of these airplanes.

  • I would say that it's not fair to our enemies or even our own technology to fight against the Raptor,

  • but the goal of war isn't fair.

  • We don't go into combat because we want a fair fight.

  • We want to win as fast as possible with as little loss of life as possible,

  • and the Raptor allows that to do that for generations to come.

  • In today's changing world, there are few certainties,

  • but the rule of the Raptor, America's air-dominance fighter over the skies, is one of them.

It is a war plane light years ahead in its design.

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