F-22: Long live the King.

In the dynamic world of military aviation, where technological marvels rise and fall, the fate of the F-22 Raptor hangs in the balance. As the famous Terenas Menethil, the 2nd, had said, "no king rules forever, my son", the F-22 won't be ruling the skies forever. In a world dominated by information and technology, we witness the imminent retirement of this iconic aircraft. Amidst the swirling rumors and speculations, it becomes crucial to discern fact from fiction. Beyond the headlines and sensationalism, I would like to embark on a journey with you to understand the roots of the Raptor, its role, and unravel the intricate web of circumstances leading to its eventual withdrawal from the skies.

Lockheed Martin's YF-22

The Cold Beginnings

The F-22 Raptor as we know today, actually was started in 1981 as "Senior Sky". It was part of the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program to counter the Soviet A-50 AWAC system as well as new  surface-to-air-missiles. Since the project was very ambitious, designed to spearhead offensive against USSR in case of a Warsaw pact invasion of Europe, the government of United States actually encourages multiple companies to collaborate and work with each other. Lockheed Martin (via its Skunk Works division) partnered with Boeing and General Dynamics to produce YF-22 while Northrop partnered with McDonnell Douglas to produce YF-23. Despite being faster and more stealthy than the YF-22, the YF-23 was dropped as it was not agile enough. In an environment where the USAF might be against highly agile MiG-29s and Su-27s, agility to survive a dogfight was crucial.

Northrop's YF-23 (above) and Lockheed Martin's YF-22 (below) in flight

Due to the offensive role that F-22 was supposed to fill deep within enemy lines, its shape was designed to provide higher visibility and higher radar performance while minimizing radar cross section. This was achieved by superior aerodynamic design that allowed the platform to achieve high speeds without the use of an afterburner. It was a technological marvel. In 1985, the US government had thought that they would purchase around 750 F-22s. Perhaps the plan was the replace the entire F-15 fleet. However with the fall of Soviet Union, there were extensive budget cuts and eventually Department of Defense only purchased 183 (which eventually became 187 in 2008) despite the USAF needing minimum 381. This meant the Department of Defense was on the hook for two different platforms with different costs for maintenance. Additionally, the export of F-22 to other nations was banned to protect its stealth and other advanced technologies. While, it didn't stop adversaries from performing cyber attacks to steal the data of F-22, it had severely ballooned the cost of each F-22 fighter as it was an artisanal platform in USAF's fleet. This would eventually come to haunt the F-22 as we will discuss later. 

So why is it being retired if its so good? To understand this, we have to first realize that the original strengths of the platform.

Designed in 1980s during the height Cold War, the strength of F-22 lies in its ability to merge two different philosophies. Its thrust vectoring and agility provided it super maneuverability to conquer dogfights, while its low observable radar cross section and stealth helped it evade radars until it was too close. All these helped it against its Cold War era goals. It could go deep inside Soviet space and still match the Su-27 flankers agility. But, as time moved on, Soviet Union fell apart and new threats emerged. 

Enter the Dragon

The Chengdu J-20

One of these threats was communist People's Republic of China. While, USA had expensive F-22 at its disposal, People's Republic had stolen numerous amount of data to create its own cheaper J-20 stealth fighter. The People's Republic has produced and inducted double the number of J-20s than the USAF's F-22. However, unlike F-22 that's using a newer generations of engines, J-20 is mostly used older Russian AL-31 engines and only recently started using the Chinese copy of the AL-31 engine called the WS-10. Unlike USAF, People's Republic is aiming for quantity of quality and it predicts that a large fleet of J-20s would overwhelm the F-22.

Even if F-22 was successful against the J-20, People's Republic of China suspects that each Raptor lost would hurt USA a lot more than a loss of J-20 would to People's Republic as J-20 should be significantly cheaper to produce than F-22. The world has so far never seen a situation where this will be tested and I hope we do not see it in the future as well.

Maintenance Woes

F-22 Raptors

When the F-22 was created, it was not created with modularity in mind. This means that its software is married to its hardware. As advancements in technology created new hardware, new software updates were required to ensure that it was compatible with F-22. This proved to be extremely expensive. The F-22 also cannot communicate well with other stealth platforms like F-35 even via a direct data link. As such, it has been reported that USAF is using Lockheed U2s  as a "middle-man" to transfer data. This is a big issue as F-35 would normally provide backup to F-22 in stealth missions and a "middle-man" approach would lead to significant latency. Latency which could prove not only costly, but also, lethal.

Additionally, since the production was only limited at 187 aircrafts, any repairs come at a significant cost. The platform was also never exported so all the costs are to be incurred by United States unlike F-35 which would also see other members contribute to the costs. As per latest assessment from Department of Defense, the assembly lines would be extremely expensive to reopen and eventually it was decided that it wouldn't be worth to reopen the production line at the high cost it would incur to the American taxpayer.  

Looking Forward

Since the F-22 was extremely expensive to purchase, maintain and upgrade, it will be of no surprise that its retirement should be something that USAF would explore. Since the American air supremacy relies on being a step ahead, it is no surprise that DoD would focus on the next generation of fighters than focus on the ones from a bygone era. The F-22 isn't weak, its just too expensive for what it provides. With costs being at the forefront, I suspect the new generation fighter would be aimed with some sort of drone or unmanned technology that could overwhelm the enemy defenses at a much cheaper cost.