Why the F-16 is one of Nato’s most important fighter jets | BBC News

In March 2013, a US Mark 1 Predator drone was flying on a reconnaissance mission over international waters near the coast of Iran. When the Iranian military picked it up on their radar and noticed that it was all on its own, they scrambled two jets to intercept it. A few months earlier, a similar situation had unfolded, but the pair of Iranian Su-25s had missed every shot before returning home. This time around, Iran was sending two F-4 Phantoms, an old but highly reliable aircraft that was sure to take down the Predator drone. But this time around, there was a surprise waiting for the Iranian pilots. As they approached the drone, one of the pilots in the lead F-4 looked to his left and was met with the pilot's worst nightmare. Cruising right alongside them was an American stealth fighter that had remained entirely undetected on their radar and had been flying right underneath their noses. After checking out their weapons, the American had climbed to reveal himself. And not in the mood to engage two enemy aircraft, he turned on his radio and said to the Phantoms to go home. A request which they promptly followed, eager to get away from the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, arguably the most lethal fighter jet of all time. Are you tired of feeling like your online privacy is constantly under threat? Well, worry no more! Introducing Surfshark VPN, the solution to all of your internet security problems. Imagine being able to protect all of your online activities with just a single click. With Surfshark, you can keep your private information safe and secure. The best part? It's incredibly easy to use. Surfshark masks what you're doing online, keeping all the important stuff private and secure. With Surfshark VPN, you can travel the world in just one click, change your virtual location, and also access different content libraries around the globe. Want to watch your favorite shows and movies from back home while traveling? Surfshark has you covered. 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Thanks to Surfshark for sponsoring, and now back to today's video. In the 1980s, the United States Air Force announced the creation of a new program called ATF, or Advanced Tactical Fighter. The goal was to build upon the success of the F-15 and F-16 and create something new and state-of-the-art that could counter the new advancements in Soviet aviation using new developments in stealth, speed and maneuverability. Of seven companies that bid for the contract, two were selected to compete. Lockheed, who created the prototype YF-22, and Northrop, who designed the prototype YF-23. While overall somewhat similar in design, the two designs differed in several key places. For example, the YF-23 was much larger and sported a dramatic V-shaped tail for high maneuverability. It was also considered stealthier and, according to some analysts, could have been faster. It was a very unique design. But this uniqueness might have been its downfall, as the Air Force announced that they would be selecting the YF-22 instead. There's a lot of speculation as to why the YF-22 was ultimately chosen, but the biggest factor behind Lockheed's victory is likely the fact that it was seen as cheaper and less risky investment. There was also a bit of salesmanship involved, as Lockheed's test pilots were a bit showier during the trial runs, pulling maneuvers that put more than nine Gs on the airframe, firing internal weapons bays, and showcasing their thrust vectoring, which their competitor lacked. To this day, many die-hard YF-23 fans will continue to assert that the Air Force made the wrong choice, and that it was more a bureaucratic decision than anything else. But regardless, Lockheed was awarded the Advanced Tactical Fighter contract, and the F-22 was on its way to full-scale production. As convinced as Air Force officials were that Lockheed's design would be cheaper, they were in for a surprise. The technology being developed on the F-22 turned out to be way more expensive than everybody had anticipated, but when the Raptor finally entered service in 2005, there were no doubts about the absolutely lethal machine that had been created. With a length of 62 feet and a wingspan of 44 feet, the F-22 is quite similar in size to the F-15 Eagle, but the first thing that's unique about the F-22 is the shape of its wings. Their diamond shape gives the aircraft a very high wing area, which, along with the large tail fins, makes the F-22 incredibly maneuverable. This maneuverability is aided by the pair of Pratt & Whitney F119 turbofan engines, which come with thrust vectoring, allowing the aircraft to redirect its exhaust for superb handling. All of this, along with computer-assisted controlling, allows the Raptor to pull off spectacular stunts that almost seem to defy the laws of physics, such as its signature falling leaf, a stunning near-vertical climb after takeoff, and a whole lot more. But maneuverability is only part of what makes the F-22 the most fearsome fifth-generation fighter. Those Pratt & Whitney engines have a maximum thrust of 35,000 pounds, which can blast the Raptor to a maximum speed of Mach 2.2. It also has the ability to supercruise, which means it's able to maintain supersonic speeds In the case of the F-22, it can maintain a combat speed of Mach 1.5 while flying at an altitude of 50,000 feet, granting a wider deployment range for air-to-air missiles when compared to other fighters. Blistering speed and high altitude already make it a difficult target on its own. But what really puts the F-22 in a class of its own is its stealth. To avoid bouncing radio waves back toward enemy radar, the Raptor was carefully designed with state-of-the-art low observability. This includes the shape of its airframe, often referred to as continuous curves, which avoid flat edges as much as possible, scattering radar waves and thus preventing them from returning to their sender. The designers went as far to avoid straight edges even on the landing gear doors and weapons bays, instead giving them carefully designed sawtooth edges to further complicate matters for enemy radar. Of course, the jet's armament is also stored internally to reduce visibility in three internal compartments, a main weapons bay at the center and a smaller one on each side. The main weapons bay houses six launchers for beyond-visual-range missiles and the side compartments can each hold one shorter-range air-to-air missile. But because opening the weapons bays could betray the aircraft's stealth, hydraulic systems ensure that the bay doors are open for less than a second as the missile is pushed clear of the aircraft and launched while the door closes as quickly as possible behind it to maintain stealth. In a similar fashion, the F-22's autocannon, a 20mm M61 Vulcan, is concealed by a retractable door that only opens when necessary. Now, while the shape of the aircraft is its main factor in low observability, the materials involved also play a role. Special and highly classified radar absorber materials are used to coat the F-22, which makes radar waves lose energy as they are reflected. But because radar absorber materials are expensive, heavy, and require a lot of maintenance, their application has been limited to only the places on the airframe where they're needed most. Minimizing radar absorber coating also means that less maintenance is required, and so unlike the B-2's stealth bomber, which requires climate-controlled hangars to maintain its delicate stealth properties, the F-22 can be worked on in any average hangar. All of this investment in stealth means that the Raptor is ridiculously hard to track and take down, and while its exact specifications are still classified, Lockheed Martin stated in 2009 that from some angles it has a radar cross-section of .0001 square meters, which is about the size of a bumblebee. To top it all off, when the F-22 Raptor was introduced, it came with some of the most advanced avionics of all time. The baseline software of the aircraft is comprised of a ridiculous 1.7 million lines of code, handling everything from an advanced missile approach warning system, on-board radars, and electronic warfare. Six sensors around the jet give it complete spherical infrared rounds, and are designed to operate in all weather conditions. Information gathered by the Raptor can easily be transferred to friendly aircraft, and vice versa, giving it a high level of integration on the battlefield, especially with other Raptors and exceptional situational awareness. All in all, it was truly an engineering marvel, a blend of top-of-the-line aerospace and materials engineering, as well as software development and a whole lot more. And remember, this is only the information that has been released to the public, as there is much, much more about the F-22 that still remains totally classified, and its true abilities aren't even allowed to be demonstrated in training with US allies. Overall, its production required an estimated 95,000 jobs, spanning 46 US states, and by 2011 it was estimated that the US had spent around $70 billion on the program, quite a hefty price tag. But what they got was exactly what they'd paid for, one of the quickest, most maneuverable, stealthiest aircraft of all time. When the F-22 first entered service in the early 2000s, it instantly became the center of attention. There were debates about its cost, which had gone far over budget, and even more debates about its future. But one thing was for certain, everybody else wanted a piece of the pie. Australia, Israel, Jordan, and others expressed interest in purchasing some Raptors for themselves, but despite their best efforts, the United States maintained its export ban on the F-22 and refused to sell them abroad, with Congress highlighting that they contained far too much classified technology to pass around. And so, kept within the nation that created it, the F-22 didn't see action for a few years until in 2007, when a pair were dispatched to intercept Russian Tu-95 bombers that were flying off the coast of Alaska. Since then, they've been sent on many similar missions to escort Russian bombers away from American airspace, and later, after a reluctant deployment to the Middle East, came its famous stealthy interception of an Iranian Phantom. But obviously, there wasn't a lot of real action involved in these missions. The F-22's time for combat wouldn't come until September 2014, when the United States launched Operation Inherent Resolve, the beginning of a long-term military intervention against ISIS. In the opening days of the invasion, Raptors dropped 1,000-pound guided bombs on ISIS positions near the Euphrates River in Syria. Over the next year, F-22s flew more than 200 sorties and dropped bombs on more than 60 ISIS positions. They also provided close air support for ground forces, and though they never engaged them, deterred Russian aircraft from attacking American-allied Kurdish ground forces. The one time Raptors did actually engage Russian forces was in 2018, at the Battle of Kashym. Well, technically, it wasn't the Russian military, but rather the Russian paramilitary group PMC Wagner, who have become quite well-known in recent years for their involvement in the Middle East, Africa, and Ukraine. On February 7, 2018, Wagner forces, alongside Shia militants and local fighters, launched a coordinated attack on a US-allied base near the city of Kashym, supported by T-72 and T-55 tanks. They fired rockets, artillery, and mortar, attempting to strike their headquarters. But as you can probably expect, this would be a fatal mistake. After contacting Russian officials and being assured that the official Russian military had no presence in the battle, the US authorized a large-scale response to defend their allies and special forces besieged inside the base. F-22 Raptors were among the cavalry that soon showed up, and in a dominant show of force, As many as 200 Wagner contractors and several hundred enemy militants were among the casualties, while not a single US soldier or US ally lost their life. Shortly after this incident, F-22s flew alongside B-52 bombers over Afghanistan, where together they struck Taliban-operated opium production facilities. But by far the most well-known mission ever flown by the F-22 Raptor came in February 2023, when a mysterious alleged Chinese spy balloon was spotted over US airspace, making its way eastward after being seen over the state of Montana. The Air Force was hesitant to shoot it down while it had the chance of landing on a population center, so they waited and kept their eye on it. The moment the balloon was over the Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of South Carolina, an F-22 intercepted it at an altitude of 60,000 feet and fired a short, air-to-air missile at it, taking out the balloon and allowing its wreckage to be recovered by the Coast Guard. Just a week later, the F-22s shot down two unidentified flying objects, supposedly silver and cylindrical in shape, one over Alaska and one over Canada, though the remains of these were never recovered. The F-22's service history is exemplary, as not a single Raptor has ever been shot down in combat. On top of this, its performance in training missions with Allies has shown its capabilities to be top-notch. And on the rare occasion it loses a mock dogfight, the story is seen as breaking news. But despite this, almost since its conception, the F-22 has struggled to keep its place in the US Air Force. And much of this comes down to cost. Like we said earlier, Lockheed was originally selected over Northrop, partly because Lockheed's model was cheaper and because Northrop had been known to go over budget. But this expectation was shattered, as production dragged on and on, and new experimental technologies sucked funding in over the years. And as the price rose, the Air Force began losing its interest. When the F-22 was first approved, it was expected that the US Air Force would purchase a total of 750, and the US Navy was also keeping tabs on the project as a potential carrier-capable version. But as deadlines were pushed back, and the ceiling of money continued to rise, the Navy withdrew their interest, and the Air Force lowered their plans to purchase only 339. Then as the focus of American armed conflict shifted away from conventional wars and more toward counterinsurgency and asymmetrical warfare in the Middle East, this number dropped even further. After all, what's the point of an air superiority platform when nobody's contesting your airspace? Eventually, 187 were procured, and production ceased soon after, with many of the production lines cannibalized for the newer F-35. Investors and higher-ups in the military were far more interested in the growing versatility of the F-35, as well as its export potential, and so the F-22 simply fell to the wayside, and several times it was passed up on when funding for upgrades was sent elsewhere. While it's yet to be confirmed, there are already talks of retiring the Raptor by 2030, and there are many reasons for this. Firstly, despite it being the most advanced air superiority fighter on the planet, its avionics are becoming increasingly dated with each year. Remember, this jet was designed in the 1990s, and while its avionics were state-of-the-art on release, things have changed drastically in the years since. Of course, improvements and upgrades have been added over the years, but a complete modernization of the avionics of every F-22, even if it was possible, would be unbelievably expensive, because the Raptor was simply not designed with modularity in mind, while more recent aircraft like the F-35 have been designed with this lesson already in mind. But the real reason is because the sun is already setting on the Raptor's dominance. And no, it's not rival aircraft like Russia's Su-57 or China's J-20 that pose a threat to the F-22, but rather its own replacement. The US is currently working on a program called Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, a sixth-generation air superiority platform designed to be highly integrated with drone support and the most modern avionics. And the NGAD program is supposedly going to be ready for service by 2030, but knowing the US Air Force and how they are with deadlines, it's best not to get your hopes up on that one. And so, despite being arguably the deadliest aircraft in the US inventory, and its status as a pinnacle of American military prowess, the clock is ticking for the F-22 Raptor, a beast that was perhaps born in the wrong era, and with too large a price tag. Sadly, before it can display its true potential as king of the skies, it may find itself the subject of an early retirement, relegated to airshows and aerospace museums. But whatever its eventual fate might be, there's no denying the incredible engineering behind one of the most lethal fighters that's ever been created.