America's heavily upgraded F-22 Raptor breaks cover for the 1st time! .

Thanks to aviation photographer Jared Hamilton, we just got our first real look at America's heavily upgraded F-22 Raptor that represents such a huge leap in capability over today's jets that Lockheed Martin has taken to calling it Raptor 2.0. Now, a great deal of this upgrade is tucked away beneath the radar-absorbent skin of the Raptor, but these pictures do show what may be some of the most important changes made to the world's first fifth-generation fighter. New stealth underwing fuel tanks, developed in the Low Drag Tank and Pylon program, and infrared search and track targeting pods on each wing to allow for passive detection and targeting of even stealth aircraft via their heat signatures alone. Now, some of these new additions, to be totally honest, are already pretty standard fare on a lot of jets across both fourth and fifth generations, but that's the thing that people don't seem to understand about this Raptor 2.0 concept, at least on social media. This aircraft has been the most dominant air superiority fighter in the world for two straight decades, despite more than a half-dozen new and more modern clean-sheet fighters reaching service since the first Raptors came online. The F-22's stealth, avionics, and mind-numbing aerobatic performance, all developed and fielded before Apple's iPod, not the iPhone, but the iPod, have long been enough to dominate the skies without the tools that have become commonplace since. So just imagine how scary the Raptor's gonna be once those, and a long list of other capabilities, have been fully implemented. So let's take a closer look at these pictures from Jared Hamilton while we dive deeper into the Raptor 2.0 concept. I'm Alex Hollings, and this is AirPower. Have you looked at your credit card statement lately? 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But if you start today, you could delay two mortgage payments. And as a new homeowner myself, I can attest, that is immediate cash in your pocket that I think we could all probably use right about now. So give American Financing a call. America's home for home loans at 866-889-8121. That's 866-889-8121 or AmericanFinancing.net slash sandbox with two X's. When Lockheed Martin's F-22 Raptor first took flight in 1997, its combination of incredibly powerful new engines, data-fusing sensors and avionics, and a radar cross-section that has been estimated to be around 0.0001 square meters all made it much more than just another new fighter. It represented such a significant leap ahead of even the most capable and dominant fighters of the day that the Raptor program can really be credited with thrusting the very concept of fighter generations into the mainstream consciousness just to find a way to adequately characterize how much better the Raptor really was. Of course, because of that, when people talk about the Raptor online, they tend to focus on the superlatives. Its tiny radar return, its jaw-dropping 70,000 pounds of burning thrust, and of course its incredible airshow aerobatics. But what really makes the Raptor special, at least in my opinion, isn't what it's capable of when you push it to its hairiest limits, it's how wildly capable the Raptor is well below its red lines. You see, the U.S. Air Force has been trying to teach us this lesson since at least the early 70's when the media and Congress and much of the world at large was focused squarely on America meeting or exceeding the performance metrics of the high flying and high speed Soviet MiG-25. But instead, the Air Force came out with a wildly expensive fighter that couldn't fly as high or as fast to counter it in the now legendary F-15 Eagle. The Air Force had fully embraced the idea of maximizing real combat performance instead of chasing those top-line metrics that made for good headlines. Rather than aiming for a Mach 3 plus top speed, the Eagle's design emphasized things like reduced wing loading and maintaining as much energy as possible throughout maneuvers, concepts that are a lot harder to explain in a 70-character headline, but tend to have a much bigger impact on real-life combat performance. And now, through the lens of history, the results really speak for themselves, with the MiG-25's combined air combat record over the past 56 years considered somewhat murky due to ongoing fighting in Ukraine among other things, but is still optimistically reported as 8-8, meaning 8 wins and 8 losses. The F-15 Eagle, on the other hand, would go on to record an astonishing air combat record of 104 wins and zero losses, including handing the MiG-25 one of its 8 L's. And just to head off some comments at the past, that 104-0 record is for the original F-15 Eagle in specifically air-to-air combat, and not the whole Eagle line. The F-15E has its own records, and I would argue the F-15EX, or the Advanced Eagle line, will also have its own, despite the Advanced Eagle line racking up its first two air-to-air victories just recently in Qatar. So anyway, as you might imagine, when it came time to field the F-15's intended replacement, that same emphasis on real combat performance, even if it might be difficult to explain, was still very much alive and well. Which is why I would contend that focusing on the Raptor's top-line stats does not actually do you as much good when you're trying to understand what makes it just so darn effective in the air-to-air fight. And while this concept extends into just about every facet of the Raptor's design, I think it might be easiest to sum up by looking to its engines. The F-22 is powered by a pair of groundbreaking, at the time, F-119 afterburning turbofan engines produced by Pratt & Whitney. Now under full afterburner, as I mentioned, these engines will pump out 70,000 pounds of thrust. That's some 12,600 pounds more than a fully loaded 737 MAX carrying 189 passengers. It's enough to be the most powerful fighter in service in the world right now. But in a jet like the Raptor, or in most fighters in general, really, pilots aren't going to be spending very much time with their afterburners at full tilt. The maximum SFC, or specific fuel consumption, for these engines under afterburner is a pretty mind-boggling 2.35 pounds of fuel per pound of thrust per hour. So, we multiply that max SFC of 2.35 by 70,000 pounds of thrust, and we get 164,000 pounds of fuel burned per hour, or roughly 2,742 pounds of fuel burned per minute. Now with a full load of 18,000 pounds of fuel on board, the Raptor could only keep that up for a bit better than six minutes before its fuel gauge hit E. But the Raptor doesn't need to sit at full afterburner. It doesn't need to rely on those superlative metrics because it wasn't designed just to top-line figures. The Raptor may still be the most powerful fighter on the planet under afterburner, but what's really crazy about these engines is how powerful they are without their afterburners. Each F-22 Raptor engine pumps out an insane 26,000 pounds of thrust dry without afterburner, meaning the Raptor produces more power without afterburners than most fighters can with their afterburners at full tilt, including the F-15 Eagle, the F-18 Super Hornet, the Eurofighter Typhoon, the MiG-29, and the MiG-35. Heck, just one Raptor engine without its afterburner is enough to beat the max power output of Saab's Gripen E or China's JF-17. This incredible ability to produce power without afterburners makes it possible for the F-22 to supercruise or fly at supersonic speeds without its afterburners at speeds as high as a reported Mach 1.7. That means the F-22 can fly faster without its afterburners than some of its American fighter peers, like the F-35 and F-18 Super Hornet can fly with their afterburners at max. In a close quarters fight, this ability to produce tons of power without resorting to fuel-gobbling afterburners represents a huge battlefield advantage that just isn't easy to summarize in a headline or meme, but often has a greater impact on warfighting performance than the jet's max thrust or top speed ever could. That's all to say that the F-22's dominant position atop the air superiority rankings isn't just about technology. It's also built upon a deep understanding of the real-world complexities of air combat, rather than a Russian-like focus of headline-grabbing metrics. And that focus is what has allowed this fighter to stay so far ahead of its competition that even two decades after entering service, it remains the measuring stick by which all other fighter programs are compared. The F-22 is so good at the fundamentals of air combat that it continues to dominate, even against jets carrying more modern and advanced hardware, like infrared search and track or helmet-cued targeting, both of which have become commonplace in recent decades. While adversary pilots in close-range air-to-air combat exercises only have to look at an F-22 with their eyes to cue high-off-boresight targeting with advanced weapons like the AIM-9X Sidewinder, anywhere around them, even behind them, F-22 pilots have to actually orient the nose of their entire aircraft directly at their adversary to fire. And yet, somehow, even scoring a single notional kill against an F-22 in these exercises still becomes headline news all around the world. That is how good today's Raptor is. But with sixth-generation fighters beginning to emerge, and the Raptor's replacement probably still a solid decade away from being built in sufficient numbers for the job, the Air Force no longer wants to rely on the Raptor's peerless adherence to the fundamentals alone, and instead, Uncle Sam's top-tier air superiority fighters are getting a huge infusion of capability in a massive upgrade that includes adding tens of millions of dollars worth of hardware to each and every operational Raptor. Not just bringing their onboard systems up to par with modern standards, but using the F-22 airframe as a technological bridge between today's fifth-generation jets and the sixth-generation fighters to come. And I want to be clear, these upgrades are much more than just slapping on some new coats of radar-absorbent paint and adding a software update. These changes, many of which remain classified, amount to nothing short of a complete platform overhaul so substantial that Lockheed Martin themselves have taken to calling the new version of these jets Raptor 2.0. Now, it was just about three weeks ago when I showed you the first-ever pictures and video of a production representative model of this Raptor 2.0 concept that I got while attending the Air Force Association's Warfare Symposium in Denver. But you guys might remember that I got a lot more out of that trip than just getting to see a model of what this upgraded jet would look like. I also learned that the Raptor's new stealth fuel tanks aren't drop tanks at all like we had all previously assumed, meaning they weren't just designed to maintain the aircraft's low observability, but also to withstand the immense forces associated with aggressive combat flying. Now, Lockheed Martin's folks wouldn't tell me exactly how many Gs these new tanks are rated to withstand. And it is important to remember that the Raptor was built to be a highly capable dogfighter, but it still prefers operating as a long-range sniper, where pulling hard Gs isn't as common a necessity. Now, what Lockheed would tell me is that these tanks were designed to stay underwing through the vast majority of combat operations that a Raptor might find itself in. But just in case, if they do need to be dropped, they break away completely clean from the wing, leaving no gaps or pylons behind that could compromise the Raptor's stealth profile. The non-stealth drop tanks carried by today's F-22s for ferry flights hold 600 gallons, or around 4,000 pounds of fuel each. But those stealth-compromising fuel pods are never actually carried in combat because of the way they mess up both the jet's stealth and its aerobatic performance. It's important to remember that performance limitations created by carrying equipment underwing aren't just about the physics of flight, like adding weight or drag. It's often got less to do with what the jet is capable of, and more to do with what the hardware can withstand without getting ripped off the wing and creating a pretty bad day for everybody involved. Lockheed tells me that these new fuel tanks carry a similar amount of fuel as the old ones, but in a side-by-side comparison they do seem to be a bit smaller. So, my assumption is that they may carry a bit less due to the limitations of shaping geometries or wing loading or other variables. Today's F-22 has a combat radius of around 530 miles on internal fuel, meaning it can fly that far out to shoot something down before it has to turn back without refueling. If these new tanks do indeed carry around 4,000 pounds of fuel like the old ones, well, they could realistically extend the Raptor's combat range out to well north of 860 miles. If the new tanks carry about 1,000 pounds less in total, or around 3,500 pounds of fuel each, that would still stretch the Raptor's legs well past 750 miles. That shakes out to between a 40-60 increase in range while having a minimal impact on the Raptor's stealth profile. But just as important are those infrared search and track targeting pods that we can see outboard on the wings of this Raptor. These pods are known to house Lockheed Martin's new Gen 3 TAC-IRST system, and we'll dive into what that means a bit more closely in a minute. This passive infrared targeting capability has become pretty commonplace on many of today's fighters, and has long been a gap in the Raptor's capability set. In fact, it was supposed to be implemented in the Raptor originally, but was cut due to budgetary limitations. In effect, infrared search and track targeting allows fighters to track and target adversary jets via their heat signatures alone, which comes in really handy in at least two different ways. The first is that infrared sensors are passive, unlike radar which requires blasting potentially detectable electromagnetic energy out into the world to read how that energy is bounced back. And the second, of course, is that even stealth aircraft produce a pretty prominent heat signature when juxtaposed against the very cold high-altitude sky, making this an effective means of countering stealth aircraft as long as you've got line of sight. Now, if you look very closely at these images taken by Jared Hamilton, it looks a little like the pod on the pilot's left or our right has lenses for targeting sensors to peek out through, but the pod on our left looks like it could actually be opaque. Now that suggests a few potential possibilities. If there's only a lens on one pod, the other could be dedicated to adding different new capabilities to the Raptor, like new electronic warfare hardware, or a line of sight communication system to control AI-enabled drones in heavily jammed environments. If, on the other hand, both pods do carry infrared sensors, that could be beneficial in a different way. With separate IR feeds from slightly different angles, it could allow for more effective triangulation of a target in 3D space. Now this is a capability Lockheed Martin IRST systems already employ to some extent, networking sensors across multiple aircraft to create a higher fidelity targeting track. Now this is important because a single IRST sensor can, broadly speaking, pretty effectively identify a target's angle and bearing in relation to itself, but not necessarily its distance. With another sensor measuring from another angle, it becomes a lot easier to triangulate distance and as such, precise location. In any regard, the IRST system the Raptor is getting won't just be a plug-and-play equivalent to existing systems in the field today. Lockheed Martin describes it as a next-generation infrared sensor that builds upon lessons learned in earlier TAC IRST efforts, as well as in the development of systems like the F-35's incredibly advanced infrared-distributed aperture system that ties directly into helmet-mounted displays, as well as the F-22's own AN-AAR-56 Infrared Missile Launch Detector, or MLD, system. And true to that concept, this system is meant to be much more than just a forward-looking infrared targeting capability. Lockheed has also stated plainly that it provides full 360-degree coverage. And that tells me it's going to require a lot more than one sensor. In fact, Lockheed Martin officials have even openly stated that the system will require, a distributed set of embedded TAC IRST sensors. So that could really be an argument in favor of both of these pods having lenses and it just being tough to make them out in the pictures. All of this, of course, comes in addition to a long list of internal upgrades that the F-22 is slated to receive, which includes a new Open Mission System and software architecture to allow for rapid updates and easier upgrades down the line. In fact, just last week, the first over-the-air F-22 software update was executed in testing, making it possible to update the Raptor software overnight, something that was never possible before. Another massive upgrade for the Raptor fleet comes from integrating the Thales Scorpion helmet-mounted displays and weapon cueing system that I mentioned briefly earlier. Now this not only presents vital information directly in the pilot's field of view, but also allows the pilot to target adversary aircraft or ground systems using nothing more than their line of sight, allowing for the employment of high-off-boresight weapon launches, or launches without the nose of your aircraft oriented toward your target. For years now, the F-22 has been the only American frontline fighter to lack this capability due to clearance issues under the jet's cockpit canopy. Now this system in conjunction with new infrared sensors will give Raptor pilots a big leg up in both weapons employment and in situational awareness over today's F-22s. Software upgrades on the Raptor's Pratt & Whitney engines might not be as sexy to talk about, but they are extremely important for the future of the F-22 fleet. Pratt used real-time data sourced from operational Raptors to dramatically improve their maintenance algorithms and much more effectively project support needs. Something that Pratt says will not only significantly extend the service lives of these engines, but will also come with roughly $800 million in savings over the program's lifetime. The F-22 will also be the first of America's fighters to receive the operational hardware required to command formations of collaborative combat aircraft, or CCA drones, in development and testing today. This capability will, of course, find its way to the upgraded Block 4 F-35 and the Air Force's new F-47, among others, but it will be the F-22 that leads this American effort into the field. And while most of the rest of the Raptor 2.0 upgrades are classified, we can shed at least some light on the effort's priorities by looking to the Air Force's AF Ventures Small Business Innovation Research Program that listed 14 potential Raptor upgrades for small businesses to compete for the chance to build. Now this list included several capabilities that we've already covered, including predictive maintenance, helmet-cued targeting, long-range infrared and track sensors, and controlling drones, but also included several other notable possibilities like pilot-assisted autonomy, which is part of the Air Force's effort to integrate AI into the cockpit of crewed aircraft as well as drones, with algorithms for optimizing intercepts, the rapid identification of threats, and a whole lot more, including the ability to simulate enemy aircraft through the fighter's own onboard sensors and displays for advanced air combat training. Now how many of these capabilities will ultimately manifest in the Raptor isn't clear. It could be all of them, but we won't know until the Raptor 2.0 actually reaches operational service. And I tell ya, that will be a very exciting topic for me to dive into when it happens. Now before I close, I want to point out that this is not the first time that Jared Hamilton, or JMH Creates, has come through for me with incredible images or video. He is the same guy who sent me the first ever footage of a B-21 Raider conducting an air-to-air refueling just a few weeks ago, and the first footage of the second Raider conducting test flights. So, you know, you should definitely go give him a follow if you're into awesome aviation photography. I will make sure to include a link to his Instagram in the description below. Go show him some love. And, of course, I've also gotta tell you guys again about our new Sandbox News app that's already available on iOS and is coming soon to Android devices. This app is totally free and consolidates all of our video and written work into a single place, so you no longer have to jump from platform to platform to find it all. You can find all of our episodes of Airpower and Firepower on there, alongside insightful analysis from special operations, intelligence, and conventional force veterans, alongside award-winning journalists. I am really proud of this app, and I've loved going through all of your feedback and comments on our last few videos. So, you know, go download it if you haven't. And with that ends yet another edition of Airpower from Sandbox News. I'm Alex Hollings. Make sure to swing by SandboxNews.com or download the app today and every day for all the latest in news, entertainment, and merch from all around the Force. If you got anything out of today's video, make sure to click like and subscribe down below, and leave me a comment so I know what I should cover next. And, of course, don't forget to tap on that bell icon so you never miss a drop from Sandbox News.