Related: COULD THE YF-23 HAVE BEEN BETTER THAN THE F-22? Why make the F-22 into an FB-22 fighter/bomber? An F-22 Raptor from the 325th Fighter Wing flies alongside an F-35 Lightning II from the 33rd Fighter Wing over the Emerald Coast in northwest Florida. It would take nearly twenty years to go from inking the contract to putting Raptors into service, but as Lockheed’s game-changing jet prepared for its operational debut at the tail end of 2005, the fighter had already made such an impression on Defense officials and lawmakers alike that some began asking, “Why not make this thing into a bomber too?” In other words, the Raptor could kill the best Soviet fighters in the world before they even knew it was there. The F-22 Raptor wouldn’t even need to prove it could fly alongside the MiG and the Flanker thanks to its incredibly small radar cross-section and limited infrared detectability. The new jet could keep up with the MiG-29 and Su-27 in a drag race and offered similar thrust-vectoring acrobatic capabilities, but it absolutely outclassed its Soviet competition in terms of survivability. Regardless of which fighter you prefer, there’s no denying that the F-22 Raptor catapulted military aviation into a new era. You can learn more about the YF-23, and whether or not it may have actually been better than the F-22, in our full feature on the fighter here. YF-23 (top) and YF-22 (bottom) during testing. While some still contend that Northrop’s fighter was better, the truth was, either jet would have represented a massive jump in fighter capability over Cold War speed demons like the F-15 or the Soviet MiG 29. Ultimately, Lockheed’s proposed YF-22 beat out Northrop’s YF-23, despite Northrop offering superior stealth and range in their aircraft. With the stated aim of offsetting any potential Soviet advantage created by their new, highly capable fighters, the Air Force stood up its Advanced Tactical Fighter program in earnest.īy 1986, Lockheed and Northrop were selected to compete for this new contract, which was expected to result in 750 new air superiority fighters that would not only leverage the speed and maneuverability of the Soviet competition, but also stealth technology.

While today, we recognize that the Soviet Union was only about a decade from collapse, the communist nation remained a potent threat, both literally and in terms of perceptions within the defense community at the time. Air Force first identified the pressing need to field a more advanced fighter to effectively counter the Soviet’s new Su-27 Flanker and MiG-29 Fulcrum. Development on the F-22 Raptor really dates all the way back to 1981, when the U.S.

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