F-22 Raptor Has One Mission: Win Any Fight

As a fifth-generation stealth fighter, the F-22 is particularly engineered for air supremacy and air dominance missions, that means its radar-evading expertise is designed to elude and destroy enemy air defenses.

The plane can also be configured to perform because the world’s premier air-to-air fighter in a position to “dogfight” and readily destroy enemy plane.

Behind the Wheel

The F-22’s command and management sensors and avionics assist different coalition plane establish and destroy targets. Whereas among the plane’s applied sciences are usually not “publically discussable,” Air Power F-22 pilots and weapons builders say that the F-22’s energetic and passive sensors enable it to perform as an “aerial quarterback” permitting the mission to unfold.

For instance, drawing upon info from a ground-based command and management heart or close by surveillance aircraft – resembling a Joint Surveillance and Goal Assault Radar System (JSTARS) – the F-22 can obtain info or goal coordinates from close by drones.

For the time being, focusing on info from drones is relayed from the bottom station again as much as an F-22.

Nonetheless, laptop algorithms and expertise are evolving such that plane like an F-22 will quickly have the ability to rapidly view drone video feeds within the cockpit while not having a floor station – and finally have the ability to management close by drones from the air.

The F-22 is thought for a spread of applied sciences together with a capability referred to as “supercruise,” which permits the fighter to achieve speeds of Mach 1.5 while not having to activate its afterburners. This will increase the jet’s working envelope when it comes to each pace and vary, giving it a bonus over different fighters.

F-22 Weapons

The fighter jet fires a 20mm cannon and has the power to hold and fireplace all of the air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons together with precision-guided floor bombs such Joint Direct Assault Munitions (JDAM) referred to as the GBU 32 and GBU 39.

Within the air-to-air configuration, the Raptor carries six AIM-120 AMRAAMs and two AIM-9 Sidewinders.

F-22 pilots say the plane possesses a complicated sensor suite permitting the pilot to trace, establish, shoot, and kill air-to-air threats earlier than being detected. Vital advances in cockpit design and sensor fusion enhance the pilot’s situational consciousness.

F-22 Raptor as depicted on a Tweet from Lockheed Martin.

Air Power weapons builders additionally use what’s referred to as a radar-warning receiver – a expertise that makes use of an updatable database referred to as “mission information information” to acknowledge a wide-range of enemy fighters, 

Made by Lockheed Martin and Boeing, the F-22 makes use of two Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 turbofan engines with afterburners and two-dimensional thrust vectoring nozzles, an Air Power assertion mentioned. It’s 16 toes tall, 62 toes lengthy, and weighs 43,340 kilos.

Its most take-off weight is 83,500 kilos. 

The Air Power’s stealthy F-22 Raptor fighter jet delivered among the first strikes within the U.S.-led assaults on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria when aerial bombing started in 2014.

After delivering among the first strikes within the U.S. Coalition-led army motion towards ISIS, the F-22 started to shift its focus from an air-dominance mission to at least one extra centered on supporting assaults on the bottom.

In regards to the Writer

Kris Osborn is the Navy Affairs Editor of 19FortyFive and President of Warrior Maven – Heart for Navy Modernization. Osborn beforehand served on the Pentagon as a Extremely Certified Skilled with the Workplace of the Assistant Secretary of the Military—Acquisition, Logistics & Know-how. Osborn has additionally labored as an anchor and on-air army specialist at nationwide TV networks. He has appeared as a visitor army knowledgeable on Fox Information, MSNBC, The Navy Channel, and The Historical past Channel. He additionally has a Masters Diploma in Comparative Literature from Columbia College.