10 + Surprising Facts About The F-22 Raptor Fighter Jet

 Hello and Welcome Here on FTD facts, I've been doing a lot of blog around airplanes jets and amazing military Aircraft and nothing is quite as cool and amazing as the awesome Groundbreaking f-22 Raptor a fighter that changed many things about aircraft and how planes are gonna be built in the future One plane that was way ahead of its game But before we get into the amazing facts about the f-22, I should probably introduce myself. Hey, all you lovely people out there How is it going? Hope you're all having a fantastic amazing day My name is Dave Walpole and welcome to FTD facts a channel where I look at well in this particular type of video Military content. 

We also look at countries' cultures and other things like that. So that's kind of your jam You want to hit that subscribe button now a little bit of self-promotion just lets, you know every Thursday I'm always looking at a new plane or an issue revolving around a plane that you might know about for example the next video I'm gonna be looking at the issues with the f-35 and Canada there's quite a lot of controversy around that so that's gonna be coming up next so check out the playlist if you're interested in that sort of thing, so right off the bat, the F-22 is considered a fifth-generation Twin-engine all-weather stealth fighter. Now. What's cool about this fighter is it is one of the times that Lockheed and Boeing? really teamed up to create a revolutionary fighter the f-22 Raptor came from what was known as the advanced fighter program and this began as far back as 1981 I did not know that the f-22 started way back Then this program was aimed to replace the old aging f-15 fighters and be a possible replacement for the rather new F-16 as well. There were new fighters that were on the block such as the sun-27 flanker and the mig-29 Which this program eventually was made to beat those fighters as this program evolved. 

They released what was known as the Lockheed If-22 which had its first flight on September 29 1990 Scientists joined together and competed against this fighter with their particular fighter known as the if-23 Which ironically looks a little bit like an f-35, but the f-35 did not come from that fighter I don't know it just kind of looks different but the thing for the f-22 as it got certified it began production in 1996 Originally America was going to buy 750 of these at the time but as time went on this big deal went less and less and less and less and less because by 2008 because of budget reasons and a few other reasons as well Congress lowered the amount that they could spend on this fighter and only purchased approximately 187 of them however It was shortly before that at the first combat squadron off-22s began conversion in 2005 with that being said one of the first real squadrons of F-22s was the 43rd fighter squadron. 

Now, these guys have been around as far as 1917 as a matter of fact squadron 43 has been commissioned and decommissioned several times in history, for example, they were operated between the years of 1917 to 1919 and then were taken down until 1922 until about nineteen thirty-six and then operated yet again in 1942 1946 and then again in 1964 to 1994 and on a side note during that last time they were the first squadron to do the conversions for the F-15 as well however by 2002 they were brought back into service to provide training for the F-22 which operated out of the Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. Now, here's the thing. Yes, The f-22 is no longer in production The question is although it is a good fighter of why Isn't it with only a hundred and ninety-five of these ever being made in total? There were a couple of reasons such as they were extremely expensive on top of that There was also the introduction of the cheaper stealth fighter known as the f-35 and even the United States really questioned How valuable the f-22? Was going to be used after the collapse of the Soviet Union and on top of that one thing that really hurt the plane Was the fact that there is an extreme ban on exporting the technology and this plane as a whole to other countries as a matter of fact because the f-35 is Considered a cheaper more dumbed-down version of its stealth abilities That is why the f-35 is allowed to be exported to other countries however That being said the United States doesn't just give out f-35s countries have to have very strict requirements And because of all of these reasons the last f-22 to ever be made was actually in 2012 but although there was a major ban on this particular plane that didn't mean other countries were not interested in it. For example, Australia was very interested in purchasing this fighter Even Japan was heavily considering going into a secure partnership with America to acquire it But the thing was in order to obtain this fighter It would have to increase its military budget to over 1% of the GDP Which is something that has never happened in Japan's history post the Second World War Okay, so let's take a look at some of the more unique facts about the f-22 so for combat, this fighter was first used in Syria in 2014 this was for operation inherit resolved during that operation They say they dropped approximately 270 bombs. However, the f-22 was also used quite heavily for reconnaissance however, that wasn't theoretically the first time the f-22 was in kind of combat because the first time It went in combat. 

Theoretically was up against a bunch of f4 phantoms a very interesting story apparently Iranian forces and fighter pilots attempted to come close to a Predator drone with the f-22 only scaring them off the story is that the f-22 managed to sneak up behind the Iranian f4 phantoms and Managed to come so close that not only the pilot could see what missiles the f4 phantoms were carrying But the f-22 pilot managed to pull up on one of the f-4s wings which made them realize they were dealing with some extreme Technology and therefore backed off and this happened back in 2013 also one of the reasons why Japan was heavily interested in this fighter for long time is Because they were first operated in an international setting out of the Kadena Air Force Base in Japan This was with the 27th squadron and they actually flew over from Hawaii To Japan and on their first flight one of the fighters had to be returned to Hawaii because of severe software problems however This plane did manage to make it back safely to Hawaii get repairs and go forward to Japan and in 2007 This made it the first international deployment of f-22 Raptors and besides that it's also been deployed to Germany Estonia and Poland for training exercises It was also seen in Afghanistan and even Iran in which we already heard from that f4 phantom story But they say in the Middle East the f-22 flew over 200 sorties So here's kind of the downside with the f-22 Raptor being such an advanced amazing piece of technology we get a little thrown off when we hear that the f-22 Actually had some serious problems to begin with keep in mind these were also fixed later on but for example One of the biggest issues with the f-22 Raptor was back in 2013 Where there were many cases of pilots blacking out due to severe breathing problems basically They had hypoxia like symptoms and meaning that they weren't getting enough oxygen to the brain because of this pilots experienced memory loss Emotional liability and a few other things such as a lingering Respiratory problem. This is things like cough and things like that But realistically even though pilots weren't blacked out because they weren't getting enough oxygen This really doesn't help pilots cuz they make bad decisions when they're up in the air lack of oxygen makes bad decisions And with that in 2005, They discovered that the breathing regulator was defective and on top of that the oxygen Generating system reduced the amount of oxygen that was given to the pilots at high G maneuvers Fortunately though the United States military jumped on this as soon as possible and they have since fixed those issues With that because of this oxygen issue. I should also mention that there was one major hull loss Overall, there have only been about four major haul losses of this aircraft, and of that unfortunately two of the four pilots Did not make it now. Let's get away from the dark side. So let's look at some of the specs now 

The good thing is this plane is not over a large one Which is really good for not appearing on the radar and I'm going to get into that stealth aspect in a little bit but let's look at some of the specs first for example its size comes in at a length of Eighteen point nine two meters by a width of thirteen point five-six and a height of five-point zero eight meters Inside this aircraft because it is a twin-engine aircraft. It uses two x Pratt & Whitney f119 pw100 engines and it is Fast now as a matter of fact speed is a very controversial thing when it comes to this plane Speed overall with planes is a rather controversial thing because there's a lot of things to be taken into effect These factors are drag altitude air temperature and things like that that make the f-22 Debated in its speed limit. However, during testing the f-22 showed that it could go up to speeds of Mach 2.25, and in Supercruise meaning it was completely loaded up it got over Mach 1.8. Now the downside is there's been really no official limit of how much this aircraft can carry Although I've read that each wing is capable of carrying up to two thousand two hundred and seventy kilograms Which is roughly around five thousand pounds for its weapons, though It does have one gun in the front and that is a 20-millimeter cannon with about 480 rounds But however for this aircraft, it only has four hardpoints now, of course, They can carry things like bombs and error to air air-to-surface missiles all that jazz and you might be thinking to yourself Yeah, well, there's only four. I mean the f16 can hold a lot more believe it or not It still gets the job done and also cost. This has been a very debated issue as well. However, in 2019 they estimated that the cost per hour for one of these aircraft, while it is flying, comes in at $35,000 again That's per hour but overall one of these babies at least in the year 2000 cost about 150 million dollars with the entire production and development cost coming in at sixty-seven point three billion u.s. Dollars as of 2010 in which I hope the taxpayers are extremely happy with paying that and Last but not least. 

This is probably the greatest factor of the f-22 is the stealth now, here it is I am no expert and anybody out there in the public world is not an expert either This is because the technology around the f-22 is extremely classified heck We know that the f-22 is banned in other countries because it's stealth technology is so advanced But what we do know about the stealth technology is that it has what is known as active electronically scanned array radar which makes the f-22 largely Undetectable on radar screens as well with its unique shape It helps radar bounce off of it, which means that if it shows up on radar It's very very small as the size of a bumblebee. So that's it That's me looking at the great amazing aircraft known as the f-22 Raptor. I absolutely love this aircraft I think it's kind of unfortunate that it's no longer in production. There are talks about a sixth-generation F-22 coming out, but I don't know what's going on with that lot of specs a lot of theories But that is for the future which we cannot predict. Anyways, guys My name is Dave Walpole And I hope you guys enjoyed this video and that being said be sure to check out the playlist up in the cards down in the description box below and At the end of this video because in the next episode, I'm gonna be talking about Canada and its f-35 issue It's really quite a big one and of course just hit that subscribe button if you're new and you want to learn about more cool aircraft because I love talking about aircraft and military gear But that being said feel free to leave a comment and hit that like button if you enjoyed this video and you want more aircraft Blog, but you guys have yourself a fantastic day and I'll see you in the next one.