While just arriving, with some even saying it was a wake-up call for the F-22 Raptor, during the exercise Red Flag Alaska in 2012, this aircraft was well and truly thrashed by an unexpected foe: the German Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon. This dogfight between the two has been widely debated to this day.
It was the first time along the exercise for the US Air Force F-22 Raptors and German Air Force Eurofighter Typhoons. The exercise provided advanced fighters with rare exposure to dissimilar air combat training. Could these be the joint F-22 inherent stealth, supercruise capability, advanced avionics, and simultaneously agile, multi-mission Eurofighter Typhoons? **.
During the exercise, Typhoons and Raptors dueled; reports mainly indicated that the Eurofighter Typhoon was very good, especially when ‘clean’—that is when the Eurofighter had no external fuel tanks mounted on its wings. The Typhoons also noticed that it tended to bleed significant energy when doing the thrust vectoring—a maneuver that gave the Raptor the ability to change the direction of flight almost instantaneously but often left it weak if it couldn’t shoot down an enemy within the shortest time possible.
An elated German pilot summed it up by saying, “Yesterday, we had Raptor Salad for lunch.” This meant that the Typhoon had managed several kills on the Raptor during the exercise. The Typhoon’s IRST system had demonstrated its capability to detect even stealthy aircraft like the F-22 at distances of about 50 km.
It has never been contested that the F-22 would reveal unquestioned domination in BVR combat through its stealth and advanced radar systems. However, it was demonstrated through Red Flag Alaska that in close-range dogfighting, the Eurofighter Typhoon could give a good fight and even outclass the Raptor in some exercises. This upsets the view of invincibility that people used to have regarding the F-22 and underscores, other than technical specifications, the many important roles complexities have in air combat through the varying variables involved.
As the U.S. Air Force is aiming towards this Next Generation Air Dominance fighter, debate over the legacy of the F-22 Raptor goes on. With stealth and advanced avionics, the Raptor is a very fierce enemy, but through Red Flag Alaska, the fact that air combat is such a dynamically changing environment in which adaptability and not just piloting skill is the key is driven home.