Once touted as the ultimate aircraft for the USMC, tri-service fighter, similar to the F-4 Phantom II, the F-22N Sea Raptor has had questions as to the practicality and need for such a platform. The ability to conduct DEAD in an IADS-saturated environment was certainly one of the most desired attributes for the USMC.
The Sea Raptor is a dedicated DEAD platform, a platform for the destruction of enemy air defenses is its Air Force sister. Critics say the current USMC aircraft can perform such tasks and point to Bosnia and Iraq during the Gulf War, where US Army AH-64 Apaches did destroy ground-based air defense (GBAD) assets. This perspective that the F-22N is unnecessary also gains strength from the fact that seldom does the USMC act in a vacuum; there is a need for USAF Raptors for land-based fighters in such missions.
The F-22N had been rejected more than a decade earlier by the United States Navy, and any actions to restart it have been interpreted as attempts to prolong the Raptor’s lifecycle in a bid to make foreign sales, particularly to Australia. Detractors also say such efforts are impelled more by the interests of defense contractors than actual operational requirements.
Running parallel to the F-22N story was the one regarding the Navy Advanced Tactical Fighter program – NATF. This program was examining both the F-22 and the F-23 as one of its many candidates. The NATF was seeking a stealthy, multirole fighter for the Navy, but some huge challenges had to be met. Variable Geometry wings, while offering extended loiter times with slower approach speeds for carrier landings, were going to present some significant design-for-stealth challenges. The continually changing angles of the leading edges and the complex shape of the wing roots made stealth difficult to achieve.
The major reasons the Navy continued a lack of full commitment to the NATF program were as follows: one was the Air Force’s proviso when it chose a version of the aircraft not selected for the ATF program, requiring the Navy not to buy that aircraft version. This created concerns about cost and capability, with the Navy afraid of being left with a fighter that was “too much” in terms of air-to-air combat, yet not enough in any other role. The NATF’s high-cost factor, along with the Navy’s expressed desire for a dual-role aircraft with secondary strike capability, further muddied the waters.
Eventually, the Navy decided to withdraw from the NATF program in favor of focusing on other needs. The surprise cancellation by then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney of the F-14D terminated any realistic Navy direction. Having a larger weapons load, the F-23 might have been able to carry the AIM-152 missile, a potential capability never offered by the F-22 NATF. The Navy also was convinced that IR-guided missiles were superior-a belief in opposition to Air Force dogma-and the gap between the services’ needs continued to grow.
The F-22N Sea Raptor and the NATF programs essentially remind one of the intricacies and pitfalls of conceptualizing multi-service, next-generation aircraft. While ambitions may have flown high, the sordid realities of cost, capability, and coordination across services knocked those ambitions off their perch.