The journey of the F-22 Raptor, one of the best fighter machines in the world, probably started way before it first-ever touched the sky on a Sunday morning in 1997. The US Air Force identified the need for a new air superiority fighter in 1981. It was a replacement for the F-15, only seven years served at that time. The ATF competitor was selected in Halloween 1987; two design prototypes, the YF-22 and YF-23.
The Lockheed-Boeing-General Dynamics team had won the ATF competition by 1991. This all was done with 44,000 wind tunnel test hours, 13,000 material sample tests, and six lionheart years of tough development work. Chief Test Pilot Paul Metz, his lucky Super Chicken T-shirt on, took the Raptor into the air for the first time, quickly gained speed, and turned around to land with the gear down. Jon Beesley, the safety chase pilot, found he had to light off his F-16’s afterburner to stay with the Raptor. Metz landed the plane after a 58-minute flight over north Georgia, which started the clock on 3,496 flights and 7,616 test hours that would be racked up in the F-22’s engineering and manufacturing development phase. The Air Force declared the F-22 operational in 2005.
“The very existence of this airplane-your airplane-has altered the strategic landscape forever,” said Robert J. Stevens, Lockheed Martin CEO, in remarks renewing the strategic importance of the F-22. He spoke May 2 as the last of 195 F-22s built for the Air Force rolled off the production line, completing the world’s only active fifth-generation stealth fighter force.
The Northrop Grumman threw its hat in the ring amidst plans for a sixth-generation fighter for the U.S. Air Force, staking its place as the third competitor in this prestigious race alongside Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The heritage of Northrop Grumman in military aviation starts strongly, with Northrop responsible for the stealthy B-2 Spirit bomber and Grumman for the iconic F-14 Tomcat.
The Department of Defense reportedly has two sixth-generation projects in the pipeline: the Next Generation Tactical Aircraft for the USAF, which is intended to replace the F-15C/D Eagle and, eventually, the F-22 Raptor, and the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter for the USN, to replace the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. Tom Vice, the president of Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, said NG would pursue concepts with radically different designs, changing what traditional fighter architecture looks like. This resembles how they handled the YF-23 Black Widow prototype with McDonnell Douglas during the ATF competition against Lockheed Martin’s YF-22.
The YF-23, created with McDonnell Douglas, was a capable if slightly less able plane, renowned for its excellent stealth and speed, mainly in supercruise. The Air Force considered it too much of a gamble for its purported maneuvering superiority by favoring the YF-22 with its supermaneuverability through two-dimensional thrust vectoring. The Next Generation Tactical Aircraft being proposed by Northrop Grumman should improve upon the pluses of the YF-23 with the infusion of advance computers and weapon systems and stealthier skins and much powerful engines. He also indicated that there may be some taking in tailless configurations or optionally manned fighters in tune with the Department of Defense’s keenness on directed energy weapons for the future generation of aircraft.
With the evolving air superiority landscape, Northrop Grumman’s innovative approach might just define the future of airborne combat, drawing on past near-wins and taking technology and design to the limits.