Raptor: Birth Of Air Dominance

A copper sunrise over the Mojave, a silent climb into the haze, and radar screens that fade to nothing—our story begins with a moment that changed how airpower thinks. We trace the F-22 Raptor’s path from Cold War anxiety to apex hunter, exploring why the Air Force bet on a fighter that wouldn’t just outfly enemies but erase itself from their world.

We dig into the Advanced Tactical Fighter program’s audacious requirements—supercruise, all-aspect stealth, and sensor fusion—and the high-stakes duel between the YF-22 and YF-23. From Skunk Works’ obsessive engineering to the ITO-coated canopy and internal weapon bays, we show how the Raptor fused stealth, speed, and agility into a single kill chain that ends fights before they begin. You’ll hear how Northern Edge 2006 set a new benchmark, why the Raptor led the first wave over Syria, and how a seemingly simple balloon interception reaffirmed the Air Force’s trust when certainty mattered most.

We also zoom out to compare philosophies: the F-22’s pure air dominance, the F-35 Lightning II’s information advantage, and the Su-57’s hybrid compromise. Together, the Raptor and Lightning create a layered system—one cleans the sky, the other turns it into a networked command post. Finally, we look ahead to NGAD and its family of systems, autonomous wingmen, and resilient networks that carry the Raptor’s lessons forward: win with information, survive with stealth, and adapt faster than the threat evolves.

If you enjoy deep dives into aerospace, strategy, and the tech that quietly shapes the world, follow the show, share this episode with a friend, and leave a quick review to help others find it. What do you think wins the future: agility, stealth, or information?

Chapters

• 0:10 Dawn Over Edwards: A New Threat
• 0:58 The ATF Vision Takes Shape
• 4:19 YF-22 vs YF-23 Showdown
• 6:21 Skunk Works Turns Prototype To Predator
• 8:12 Stealth, Supercruise, And Sensor Fusion
• 12:43 Combat Proof: From Alaska To Syria
• 16:18 Raptor, Lightning, And Su-57 Compared
• 20:03 Legacy To NGAD: Building The Next Sky

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

The first light of dawn spills across the Mojave Desert, turning the sands around Edwards Air Force Base into a shimmering copper sea. On the runway, a strange and beautiful aircraft waits in silence, its sharp predatory angles catching the sunrise like polished steel. Even before it moves, there's a feeling in the air that something important is about to happen. Something the world isn't ready for. The pilot eases the throttles forward. A low rumble becomes a roar. The jet surges down the runway, leaps into the sky, and vanishes into the morning haze. Seconds later, radar screens across the range flicker, then fade to nothing. To the engineers watching from the ground, this wasn't just another flight test. This was a warning shot to the future. Because in the early 1980s, the United States felt something shifting. For the first time since Vietnam, American air superiority wasn't guaranteed. Across the world, the Soviets were unveiling fighters that could finally challenge the F-15 and F-16. That thought alone rattled planners in the Pentagon. What happens to global stability when you can no longer see the threat coming? What happens when the skies cease to belong to you? The answer became the US Air Force's most ambitious idea since the SR-71. They would build a fighter that didn't just outfly the enemy, but erased itself from their world entirely. A machine that could survive the collapse of old doctrines and define the next era of air combat. A machine built not just to win battles, but to shape the kind of world that might exist after them. Out of that vision came the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor. The first true fifth generation fighter. Born from Cold War pressure and technological audacity. It wasn't just a jet. It was a blueprint, an instruction manual for maintaining control in a world where everything familiar was starting to slip. And from its very first flight, it proved one thing. The future doesn't belong to whoever flies highest or fastest. It belongs to whoever sees what's coming, long before anyone else does. Today, we're diving deep into the origin story of the F-22, how a jet born from that Cold War urgency became the benchmark that every modern fighter is still measured against, and why its production run ended long before its legend did. So strap in, because it's time to tell the story of the United States Air Force's true apex hunter, the F-22 Raptor.com. By the early 1980s, the US Air Force found itself facing a quietly growing crisis. For nearly a decade, American fighters like the F-15 Eagle and the F-16 Fighting Falcon had ruled the skies without question. But intelligence reports from across the Atlantic were telling a different story. The Soviet Union wasn't just catching up, they were building fighters that could potentially challenge the very idea of American air dominance. The Su-27 Flanker and the MiG-29 Fulcrum were more than just upgraded Soviet jets. They were fast, agile, and equipped with weapons and radar systems designed specifically to counter the Eagle's strengths. For the first time since Vietnam, the balance of power in the air felt like it could genuinely shift. If the next generation of Soviet aircraft equaled or surpassed American jets, the US wouldn't just lose an edge. It could lose control of entire regions overnight. Now, to Pentagon planners, this wasn't an abstract concern. Control of the sky was the backbone of every US strategy on the ground. Lose it and everything underneath becomes uncertain. So the Air Force made a decision that would redefine the next half century. They wouldn't simply build a better fighter. They would build something the enemy couldn't fight at all. This ambitious idea became the Advanced Tactical Fighter Program, or ATF. Launched in 1981, it was framed not as an aircraft competition, but as a race to define the very rules of future air combat. Make no mistake, nothing like this had ever been tried before. In fact, it seemed that the requirements bordered on unrealistic. The Air Force wanted a jet that could supercruise without Afterburner, evade radar from every angle, think faster than its pilot, and maneuver in ways no human had ever seen in a dogfight. And this wasn't going to be some sort of one-off X-plane. This jet had to be a production airframe with over 700 examples planned. To turn that impossible vision into reality, two industry super teams stepped into the arena. What followed from this wasn't just a competition, it was literally a clash of titans, with the fate of defense companies hanging in the balance. Former bitter rivals joined forces, pulling their best engineers and boldest ideas to create the ultimate fighter, the one that would claim the crown as king of the skies. After untold delays and nights of intense planning and design sessions, two prototypes emerged. Lockheed, Boeing, and General Dynamics formed one coalition, and they produced the YF-22, while Northrop and McDonnell Douglas answered with the YF-23. The YF-23 looked like something pulled from a classified sketchbook. Sleek, sinister, almost alien. It prioritized deep stealth and long-range performance. The YF-22, on the other hand, looked raw, muscular, and built with the elbows-out mentality of a knife fighter. It wasn't just designed to evade the enemy, it was designed to dominate them at close range if things ever got personal. The competition that followed became one of the most consequential showdowns in modern aviation history. Test pilots pushed their prototypes through stealth trials, simulated dogfights, extreme maneuvers, and radar testing so sensitive that even the test teams didn't know the full results. And in the end, it came down to a hard truth. The YF-23 was faster and stealthier, but the YF-22 was more agile, more flexible, and far better suited for decades of upgrades. And so, on April 23rd, 1991, just a few months after the first Gulf War, the US Air Force announced its decision. The YF-22 would move forward and become the F-22 Raptor. From there, the aircraft would enter the hands of a legendary group who were tasked to turn the prototype into a production aircraft, the engineers at Lockheed Martin Skunkworks, and they'd be working alongside Boeing and Pratt and Whitney. The team over at Skunkworks were the same minds behind the U-2 and the SR-71. Aircraft built for moments when the future felt uncertain. With the F-22, they actually faced a similar challenge. Build something that would still matter even if the world changed, even if old systems collapsed, even if tomorrow would look nothing like today. When the first prototype took flight in 1997, the message was unmistakable. The Raptor was more than just an iteration after the F-15 Eagle. It was really a clean break from everything before. It supercruised effortlessly and was incredibly maneuverable for its size, thanks to its airframe design and thrust vectoring engines. It climbed like it wanted to outrun Gravity itself, and on radar screens, it appeared smaller than a marble, if it appeared at all. And quick side note, why not train radar operators to look for Mach 2 marbles? Comment below if you know. Meanwhile, by 2005, the first operational F-22s entered service. And while there was a planned target of 700 plus airframes, sadly, only 195 would ever be built. That number was shaped by budget battles, politics, and shifting global priorities. But each raptor represented the pinnacle of American aerospace engineering. But how exactly did the Raptor achieve its goals? Let's take a look at what makes the F-22 successful and unique. If the ATF program was the decision to leap into the future, then the F-22 itself was the moment the future finally arrived. Remember, the Raptor was built on a single uncompromising philosophy. Don't just survive the fight. End it before it begins. At its foundation, of course, was stealth. But the kind of stealth that the F-22 needed wasn't just about avoiding detection. It was about becoming a ghost in a world built to track shadows. Every surface, every line, every angle was shaped so that radar waves would scatter harmlessly away. Even the fasteners were positioned with obsessive precision. It's as if the engineers were trying to leave no trace of the aircraft's existence. But it wasn't just the airframe. It was even down to details like the canopy, a smooth, curved bubble coated with a microscopic layer of indium tin oxide or ITO. This is a transparent conductive film. But this gold coating isn't just for show. It serves a stealth function by stopping radar energy from bouncing off the pilot's helmet and revealing a human shape. And when the sunlight hits it just right, well, it glows like the visor of a knight guarding the future. Beneath that sleek exterior, the Raptor hides one of the most powerful engines ever fitted to a fighter. Two Pratt Whitney F-119s generate over 70,000 pounds of thrust combined. And this gives the jet a talent so rare it borders on unfair supercruising. That's the ability to fly at supersonic speed with no afterburners. That means no giant fireball behind the jet, no massive heat plume to track with IRST sensors, just raw, silent, unrelenting speed. In a world where reaction time decides life or death, supercruise is the difference between choosing the fight and dictating it. But speed and stealth alone aren't what make the Raptor dangerous. It's what happens when it slows down. The F-22's two-dimensional thrust vectoring nozzles can pivot independently, giving it a level of agility that almost looks like cheating. In the right hands, a raptor can pivot, twist, climb, and swing its nose around with a kind of controlled violence that virtually no fourth-generation jet can touch. It's the sort of maneuverability that once inspired Transformers to turn the Raptor into Starscream. Because if any jet looked like it could change direction with a thought, it was this one. Pilots that fly the Raptor say the aircraft feels less like a machine and more like an extension of instinct itself. Responsive, intuitive, and seemingly wired directly into the mind. Inside the cockpit, that instinct becomes something more. The raptor's sensors, radar returns, electronic signatures, and infrared feeds all merge into a single, seamless picture. This ability, sensor fusion, doesn't just inform the pilot, it elevates them. Instead of managing systems, they manage the entire battle space, seeing not just where enemies are, but where they will be. At the heart of this fusion is the ANAPG-77 ASA radar. It's a masterpiece of electronic warfare. It can scan vast distances, track multiple targets, jam enemy systems, and share information with other aircraft, all while keeping the raptor nearly invisible on opposing radars. In the right hands, it turns the aircraft into a conductor, orchestrating a silent symphony of battle space control. Weapons, of course, remain inside internal bays until the moment they're needed. The doors snap open and shut in fractions of a second, preserving the jet's radar signature. A raptor can fire six AMRAMs and two sidewinders before the enemy even realizes it's being hunted, and it still carries that all-important, super versatile, 20mm Vulcan cannon. Even the maintenance systems seem alive. Thousands of embedded sensors monitor stress levels, component wear, and stealth integrity. The aircraft is constantly assessing its own health, a trait that feels almost futuristic, but necessary for a machine built to outlast the unpredictable. In the end, every bolt, every circuit, every line of code in the F-22 serves one purpose. Control the sky so completely that no enemy even understands what happened. But so far, we've talked about specs in theory. How has the F-22 performed in real-world situations where Gs are being pulled and jet fuel is being burned? By the time the F-22 finally reached operational status in 2005, it was clear that the Air Force hadn't just picked up a new fighter, it had gained the kind of advantage that makes opponents reconsider their plans entirely. Pilots who faced it in training said that it felt like fighting a rumor. You never saw it, you never heard it, you just died. An exercise Northern Edge 2006 proved that point. In the cold Alaskan air, the Raptor took on waves of advanced aggressor aircraft simulating some of the best fighters in the world. The result was so lopsided it didn't seem real. 108 simulated kills with zero losses. Pilots flying against the F-22 said that it felt like being hunted by something that existed one step ahead of them. By the time your radar warned you that something was wrong, it was already too late. But the Raptors' true tests wouldn't come until years later. In 2014, as the US-led coalition prepared to strike ISIS targets in Syria, the skies above were thick with radar sights, command nodes, and hostile sensors. The opening wave had to be perfect, fast, clean, and invisible. The kind of mission where you send the aircraft you trust most. The F-22 led the way. Raptors, by this time modified to include air-to-ground munitions, infiltrated Syrian airspace ahead of the main strike packages, eliminating key radar and command centers with surgical precision. Pilots described the missions as eerie. You could see everything happening on your radar display, but the enemy saw nothing in return. The Raptor wasn't there to rack up bomb damage. It was there to peel back the air defenses like a surgeon making that critical first incision. Coalition pilots said it felt like being guided through a battlefield by a hand they never saw. Years passed and the Raptor's role kept evolving. It became an interceptor, a deterrent, a scout, a guardian, always watching where tensions simmer. Then, in 2023, it made headlines again, this time for a very different mission. A Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon drifted across the United States, triggering a political storm and relentless media coverage. The jet chosen to intercept this balloon wasn't the newest fighter and it wasn't the cheapest. It was the aircraft the Air Force trusted to finish the job cleanly. A single AM9X streaked upward and the balloon fell. The moment was simple, even anticlimactic, but it reminded the world that even decades after its debut, the raptor remained America's go-to answer when certainty mattered more than showmanship. Today, F-22s stand watch in Alaska, Japan, Hawaii, and across Europe. They deploy quietly, appear suddenly, and leave behind the same message every time. If there's a raptor overhead, the air is already under American control. Rivals may claim new technologies, new missiles, new sensors, but none have yet changed the fact that the F-22 shapes the airspace around it by its mere presence. But there is, however, a cost to mastery. The maintenance hours are heavy. The stealth coatings demand patience and painstaking precision. Specialized climate-controlled hangars follow the aircraft wherever it goes. And having less than 200 airframes means that every Raptor pilot and maintenance crew are tasked to the limit. But to the Air Force, it's worth every hour and every dollar. Because air dominance isn't just a mission, it's the foundation of everything America does in the sky. And for nearly 20 years, the Raptor has guarded that foundation without losing a single air-to-air fight. But the Raptor doesn't exist in a vacuum. How does it compare to the aircraft that have come after it? We're gonna compare the F-22 Raptor to a couple of its contemporaries, the F-35 Lightning and Russia's Su-57 Felon. What you'll find is that we're really comparing three different answers to the same question. What does a nation believe wins the wars of the future? For the United States, the F-22 was the boldest possible answer. Control the sky absolutely, or lose everything beneath it. The Raptor was built to strike first, disappear, and end the fight before the enemy ever understood what was happening. Its strengths reflect a worldview shaped by decades of global operations, long distances, unpredictable threats, and the expectation that American pilots must dominate any airspace they enter. But the Raptor's greatest strength also revealed its greatest weakness. Perfection comes with a price. The aircraft is expensive, complex, and unfortunately rare. Only 195 were built, far below what the Air Force originally planned. When the production line shut down, the US locked itself into a future where the fleet could never grow, only age. And so, to fill that gap, the next American jet took an entirely different path. The F-35 Lightning wasn't designed to outrun or even really outmaneuver the Raptor. It was designed to out inform everything else. Stealthy, yes. Capable, absolutely. But its true power lies in what it sees and how it shares that information. In the F-35, the pilot becomes the center of a constantly updating web of intelligence. Aircraft, ships, satellites, even ground forces, all feeding into one collective picture. Where you can think of the Raptor as the lone hunter, the lightning is a battlefield network in motion. Together, these two aircraft form a layered system. The F-22 clears the skies of threats. The F-35 turns that cleared airspace into a command post. One controls the high fight, the other orchestrates everything below it. Then there's the third competitor, Russia's Su-57 Felon, and it's a jet that's shaped by a completely different set of realities. Russia didn't have the resources to chase the Raptor's purity of stealth, so instead it pursued an aircraft that blended maneuverability, speed, and partial stealth into a kind of hybrid predator. On paper, the Su-57 has impressive kinematics and innovative design choices, but in practice the program has struggled with production challenges, engine limitations, and the harsh realities of maintaining advanced aircraft under economic strain. Today, only a handful of Su-27s are in active service, far too few to change the balance of power in the skies. Borrowed stealth, limited avionics, ambitious but inconsistent sensors reflects a nation trying to build for the future while fighting the limits of the present. Now, side by side, these three aircraft reveal a truth far bigger than any jet. The F-22 is the embodiment of pure air dominance, the belief that the first shot decides the war. The F-35 is the belief that information and coordination win modern battles. And the Su-57 is the attempt to stay competitive with limited means and shifting global priorities. In the US Air Force today, the Raptor and Lightning operate as a single force. One delivers the unseen punch, while the other connects the entire battle space, ensuring every ally sees what the enemy cannot hide. It's a kind of ecosystem, balance of speed, stealth, awareness, and adaptability, and in that ecosystem lies the lesson each nation has learned, or is still learning. The future of air combat doesn't go to whoever builds the fastest machine, it goes to whoever builds the best system and understands how quickly that system can be lost if it isn't updated for whatever comes next. The F-22 Raptor was never meant to be ordinary. It was born from a moment in history when the future felt fragile, when planners didn't know what the next decade would look like. Only that air superiority had to be guaranteed no matter what storms came. And in the years since, the Raptor has become something more than the sum of its parts. It became the standard everyone else chases. Every fifth generation fighter that followed, the F-35, the British Temptus, Japan's G Cap, carries lessons first proven in the Raptor. Engineers learned how to merge stealth with raw power, how to fuse sensors into a single living picture, and how to give pilots the kind of awareness that can reshape the outcome of a conflict before it even begins. The Raptor didn't just dominate the skies, it rewrote the textbook on how a fighter should think. But true legacies don't freeze in time, they echo. And today, that echo is shaping the next generation air dominance program or NGAD, the Air Force's leap into sixth generation air combat. Now, NGAD isn't a single aircraft, it's actually a family of systems, adaptive engines, autonomous wingmen, AI-assisted decision making, and networks that are designed to survive in a world where old assumptions may just collapse overnight. And as we've learned this year, the fighter component of the NGAD is now designated the F-47. So in that sense, you can think of the NGAD as a spiritual continuation of the F-22. It's the idea that air superiority isn't something you inherit, it's something you prepare for, learn for, and build for even when the future is uncertain, especially when it's uncertain. The Raptor taught the Air Force that information could be as powerful as speed, that invisibility could be more decisive than firepower, that control of the sky is the foundation upon which everything else stands. And those lessons remain urgent. Because guess what? The world is shifting again. New threats, new technologies, new doctrines. The same forces that once created the ATF program are returning. Rival nations building advanced fighters, stealth drones, and long-range sensors designed to erode America's traditional strengths. The questions that the Raptor answered decades ago are now resurfacing in new forms. Yet, amid all that change, the F-22 remains the quiet constant. It still deploys where tensions rise. It still guards the edges of American airspace. It still shapes the battle spaces simply by being present. No other aircraft has matched the totality of its dominance, and perhaps none will. Because the Raptor wasn't built to fit into a system, it became the system. And that may be its most enduring legacy. Not the kill ratios, not the stealth metrics, not even the unmatched maneuverability. The Raptor's legacy is really an idea that a single machine made in a moment of uncertainty can help stabilize the world around it and guide the architects of the next era toward what must be preserved when everything else changes. So when an F-22 rises through the clouds and melts into the sunlight, it's not just metal and fire. It's a flying philosophy made real. That knowledge, preparation, and mastery of the unseen decide the fate of the sky long before the first shot is fired. And in that disappearing silhouette, you can see the past, the present, and the first hints of the future all flying information. Thanks to my patrons and channel members who directly support my work, you're awesome. The F twenty two Raptor, the Apex Predator. That's one more documentary, done and dusted. Now you know. PilotFotog.com