Abandoning the F-22 stealth fighter will create a capability gap and new costs, and the US Air Force is looking forward to the next generation of fighters
Congressional regulators have warned that abandoning its 32 F-22 Block 20 stealth fighters would expose the U.S. Air Force to potentially serious operational, training and testing challenges, as well as the risk of having to pay for them.
It will be very expensive to bring these stealth fighters, which account for only a fifth of the size of the current Raptor fleet, to the updated standard. The U.S. Air Force is staring at looming budget cuts, as well as growing doubts and criticisms.
That is, while advancing the modernization program, the U.S. Air Force is reducing the size of the existing fleet of the F-22, a global stealth fighter. Currently, the 32 Raptors to be retired have been downgraded to test and training missions to help free up funds for priority modernization efforts.
According to relevant information, 90% of Air Force pilots, the initial training of the "Raptor", was carried out using the F-22 Block 20. The remaining 10% of the pilots of the Air Force, the initial training of the "Raptor", was carried out by the F-22 Block 30/35 of the combat unit to which they were assigned.
If there is no F-22 Block 20, then the remaining F-22 Block 30/35, will have to take on all the responsibility for training. This can easily affect their operational availability and add to the costly costs associated with the already notorious intensive maintenance and general wear and tear of airframe components.
The U.S. Air Force's fighter wing, which is part of the F-22 Raptor, typically has a total of 24 F-22 Block 30/35s to ensure that at least 12 Raptors are ready to be on duty at any given time and can be used for a variety of missions.
The F-22 Block 20, due to the relative obsolescence of the airframe and avionics, now shoulders the key task of homeland defense and is seen as an essential capability for some low-range combat operations.
The U.S. Air Force admits that the F-22 Block 20 is no longer suitable for use in high-intensity air confrontations, such as fighting the J-20 stealth fighter of the Eastern Air Force in the western Pacific region. This is why the US Air Force wants to retire these 32 F-22 Block 20s.
If the U.S. Air Force reassigns the F-22 Block 30/35 to training units to compensate for the loss of the F-22 Block 20, according to U.S. Air Force documents, this could result in a total of only 18 F-22 Block 30/35 Raptors in combat units.
Now, the U.S. Air Force is building the next generation of Air Dominance Fighter (NGAD), developing a new sixth-generation manned stealth fighter designed to eventually replace the F-22 Raptor, a fifth-generation stealth fighter.
The sixth-generation manned stealth fighter can cooperate with the sixth-generation unmanned stealth fighter (CCA) with advanced jet engines, sensors, networks and battle management functions to achieve advantages in air combat and ground/ship attacks.
The U.S. Air Force has high expectations for the sixth-generation stealth fighter F-XX built by Lockheed Martin, believing that it will use advanced digital engineering models to iterate models in virtual space, and finally come up with the next generation of high-performance stealth fighters.
The test flights of some of Lockheed Martin's key technology demonstrators will lay a solid foundation for the successful development of a new generation of fighters in the future. The U.S. Air Force speculates that the new fighter will be available sometime in 2030 at the latest, and the United States will once again lead the world in the field of fighter development and equipment.
