The U.S Air Force on Friday awarded Lockheed Martin a
$10.9 billion contract to modernize its F-22 Raptor fighter jet.
The massive indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity deal
for the F-22 Program Office’s Advanced Raptor Enhancement and Sustainment, or ARES,
program will cover up to a decade’s worth of sustainment
and modernization of the 5th generation fighter which is regarded as the deadliest in the world.
According to a US Department of Defense announcement,
the contract will cover services including upgrades, enhancements, and fixes to the Raptor.
Lockheed will also provide logistics services and modernization hardware kit procurement.
If all contract options are exercised, the Pentagon expects the work to be finished
by Oct. 31, 2031. Work on the contract will be carried out in Fort Worth, Texas.
In this video Defense Updates
analyzes why the US Air Force is preparing F-22 Raptors to fight China?
Let's get started.
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The USAF planned and proposed this contract in summer 2020
Lt. Gen. Clinton Hinote, U.S Air Force deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and
requirements, said in a May interview with Defense News the service is planning to use the Raptor
as a “bridge” until the Next Generation Air Dominance program is up and running.
Hinote noted that by the 2030s, the Raptor would be four decades old,
having first gone into development in 1991.
Here are 3 reasons - the F22 Raptor is the best machine to counter China.
F -22 Raptor is the first operational aircraft to combine super-cruise and super-maneuverability.
Supercruise is the ability to have sustained
supersonic flight without having to use the highly inefficient afterburners.
With this F-22 can intercept targets which subsonic aircraft would lack the speed to pursue
and an afterburner-dependent aircraft would lack the fuel to catch.
This is possible due to the very powerful dual Pratt & Whitney
F119-PW-100 after-burning turbofan engines. F-22 has a speed of Mach 1.82 during super-cruise.
China's best fighter, the J-20 uses Russian AL-31F engines since it has struggled to make
an indigenous engine suitable for a 5th generation aircraft.
The latest reports suggest that all J-20 will be upgraded
with a locally developed WS-10C engine, but even that engine will not enable supercruise.
The future production version of the J-20 may be powered by the WS-15, a homegrown
turbofan engine currently under development and could provide it with the ability to supercruise.
That engine is still a few years away.
Radar is like an eye for an aircraft. There was no budget limitation when the AN/APG-77 radar was
developed for F 22 Raptor. No compromises were made and this keeps it at the top even today.
The AN/APG-77 radar features a low-observable, active-aperture, electronically scanned array
that can track multiple targets under any weather conditions.
It has a range of around 400 km or around 250 miles against a 1 m2 target.
This radar can also be used for electronic-attack
by focussing its signals on the enemy to overload their sensors. The radar changes frequencies more
than 1,000 times per second to resist jamming and has a Low Probability of Intercept.
Low Probability of Intercept means the enemy radar warning receivers are not able to detect
that a radar lock has been achieved against it
and hence opponents have little warning of an impending F 22 attack.
With AN/APG-77, F 22 Raptor can gather a lot of data
and some experts have said that the Raptor pilot has "God’s Eye View” of the battle-space.
Raptor is also getting Link 16 installed.
With Link 16, military aircraft as well as ships and ground forces can exchange their tactical
pictures in near-real-time. Link 16 also supports the exchange of text messages, imagery data and
provides two channels of digital voice (2.4 kbit/s and/or 16 kbit/s in any combination).
China is still experimenting with different radars for J-20
and has nothing close to what the Raptor possesses.
F 22 Raptor is developed from grounds up to be stealthy. F22 is the stealthiest
fighter ever built & has a very low RCS (Radar Cross Section) of only 0.0001 m2.
It achieves this due to its structural design
as well as the use of Radar Absorbing Materials (RAM).
It can’t be detected by most radars. Even if some radars are able to detect it,
they will find it very hard to track it and have a radar lock. Viewers may note that to
target an aircraft, quality tracking is needed so that the missiles can be guided towards it.
Hence, Raptor can strike without the enemy knowing it is there in the first place.
Stealth is still is very difficult to achieve and China has a long way to go
Sometime back reports have emerged that a Sukhoi
Su-30MKI of the Indian Air Force managed to detect the Chinese Chengdu J-20 jet fighter.
Indian Air Force commander Arup Shaha said,
"The Sukhoi's radar can see them. The new Chinese jets are not so invisible after all. No special
technology is required to detect the J-20, as it can be detected by ordinary radar stations.”