Here on FTD facts
I've been doing a lot of videos around airplanes jets and amazing military
Aircraft and nothing is quite as cool and amazing as the awesome
Groundbreaking f-22 Raptor a fighter that changed many things about aircraft and how planes are gonna be built in the future
One plane that was way ahead of its game
But before we get into the amazing facts about the f-22, I should probably introduce myself. Hey all you lovely people out there
How is it going? Hope you're all having a fantastic amazing day
My name is Dave Walpole and welcome to FTD facts a channel where I look at well in this particular type of video
Military content. We also look at countries cultures and other things like that. So that's kind of your jam
You want to hit that subscribe button now a little bit of self-promotion just lets, you know every Thursday
I'm always looking at a new plane or an issue revolving around a plane that you might know about for example the next video
I'm gonna be looking at the issues with the f-35 and
Canada there's quite a lot of controversy around that so that's gonna be coming up next
so check out the playlist if you're interested in that sort of thing, so
right off the bat the
F-22 is considered a fifth-generation
Twin-engine all-weather stealth fighter. Now. What's cool about this fighter is it is one of the times that Lockheed and Boeing?
really teamed up to create a
revolutionary fighter the f-22 Raptor came from what was known as the advanced fighter program and this began as far back as
1981 I did not know that the f-22 started way back
Then this program was aimed to replace the old aging f-15 fighters and be a possible replacement for the rather new
F-16 as well. There were new fighters that were on the block such as the su-27 flanker and the mig-29
Which this program eventually was made to beat those fighters as this program evolved. They released what was known as the lockheed
Yf-22 which had its first flight on september 29 1990
Scientists joined together and competed against this fighter with their particular fighter known as the yf-23
Which ironically looks a little bit like an f-35, but the f-35 did not come from that fighter
I don't know it just kind of looks different but the thing for the f-22 as it got certified it began production in
1996
Originally America was going to buy
750 of these at the time but as time went on this big deal went less and less and less and less and less
because by
2008 because of budget reasons and a few other reasons as well
Congress lowered the amount that they could spend on this fighter and only purchased approximately
187 of them
however
It was shortly before that at the first combat squadron of f-22s began conversion in 2005
with that being said one of the first real squadrons of
F-22s was the 43rd fighter squadron. Now, these guys have been around as far as
1917 as a matter of fact squadron 43 has been commissioned and decommissioned several times in history
for example, they were operated between the years of
1917 to 1919 and then were taken down until
1922 until about nineteen thirty six and then operated yet again in 1942 1946 and then again in
1964 to
1994 and on a side note during that last time they were the first squadron to do the conversions for the
F-15 as well
however by 2002 they were brought back into service to provide training for the
F-22 which operated out of the Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. Now, here's the thing. Yes
The f-22 is no longer in production
The question is although it is a good fighter of why
Isn't it with only a hundred and ninety five of these ever being made in total?
There were a couple of reasons such as they were extremely expensive on top of that
There was also the introduction of the cheaper stealth fighter known as the f-35 and even the United States really questioned
How valuable the f-22?
Was going to be used after the collapse of the Soviet Union and on top of that one thing that really hurt the plane
Was the fact that there is an extreme ban on
exporting the technology and this plane as a whole to other countries as a matter of fact because the f-35 is
Considered a cheaper more dumbed down version of its stealth abilities
That is why the f-35 is allowed to be exported to other countries
however
That being said the United States doesn't just give out f-35s countries have to have very strict requirements
And because of all of these reasons the last f-22 to ever be made was actually in
2012 but although there was a major ban on this particular plane that didn't mean other countries were not
Interested in it. For example, Australia was very interested in purchasing this fighter
Even Japan was heavily considering going into a secure partnership with America to acquire it
But the thing was in order to obtain this fighter
It would have to increase its military budget to over 1% of the GDP
Which is something that has never happened in Japan's history post the Second World War
Okay, so let's take a look at some of the more unique facts about the f-22
so for combat, this fighter was first used in Syria in
2014 this was for operation inherit resolved during that operation
They say they dropped approximately 270 bombs. However, the f-22 was also used quite heavily for reconnaissance
however, that wasn't theoretically the first time the f-22 was in kind of combat because the first time
It went in combat. Theoretically was up against a bunch of f4 phantoms a very interesting story
apparently Iranian forces and fighter pilots attempted to come close to a Predator drone with the
f-22 only scaring them off the story is that the f-22 managed to sneak up behind the Iranian f4 phantoms and
Managed to come so close that not only the pilot could see what missiles the f4 phantoms were carrying
But the f-22 pilot managed to pull up on one of the f-4s wings which made them realize they were dealing with some extreme
Technology and therefore backed off and this happened back in 2013
also
one of the reasons why Japan was heavily interested in this fighter for long time is
Because they were first operated in an international setting out of the Kadena Air Force Base in Japan
This was with the 27th squadron and they actually flew over from Hawaii
To Japan and on their first flight one of the fighters had to be returned to Hawaii because of severe software problems
however
This plane did manage to make it back safely to Hawaii get repairs and go forward to Japan and in 2007
This made it the first international deployment of f-22 Raptors and besides that it's also been deployed to Germany
Estonia and Poland for training exercises
It was also seen in
Afghanistan and even Iran in which we already heard from that f4 phantom story
But they say in the Middle East the f-22 flew over 200 sorties
So here's kind of the downside with the f-22 Raptor being such an advanced
amazing piece of technology we get a little thrown off when we hear that the f-22
Actually had some serious problems to begin with keep in mind
these were also fixed later on but for example
One of the biggest issues with the f-22 Raptor was back in 2013
Where there were many cases of pilots blacking out due to severe breathing problems
basically
They had hypoxia like symptoms and meaning that they weren't getting enough oxygen to the brain because of this pilots experienced memory loss
Emotional liability and a few other things such as a lingering
Respiratory problem. This is things like a cough and things like that
But realistically even though pilots weren't blacking out because they weren't getting enough oxygen
This really doesn't help pilots cuz they make bad decisions when they're up in the air lack of oxygen makes bad decisions
And with that in 2005
They discovered that the breathing regulator was defective and on top of that the oxygen
Generating system reduced the amount of oxygen that was given to the pilots at high G maneuvers
Fortunately though the United States military jumped on this as soon as possible and they have since fixed those issues
With that because of this oxygen issue. I should also mention that there was one major hull loss
Overall, there's only been about four major haul losses of this aircraft and of that unfortunately two of the four pilots
Did not make it now. Let's get away from the dark side. So let's look at some of the specs now
The good thing is this plane is not overly a large one
Which is really good for not appearing on radar and I'm going to get into that stealth aspect in a little bit
but let's look at some of the specs first for example its size comes in at a length of
Eighteen point nine two meters by a width of thirteen point five six and a height of five point zero eight meters
Inside this aircraft because it is a twin-engine aircraft. It uses two x pratt & whitney
f119
pw100 engines and it is
Fast now as a matter of fact speed is a very controversial thing when it comes to this plane
Speed overall with planes is a rather controversial thing because there's a lot of things to be taken into effect
These factors are drag altitude air temperature and things like that that make the f-22
Debated in its speed limit. However
during testing the f-22 showed that it could go up to speeds of mach 2.25 and in
Supercruise meaning it was completely loaded up it got over mach
1.8. Now the downside is there's been really no
official limit of how much this aircraft can carry
Although I've read that each wing is capable of carrying up to two thousand two hundred and seventy kilograms
Which is roughly around five thousand pounds for its weapons, though
It does have one gun in front and that is a 20 millimeter cannon with about 480 rounds
But however for this aircraft it only has a four hardpoints now, of course
They can carry things like bombs and error to air air-to-surface missiles all that jazz and you might be thinking to yourself
Yeah, well, there's only four. I mean the f16 can hold a lot more believe it or not
It still gets the job done and also cost. This has been a very debated issue as well. However in
2019 they estimated that the cost per hour for one of these aircrafts while it is flying comes in at
$35,000 again
That's per hour
but overall one of these babies at least in the year of 2000 cost about
150 million dollars with the entire production and development cost coming in at sixty seven point three
billion u.s. Dollars as of 2010 in which I hope the taxpayers are extremely happy with paying that and
Last but not least. This is the probably the greatest factor of the f-22 is the stealth now, here it is
I am no expert and anybody out there in the public world is not an expert either
This is because the technology around the f-22 is extremely classified heck
We know that the f-22 is banned in other countries because it's stealth technology is so advanced
But what we do know about the stealth technology is that it has what is known as active
electronically scanned array radar which makes the f-22 largely
Undetectable on radar screens as well with its unique shape
It helps radar bounce off of it, which means that if it shows up on radar
It's very very small like the size of a bumblebee. So that's it
That's me looking at the great amazing aircraft known as the f-22 Raptor. I absolutely love this aircraft
I think it's kind of unfortunate that it's no longer in production. There is talks about a sixth generation
F-22 coming out, but I don't know what's going on with that lot of specs a lot of theories
But that is for the future which we cannot predict. Anyways, guys
My name is Dave Walpole
And I hope you guys
enjoyed this video and that being said be sure to check out the playlist up in the cards down in the description box below and
At the end of this video because in the next episode, I'm gonna be talking about Canada and its f-35 issue
It's really quite a big one
and of course just hit that subscribe button if you're new and you want to learn about more cool aircrafts because I love talking about
aircrafts and military gear
But that being said feel free to leave a comment and hit that like button if you enjoyed this video and you want more aircraft
Videos, but you guys have yourself a fantastic day and I'll see you in the next one. Okay. Bye
Okay, guys, alright so here is that playlist that I was telling you guys about again every Thursday
We're always talking about a new aircraft and hey if you want to learn about countries or anything like that
Then just check out some of our awesome videos that we do
You guys have yourself a good one later?