“I think the most beautiful fighter jet in the world is the F-22, but we’re going to do an F-22 Super, and it’ll be a very modern version of the F-22 fighter jet.” That the line made headlines is a headline-grabber but the more significant fact is less loud: there is a serious future to the Raptor when the majority of combat jets would get written off.
The easiest concept to conceive is the “Super Raptor” idea that was discussed alongside the mention of an F-55 concept. The sixth-generation F-47 of the Air Force is placed as the core of the topmost mission of the future, yet, it is also linked with the scale, schedule, and basing realities. The force is unable to afford a capability gap in air dominance until new aircraft and associated ecosystem develop, because only 186 Raptors have been built and fewer of them are combat-coded.
The most visible indication of the fact that the F-22 runway is being extended appears in the Pentagon paper work, rather than a podium. The Air Force Fiscal Year 2026 budget request envisages a new-start undertaking termed as viability at a cost of 90.34 million and devoted to hardware and software modifications necessary to make the jet survivable to new threats.
According to the service itself: Viability is future acquisition of the capability to increase hardware and software capabilities associated with, but not limited to Low Observable (LO) signature management Improvements to Electronic Warfare (EW) system and Infrared Defensive System (IRDS) to counter emerging EW threat. That wording is important in that it positions the upgrade set as an ongoing update of survivability basics, namely stealth maintenance, cyber hardening, sensor upgrades, and countermeasures, as opposed to being one massive upgrade.
The core of that survivability push is IRDS, a novel defensive sensing package linked to modernization of missile warning. The budget description is strangely transparent that there is a program of record, IRDS, to replace the outdated missile launch detection sensors. The low rate initial production decision will be made in the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2026 with an aim of deploying superior detect in response to the long-range air to air and surface to air threats.
Crime is taking the same direction. The first anticipated platform of the AIM-260, which is the successor to AMRAAM in the same footprint but with a far greater range, is the Raptor. The details are not made public yet the intent of the program is evident; pair stealthy “first look” and extend first shot. The inward looking language of the Air Force also terms the incoming podded infrared search-and-track capability of the F-22 as a Sensor Enhancement project to maintain first look, first shot and first kill performance, with 30 pods already in preliminary production order with preliminary deliveries to take place in the second quarter of Fiscal Year 2028.
Range – the age old bane of the small, high demand fleet can be answered in concrete by the work underway on Low Drag Tanks and Pylons which are aimed at extending persistence as much as possible with minimum fines to speed and signature. Should the extension of the airframe service life to 15, 000 hours be a fact, the Raptor will no longer be merely a question of nostalgia but one of engineering practicality: maintain the proven air-dominance system lethal and networked until the F-47 and its network peers emerge.
