Why does the U.S Air Force continue to rely on the F-22 Raptor yet cannot just, merely produce more of them? Fleet math and industrial reality meet at the dissatisfying point. The Raptor is still an air-dominance gun but now it is an over-the-counter small high-end “silver bullet” force that is more difficult to maintain each year production remains cold. F-22 has a limited aircraft supply to task in combat and a constant maintenance load, the strength that made the aircraft, its advantage in the most difficult air-to-air mission sets is also a limitation to planning.
Costs illustrate the trap. A popular estimate puts the program price of the Raptor at approximately 334 million per jet when all the development and the procurement of the aircraft are divided by the small purchase. It is also costly to operate: the Government Accountability Office estimate of $85,325 to fly F-22 one hour highlights the importance of the high cost of maintaining a store fleet up-to-date, trained and on call.
Worse than raw cost though is the absence of a safety net. The Raptor will no longer have the economies of scale that quietly make the rest of the large fleets viable stable part runs, an existing pool of suppliers, and predictable repair processes. With the aircraft, as one evaluation has indicated, there is no “economy of scale when the aircraft” is no longer, and once that ecosystem is destroyed it is not as easy as turning on the lights.
Preparedness demonstrates how this can be in practice. The claimed mission-capable rate of the F-22 in fiscal year 2024 dropped to an estimated 40 percent of the fleet, which implies that the service is frequently conducting maintenance throughput as much as strategy. The same fact increases the importance of training and test planes: the total of F-22s is approximately 185, of which 143 are combat-coded, and the rest are oriented toward training and testing.
Modernization is the new way out but it does not go without its price tag and engineering problem. The Air Force is also proceeding with “viability” upgrades, the headline of which is the Infrared Defensive System (IRDS) as well as upgrades to do with low observability, sensors and electronic warfare. Stealthy external tanks are also desired both to extend range and maintain signature control, an initiative that was said to be included in maintaining the jet as capable of “seeing, shooting, and going further.” Simultaneously, the capability of the Raptor to coordinate information has also been enhanced; new capability includes two-way LINK 16 with F-35s, a viable step towards turning the F-22 into a shooter as well as a node within a wider networked force.
One of the major questions is whether even these frontline Block 30/35 jets should be upgraded or the older Block 20 aircraft that are mainly used to train should be upgraded as well. Lockheed Martin has indicated publicly the possibility of modernizing those airframes as well, which would widen the range of available jets, until the Air Force can have a next-generation replacement available in large quantities.
The start of production is not the answer to the problem. An Air Force study commissioned in 2017 had estimated a cost of between 50 and 60 billion US dollars to re-open and create more Raptors, (an increase of 194 planes), with significant risk coming in through the suppliers, workforce reconstitution, and the fact that much of what had been designed had its origins in late-1990s architecture. In the case of a stealth fighter that is designed with highly regulated materials and processes it becomes a new program with an old name to make the industrial base.
Thus the future of F-22 does not lie in “building more,” but in gaining more out of what is already there stretching the service life, modernizing more tails where possible, and incorporating the Raptor into an ecosystem of sensor and shooter that includes the F-35 and whatever follows it.
