The F-22 Is Finally Getting Some Much Needed Upgrades
May 3, 2022 Military AviationSTEFANO D'URSO
F-22 Upgrades
The artwork showing the new pods, external fuel tanks and unknown air-to-air missile. (Photo: U.S. Air Force)
The new upgrades for the F-22 have been teased both in official Air Force artworks and FY23 budget.
25 years after it entered service in the U.S. Air Force, the F-22 Raptor is scheduled to receive some major upgrades to keep its edge over future adversaries. Some of these upgrades were unveiled last week in the Fiscal Year 23 Budget request documentation and in an official artwork shared by Gen. Mark Kelly, the Commander of Air Combat Command, in a post about the 15th anniversary of the approval of the first F-22 flight demonstration.
In the artwork we can see three Raptors loaded with new stealthy external fuel tanks, two underwing faceted pods and a new unknown air-to-air missile, but there are even more novelties in the documents, which unveils a previously undisclosed relationship between the F-22 and the development of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD), the “system of systems” which includes the first Air Force’s 6th gen fighter aircraft. Let’s now see what we know about the upgrades that have been disclosed so far.
The two pods installed under the outer underwing hardpoints have already been spotted during flight testing on an F-22 at the Air Force’s Plant 42 facility in Palmdale, California, in February. It is not known yet what kind of systems are housed inside the two pods. One of the possibilities is this being a new Electronic Warfare (EW) pod, specifically developed for the Raptor in order not to dangerously degrade its Radar Cross Section (RCS).
https://theaviationist.com/2022/05/03/f-22-upgrades/
