Here's Why The US Navy Doesn't Use The F-22 Raptor
Story by Brad Hill • 10h •
Since the retirement of the F-14 Tomcat, the U.S. Navy's go-to fighter jet has been the F/A-18 Super Hornet. However, the Hornet is no fifth-generation jet like the F-22 Raptor. The Raptor is easily the most advanced fighter jet in the Air Force's arsenal and contains enough proprietary technology that it has never been sold to a foreign country. The biggest strengths the Raptor has are its ability to avoid detection and limited radio frequency emissions. Even in a dog fight, when rival aircraft can physically see the F-22, it's difficult for them to get a lock on the jet. It's an aircraft that has redefined air superiority. In the day and age of fifth-generation jets, why wouldn't the Navy use the Raptor as well?
This idea was, in fact, bounced around for a time during the '90s as a "Sea Raptor." However, adjusting the Raptor to do carrier takeoffs and landings would have required a serious overhaul that would have altered the aircraft's entire functionality. In order to sustain the force of being launched from a carrier's catapult system, it would have required a reinforced fuselage. Additionally, it would need a variable sweep-wing design like the F-14 in order to go slow enough for an arrested landing on the deck of a carrier. Not only would this redesign tack on additional costs to the already expensive platform ($350 million per plane), the variable sweep-wings would have altered impacted the jet's small radar cross section, which is what makes it difficult to detect in the first place.
The Fifth-Gen Jet The Navy Uses Instead
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