100-Word Summary: In 2012, German Eurofighter Typhoons outmaneuvered U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors during Red Flag exercises, stirring debate over the Raptor’s air superiority. These mock dogfights took place within visual range, negating the F-22’s stealth and beyond-visual-range advantages.
-While the Raptor usually prevails through stealth and situational awareness, its agility was compromised in the drills due to external fuel tanks, giving the lighter Typhoon an edge. Despite notional losses, the F-22’s advanced technology and stealth still position it as a dominant platform.
-The exercises highlight that even elite fighters like the Raptor aren’t invincible under the right circumstances.
Despite the F-22 Raptor’s reputation as the world’s most capable air superiority fighter, the stealth jet has lost a number of notional dogfights over the years to older and less advanced platforms like the F-16 and even the Navy’s electronic-warfare specialist, the EA-18G Growler. But few exercises have done more damage to the mighty Raptor’s reputation than a series of training dogfights with German Eurofighter Typhoons that took place just about a decade ago.
These losses may have been notional, but some people clearly took them seriously. So seriously, in fact, that German Eurofighters were spotted wearing F-22 kill markings on their fuselages after telling the press that they had “Raptor salad for lunch.”
With the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance fighter cruising toward service in the coming decade, it now seems likely that the mighty Raptor will retire without ever firing a shot at another aircraft in anger, making these simulated combat exercises and a handful of exciting intercepts the extent of the Raptor’s air-to-air legacy.
So what is that legacy exactly? Is the F-22 truly as dominant as people believe? Or is this fighter’s biggest advantage not stealth… but hype?
Arguments about the F-22 and Eurofighter Typhoon largely stem from German Eurofighters’ participation in the Air Force’s large-scale Red Flag air combat exercises over Alaska in 2012.
Red Flag is an advanced aerial combat training course that pits a wide variety of aircraft, often from multiple nations, against large-scale and realistic threats meant to simulate a real near-peer fight.
That year, Germany........