What You Need to Know: During a 2012 Red Flag exercise, German Eurofighter Typhoons managed to defeat the formidable F-22 Raptor in a series of close-range dogfights. These surprising results highlighted the agility of the Typhoon when engaging the Raptor within visual range, especially when the F-22 was hindered by external fuel tanks.

-While the F-22 remains dominant due to its stealth and beyond-visual-range capabilities, the dogfight showed that in close quarters, the Eurofighter can compete.

-This exercise raised important questions about air combat and showcased that even the world’s top fighter jets can face challenges in specific scenarios.

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 sent 150 Airmen and eight........

© The National Interest