Five Design Choices That Explain Why The F-35 And F-22 Handle Threats Completely Differently

Simple Flying

The Lockheed MartinF-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II are both fifth generation stealth fighters, yet they process and respond to airborne and ground threats in almost opposite ways. The United States Air Force describes the F-22 as an air-dominance platform built around a combination of stealth, supercruise, maneuverability, and sensor fusion to give pilots a first-kill opportunity before an enemy fighter even knows a threat is nearby. The Lightning II arrived roughly ten years later with a far broader brief, striking ground targets, jamming enemy radars, and feeding a fused picture of the battlespace to an entire strike package, all while still holding its own in the air. Those different missions pushed Lockheed Martin’s engineers toward very different answers to the same basic question: how should a fighter see, evade, and engage a threat?

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