The F-22 was designed so the Russians and other countries wouldn't kick our butt. Really. Before, the Russians had the Su-27, MIG-29, and other planes that are available to them and any country with enough money to make/buy them. The F-15 was basically still better than anything the other countries had to throw. Then the Russians created the Su-37. The Su-37, which is seen as the F-22's "big rivalry," can flip left, right, or backwards, while standing on its tail at a speed of almost zero. That scared us, and because we have to remain on top of all the other countries whether they like it or not, we made the F-22. The F-22 can't maneuver as well as the Su-37, but it is stealthier, since you can't have both stealth and maneuverability. Our commanders and generals think that stealth is infinitely more important than maneuverability.

The YF-23 from Northrop vs. the YF-22 from Lockheed Martin. The YF-23 should have won, and it is a better plane, in stealth and in speed. The only thing it was worse at was low-speed handling. That wasn't why it lost, though. It lost because, while Northrop's B-2 bomber was late and suffering cost overruns, Lockheed had developed the F-117 Stealth Fighter on time and under budget, which made the jugdes favor Lockheed. Northrop felt the loss greatly, because it didn't have enough experience with fighters.

Do you think it was fair to favor the YF-22 just because Northrop wasn't doing so good with the B-2, while Lockheed Martin was doing well with the F-117? Vote Below!

Even though the F-23 was better, the F-22 represents the greatest advance in fighter capability in 50 years. The F-22 can supersonically cruise without use of afterburner, has extreme maneuverability thanks in part to an advanced thrust vectoring system, stealthiness from all directions, including from infrared systems; a "first-look/first-kill" capability; and avionics that are a generation ahead of anything else in the world, equal in power to seven Cray supercomputers. The F-22 is about the same size as the F-15, but it is way better. Every single part of the F-22 has technology far greater than that of the 25-year-old F-15, which it will replace in November 2004.

Even though the Su-37 has better manuverability, it doesn't have stealth. The F-15 has neither stealth nor maneuverability. The F-22 takes the best of both worlds. It could attaining the same stealth invisibility of the F-117A Stealth Fighter, and by using thrust-vectoring, is able to fly at extreme angles of attack while changing directions at high speeds. The thrust-vectoring system deflects the engines' full thrust by up to 20 degrees a second.(For those of you who didn't get the explanation, it's like the thrust(air) coming out of the engines can be moved by 20 degrees. If you didn't get that explanation, you're hopeless!) This combination makes the F-22 not only extremely hard to detect, but also able to out- maneuver most missiles and planes most of the time. As an example, Lockheed pilots pulled the nose up to 60 degrees, while going slowly, and could still perform a 360-degree roll. Doing the same thing in an F-15 or F-16 would cause the plane to fly out of control, which is why onboard computers impose certain limits that hinder the maneuverability of these aircraft.

As shown in the picture on the left, using the thrust-vectoring system the F-22 can fly at about a 110 degree angle. The F-22 can have good control at very high angles of attack.

Now look at the right. You can see a YF-22 successfully fire an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile during testing.

And, at the bottom, you can see(from left to right) an F-22 successfully fire AIM-120 AMRAAM missile during flight testing and a F-22 just flying around doing nothing in particular.

A more detailed explanation of the F-22 can be found here, at Ryan Kirks Ultimate Skunk Works Site.