Why The F-22 Raptor Has Never Been Sold To Foreign Countries

It's inevitable that however cutting-edge a piece of technology may be on its release, that edge will dull over time. The sheer pace of advancement means that everything from the iPod Nano to the world's most sophisticated fighter jets will ultimately be superseded.

The F-22 Raptor is no iPod Nano. A formidable tool in the U.S. Air Force arsenal, it's a supercruise fighter armed with AIM-9 Sidewinders and an M61A2 gun, among other particularly devastating air-to-air weapons. It may be slated for retirement in the next decade, but its capabilities have surely made it the envy of other air forces around the world. However, over its career, the Raptor has never been made available outside of the U.S.

Why is it that the F-22 has never been exported? There were several reasons for this decision, largely revolving around keeping the aircraft's capacities super secret and in American hands. These are the steps the Air Force has taken to ensure this remains the case.

When it was introduced, the Raptor was a revelation of an aircraft. As F-22 Demo Team Pilot and Commander Captain Samuel "RaZZ" Larson put it in a 2023 interview with Lockheed Martin, the Raptor was "the first fifth-gen fighter operational in the world. It ushered in a new era of air combat ... stealth, supercruise, sensor fusion, and super maneuverability ... It's all extreme capabilities that the world had never seen."

With this in mind, it was important that the world didn't then get to have a first-hand look at exactly these sorts of features. Maintaining a reputation as a military powerhouse sometimes relies on a delicate balance between arming allies and preventing anybody else from gaining access to your top tech. Even through acts of Congress, if needed.

In 1998, the 105th Congress added a law relating to the F- 22 to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act. Sponsored by Wisconsin's David R. Obey, section 8103 reads, "None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to approve or license the sale of F-22 advanced tactical fighter to any foreign government."

The desire to protect the aircraft's secrets, coupled with the dramatically lessened number of F-22s available — 750 of them were initially intended to be deployed, but only around one-quarter of them would be developed — meant that it would be impractical to export the model even if it wasn't illegal to do so.

Formidable as it is, it's no surprise that there has been considerable international interest in the F-22 (albeit tempered by the dissolution of the Soviet Union during the era of the aircraft's development). Reuters notes that it would have cost Japan up to $2.3 billion to create a comparable fighter jet. Such prohibitive costs surely contributed to the desire of other American allies, such as Australia, to obtain F-22s of their own.

In September 2009, some in the Senate called for the development of an F-22 that could be wielded by allies, but the ban remained in place. Between the logistics and expense of developing such a model and the subsequent need for training allies in its theoretical use, the move was ultimately deemed impractical. A 2021 U.S. Air Force document obtained by The War Zone estimates that an export F-22 program could have cost up to the equivalent of around $13 billion.

Perhaps even more significantly, an equally formidable, more general-purpose aircraft arose that was perhaps a better fit for international duty than the F-22. The F-35 Lightning II has been extensively imported, with Japan being the biggest importer at 147 (between the A and B models). In this way, fifth-generation, versatile U.S. aircraft would be wielded by allies after all. Indeed, the pricey Joint Strike Fighter Project makes it clear that the F-35 always had this approach in mind.

Work on the F-22 Raptor began in the early 1980s when the U.S. Air Force needed a tactical fighter that could utilize the range of new technologies that were becoming available. The likes of stealth capabilities, after all, were the sorts of things with which the Air Force had to keep up lest other nations get the drop on it.

It was around a decade before Lockheed Martin's early take on the Raptor concept was approved, and "YF-22" embarked on a tentative test flight. In 1997, the completed F-22 Raptor made its debut. From there, the development of the aircraft for the Air Force began in 2005, and though it would serve since, it didn't see active combat until 2014's Operation Inherent Resolve.

Since its inception, as with so many long-serving military vehicles, the F-22 has been afforded a range of upgrades in its history. Beginning in 2020, the Raptor Agile Capability Release initiative targeted major improvements in the aircraft's performance and capabilities, the first focus of which was Link 16 capability. Between approximately 2024 and 2028, according to Aviation Week, around $19.5 billion is earmarked for continued development of the Raptor.

Quite clearly, there is sufficient faith that the aircraft can continue to excel for the foreseeable future, and international interest in developing a fleet is more than conceivable. Nonetheless, the model has never been exported, and it seems it never will.