The F-22 Raptor fighter will be easy to spot at the Chicago Air and Water Show, which begins Friday.
It will be the jet flying in ways that boggle the mind: standing on its head or even backward.
Defense experts say the F-22 is the most advanced fighter ever built: invisible to radar, capable of flying higher and faster than any other plane in the world and equipped with sensors that alert pilots to potential threats hundreds of miles away.
“That’s why the name Raptor is appropriate: You’re flying high, seeing everything around and very difficult to defeat,” said Larry Lawson, an executive vice president with Georgia-based Lockheed Martin Corp., which developed the jet in a joint venture with Chicago-based Boeing Co. and Connecticut-based Pratt & Whitney.
But this Raptor is in danger of extinction, the result of budget politics that have given funding for anti-terrorism programs precedence over conventional warfare this decade.
The Bush administration has provided funding for about 180 of the fighters, far fewer than the 381 planes the Air Force has said it needs to fight a prolonged war against another air power.
Boeing and Lockheed say they will be forced to end production of the new jet by 2011 unless they receive additional orders. But the plane’s technology is so sensitive that the U.S. won’t allow it to be exported to other nations.
Congress is considering whether to provide another $500 million for the program, which would keep it in full gear for another year, allowing the next president to decide the jet’s fate.
Defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute warns that by skewing funding to unconventional warfare, the U.S. risks ceding air dominance to other nations that are developing sophisticated new fighters to counter the plane.
“There will be other threats like Russia or China in the future,” he said. “Right now, the F-22 is the only plane we have responding to it.”
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jjohnsson@tribune.com