At the Seoul International Aerospace and Defense Exhibition ( ADEX ) 2023, which is being held at Seongnam Seoul Airport from the 17th to today (22nd), the US Air Force F-22 ‘Raptor’, known as the world’s strongest stealth fighter, is showing off gravity and aviation common sense. It is attracting attention as a demonstration of high mobility. The F-22 , which participated in the Seoul ADEX Air Show for the first time in four years, is capturing the attention of visitors by performing the ‘cobra maneuver’, which involves ascending vertically at ultra-high speed immediately after takeoff and flying after raising the nose like a cobra. The F-22 , developed in the 1990s, showed off its revolutionary level of technology and earned the nickname ‘a fighter made by torturing aliens.’ The reason why the F-22 received this nickname was due to its surprising and excellent maneuverability along with stealth performance that can be detected by radar as the size of a small insect. A former fighter pilot and reserve air force general who watched the F-22 ‘s demonstration flight at ADEX 2023 said, “It is a shocking fighter that breaks all the aviation common sense and fighter jet piloting experience I have learned so far.”
The F-22 ‘s outstanding mobility is evaluated as being far beyond the level of existing fighter jets and reaching the level of super-maneuver ability beyond high mobility . The secret to achieving this level of initial mobility is a powerful engine and an advanced fly-by-wire steering control system. In particular, the thrust vectoring engine, which can control the direction and size of thrust, plays a decisive role.
The F-22 is equipped with two Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 engines. The F119 , which has the most powerful thrust among the world’s fighter engines, is the world’s first mass-produced thrust vectoring engine. The output per unit is 11 tons, and when the rear combustor (afterburner) is turned on, the output reaches 18 tons. Thanks to its powerful engine power, the F-22A can cruise at supersonic speeds (super cruise) at a constant speed of about Mach 1.5 without turning on the afterburner.
The F119 engine consists of a 3-stage fan, a 6-stage compressor카지노사이트, and a 1st-stage compression turbine. It is also equipped with a digital engine control module that uses the 4th generation integrated digital engine controller ( FADEC ) to check whether the engine is operating properly or which parts need maintenance. Each module is equipped with two computers.
The F-22 boasts excellent performance, but only 195 units were produced, and the U.S. Air Force is considering early retirement due to high operating and maintenance costs. The price of each F-22 is known to be $360 million (about 450 billion won). As it is expensive, it is also cautious about putting it into practice, so there are not many cases of it being used in practice. The first real battle took place in 2014 when an airstrike was carried out against the Islamic State ( IS ), a Sunni militant group.
Last February, it attracted attention by shooting down Chinese and unidentified balloons that appeared in the skies over the U.S. mainland, Alaska, and Canada. At that time, the F-22 fired an AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missile at an altitude of 17.7 km and shot down the Chinese balloon at an altitude of 19.8 km. This was the first air-to-air combat record in 18 years since the F-22 was deployed, and the highest altitude kill in history. However, it became a hot topic because it was said that an expensive fighter jet worth 450 billion won was used to shoot down a balloon, a relatively cheap old weapon. At ADEX
2023 in Seoul, the demonstration flight of the first domestically produced supersonic fighter, KF-21, also received applause from many visitors. The KF-21 , a 4.5 generation fighter, also known as the ‘Mini Raptor’, is currently under development, but unusually, it has been released to the public and is even undergoing demonstration flights. An official said, “Even though it is a prototype still under development, I was surprised that the KF-21 performed a more difficult flight than expected.”Development of the KF-21 will be completed by the first half of 2026 and begin full-scale mass production. KAI (Korea Aerospace Industries)’s domestically produced light armed helicopter ( LAH ), whose development will be completed this year, also demonstrated a highly difficult maneuver at this year’s Seoul ADEX .
