{"id":1423,"date":"2025-02-11T09:33:47","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T09:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/?p=1423"},"modified":"2025-01-06T09:35:03","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T09:35:03","slug":"how-stealthy-f-22-raptors-learned-to-take-on-elusive-iranian-threats-in-the-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/?p=1423","title":{"rendered":"How Stealthy F-22 Raptors Learned to Take on Elusive Iranian Threats in the Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Lt. Col. Dustin Johnson was ordered to deploy to the Middle East last year, he and his fellow\u00a0F-22 Raptor\u00a0pilots prepared for an unusual challenge.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

As America\u2019s premier air superiority fighter, the F-22 was designed to take on advanced enemy aircraft, capable of maneuvering stealthily and cruising at supersonic speeds.\u00a0But the dangers that most concerned Johnson and his Airmen included Iranian-designed drones and cruise missiles that Tehran and its proxies have employed during the most recent stretch of unrest in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were not necessarily worried about shooting down anybody else\u2019s airplanes,\u201d Johnson said in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. \u201cWe were primarily there to defend our ground forces against the threats that were being posed by the UAVs in the AOR, as well as the cruise missiles that we\u2019ve seen become more prevalent, both from the Houthis as well as militia groups in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given the changing character of war, the episode shows that even a high-end fighter needs to be prepared\u00a0for low-end threats.<\/p>\n

The challenge began when F-22s from the 90th Fighter Squadron, which Johnson commands, were\u00a0rushed to the Middle East in early August\u00a0from their home base at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, after Israel killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Iran threatened to retaliate.<\/p>\n

The F-22s reached the Middle East on short notice and were flying combat missions within a day of arriving at an air base in the region that U.S. military officials have declined to identify.<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors arrived in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility Aug. 8, 2024, as part of the U.S. force posture changes in the region to address threats posed by Iran and Iranian-backed groups. U.S. Air Force photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The drone threat they faced was not a hypothetical one.\u00a0Iran had\u00a0launched over 80 drones when it attacked Israel in April 2024, which were\u00a0shot down by<\/a>\u00a0American\u00a0F-15E Strike Eagle<\/a>s and F-16s, as well as some allied jets.<\/p>\n

Drones and cruise missiles were also in the hands of Iran-backed groups in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, which meant there were several geographically disparate air threats in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very fluid situation,\u201d Johnson said. \u201c\u2026 Knowing exactly where threats were coming from and when is becoming exponentially more difficult to discern because the threat has just proliferated to the point that it can literally be one person from anywhere with a single UAV.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the drones posed less of a threat to the F-22s than a high-end Chinese fighter, downing them presented some challenges.\u00a0Like the F-16s and F-15Es, the F-22s that have been deployed to the region in recent months have\u00a0Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars<\/a>, which makes detecting drones easier, a senior U.S. defense official noted to Air & Space Forces Magazine. But it is still not an easy task. Not only were the drones very small, but their slow speed always made them hard to detect.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s air-to-air [combat], but it is a different type of air-to-air than we\u2019ve ever really trained to before,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cEven the difference between a cruise missile and a UAV is significant in terms of your tactics, how you find it, how you kill it. They pose very significant identification problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
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Two U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptors fly in formation over the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, Oct. 10, 2024. U.S. Air Force photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The F-22s had some\u00a0lessons to draw on. Maj. Benjamin Coffey of the 494th Fighter Squadron, who was awarded the Silver Star for downing some of the drones in his F-15E in April, had written a paper on the subject.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wrote a paper, essentially, reviewing everybody\u2019s tapes through those first couple shoot-downs \u2026 like, \u2018here\u2019s how you will execute if you find a drone out there,\u2019\u201d Capt. Brian Tesch of the 494th Fighter Squadron said. \u201cThis isn\u2019t something you can just go out there and randomly practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. Air Forces in Europe boss Gen. James B. Hecker said in November that he had ensured that the paper was distributed to units deploying to the Middle East. Johnson said he and his pilots were able to draw on the previous lessons learned by the Air Force while refining the tactics to deal with potential drone threats.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though this specific mission is not taught in any of our syllabi, part of what the Weapons School teaches is that community of connectivity and problem-solving that is flexible enough that it can apply to problem sets that we haven\u2019t even thought of yet,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

Given the reputation of the F-22 and the success U.S. and allied Airmen enjoyed against the drones in April, Iran elected not to use UAVs when it attacked Israel in October. Instead, it relied exclusively on ballistic missiles, which Israeli and U.S. air defense systems countered.\u00a0The F-22s returned home just before Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

The F-22 \u201cis both a strategic and tactical asset,\u201d notes Johnson. \u201cThat gives anybody pause to think about how capable their defenses are when that platform is in theater.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, preparations the F-22 crews have made to deal with the Iranian drone threats could prove useful in the years ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s 100 percent applicable\u201d to other scenarios, Johnson said. \u201cI think pretty much anybody can look at the current environment and know that if a global conflict breaks out between superpowers, this is 100 percent going to be a part of the problem that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Lt. Col. Dustin Johnson was ordered to deploy to the Middle East last year, he and his fellow\u00a0F-22 Raptor\u00a0pilots prepared for an unusual challenge.\u00a0 As America\u2019s premier air superiority […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,37],"tags":[260,92],"class_list":["post-1423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-air","category-opinions","tag-f-22","tag-us-air-force"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/F-22.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1425,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423\/revisions\/1425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}