F-22 Raptor: Retired by 2030. Then China Built 300 J-20s

The F-22 Raptor was designed in the final years of the Cold War to fight a Soviet air force that dissolved before the jet left the factory. It entered service in 2005 as the most capable air superiority platform ever built, then spent twenty years in training rotations while America fought wars that required close air support, not air dominance. The Air Force capped production at 187, set a retirement date, and moved on — then China built more J-20s than that in four years, NGAD slipped by a decade, and in June 2025 the Raptor flew its first offensive combat mission. The number 187, which was supposed to be a ceiling on how many America would ever need, has become the floor the next decade of American air superiority is built on. In this video, we cover: How Robert Gates capped F-22 production at 187 in 2009, why the logic seemed sound at the time, and why it didn't survive contact with China's J-20 production rate The full upgrade package that reversed the retirement decision: conformal stealth fuel tanks, passive IRST sensors, AIM-260 missiles, and Collaborative Combat Aircraft command capability Why NGAD's delays and the J-20's scale forced the Air Force to rebuild a jet it had already scheduled to phase out What Operation Midnight Hammer proved about the upgraded Raptor — and what it means that 187 airframes are now the foundation of American air superiority for the foreseeable future J-20 performs at Airshow China 2018 — footage by 中国新闻网, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Changes made: edited and used as B-roll in a narrated video. J-20 aerial footage: 朱古力 via YouTube | Creative Commons Attribution License #F22Raptor #Raptor #StealthFighter #USAF #AirSuperiority #MilitaryAviation #StealthInsider #AviationHistory #ColdWarLegacy #LockheedMartin