A supersonic killing machine built to become the stealth fighter of the 21st century,

packing a deadly array of state of the art missile systems.

It excels at both close-in dog fighting and precision strike ground attacks.

Invisible to enemy RADAR, it can intercept and strike any target without warning.

America's newest super weapon,

the F-22 Raptor next on Modern Marvels.

1981, in his first press conference as president of the United States.

Ronald Wilson Reagan offered a deal to the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

If Soviet's SS-20 missiles aimed at Western Europe were removed,

America would not deploy its Pershing II cruise missiles to counter the threat.

Throughout the 1960's and 70's, the Soviets developed

different missiles to attack in different altitude bags.

You couldn't fly under the missile threat.

You couldn't fly over the missile threat.

You had to deal with the missile threat.

One way to do that is to make suppression of enemy air defenses,

that is, destroying the missile sites and the radars, the most important mission for the air force.

By the 1970's, air dominance had re-emerged as a top priority.

And the US Air Force is committed to building its first pure air superiority fighter.

An aircraft that would eventually become the F-15 Eagle.

But just as F-15s became operational in 1978,

alarming new evidence suggested that the new fighter's superiority might only be temporary.

US reconnaissance satellites passing over a Soviet flight test center north of Moscow

discovered new Soviet fighters being tested.

One was the agile fighter, the Mikoyan MiG-29.

But the other king(?) as a huge shock to western analysts,

it was bigger than the F-15 and far bigger than any previous Soviet-built fighter,

the Sukhoi T-10 prototype.

At that time, the Soviet Union initiated

some very aggressive programs to come up with counters

and both Mikoyan and Sukhoi, both of design bureaus, initiated new aircraft development efforts.

And it appeared that they were (?)attractive with(?) field some very advanced fighters.

If the MiG-29 had concerned the American military establishment,

the existence of the Sukhoi T-10 set alarm bells ringing.

These are very good aircraft,

they're aircraft that play in the same league

as some of the top NATO aircraft like Phantom, and ultimately like F-15.

The goal is world peace ...

Just weeks into his first term, America's 40th president

increased US defense spending by 32.5 billion dollars,

and began the re-armament of the United States on a colossal scale.

In 1981, the Cold War was getting very warm.

As Reagan ingression(?) and squared off,

the US Air Force concluded that it urgently needed the replacement for its F-15,

an advanced tactical fighter, or ATF, that would have no equal.

As American planners started to develop a concept of air and land battle to fight WWIII,

the US Air Force starts to think about the kind of a equipment it wants to have

when it comes time to fight a war.

At that time, in the secret of black world, the advanced military aviation development,

one technology had emerged at the forefront,

stealth.

During that period, the late 1970's of course,

and what we call the black world, the alias in the world of secret programs,

there was a great effort going on to come up with counters to these new Soviet weapon systems

that could enable us to knock out their SAM system

and that of course uh... led to the development of the F-117.

Analysis of air to air combat in Vietnam, called the Red Baron study,

had kicked start the race for stealth

An operational analysis study showed that in Vietnam

that most aircraft were killed by other aircraft that they hadn't seen.

So from this you get the idea that if the aircraft doesn't see it, it has a tremendous advantage.

Air combat data from WWII and Korea reinforced it's need for invisibility.

So from this, in a process of operational analysis, the US Air Force learns

that what you really need to do is be invisible to the enemy.

And that means that

an aircraft is designed to be as near as possible invisible to an enemy fighter aircraft.

Its geometry is designed to give it a very low profile as to make it very invisible

to an oncoming fighter aircraft using high-frequency fighter aircraft RADAR.

The principle of stealth technology is to literally make an airplane invisible to the enemy.

An aircraft's shape must reflect incoming radio waves

away from the enemy radar rather than towards it

To further obscure the war plane's visibility,

an aircraft is being covered in materials that absorb radar signals

In turn, this reduces its visibility on a radar screen.

Leading the way in stealth technology was Lockheed Martin's Skunk works.

In the late 1970's, the stealth wasn't widely known outside of a few companies.

in the ability to integrate stealth technology, shaping for stealth and materials.

It was really only well known in 2 companies that was Lockheed and Northrop.

In 1977, amid unprecedented security,

Lockheed flew a prototype of the world's first stealth fighter.

And by the 1980's, during Operation Just Cause,

its F-117 helped to destroy general Noriega's regime in Panama.

Now the US Air Force decided that any new fighter must incorporate stealth technology

and identified 2 other areas in which a future air superiority fighter should excel.

Well, at that stage of the game, it was clear

that the Air Force wanted the stealthy fighter.

It was also clear that they wanted uh...an airplane

that was super cruise, in other words,

supersonicly without lighting off the after burners,

and they didn't want to sacrifice any of the classic fighter maneuverability

So they want the fighter that, besides all the new technology,

would maneuver as well or better than the F-15.

In October 1982, representatives from aircraft manufacturers met with the US Air Force,

and began to identify the specific must-haves for the new fighter.

It must be a supersonic cruise aircraft with a combat radius of 7 to 900 miles

with reduced observables if possible.

The aircraft would have to be able to operate on a 2,000-foot runway,

and must be easier to maintain than a F-15.

The challenge was issued.

Now it was up to the finest aviation manufacturers in the world to respond.

The Advanced Tactical Fighter Program was about to begin,

and the Raptor, America's fifth-generation fighter, was about to be hatched.

The F/A-22 Raptor is so stealthy, it appears the size of a bumblebee when detected by radar,

even though it's more than 62 feet long with a wingspan of 44 feet.

By 1983, U.S.-Soviet relations had reached a new low.

Following Leonid Brezhnev's death, the politburo, now controlled by ex-KGB boss Yuri Andropov,

was labeled by Reagan as the focus of evil in the modern world.

Continuing his policy of rearmament,

Reagan announced plans for the Strategic Defense Initiative,

better known as Star Wars.

Moscow reacted furiously.

[speaking Russian]

That August, when Korean Airlines flight 007, on its way to Seoul from New York,

strayed several hundred mile off course into Soviet airspace, Russia acted.

A fighter was sent up, and the civilian airliner with 269 people on board was shot down.

The shooting down of KAL 007 sent shock waves around the world,

straining international relations almost to a breaking point.

What can we think of a regime that so broadly trumpets its vision of peace

and global disarmament and yet so callously and quickly

commits a terrorist act to sacrifice the lives of innocent human beings?

Reagan's reaction to the crisis strengthened U.S. conviction that stealth

would now be the prime requirement for America's new fighter.

Some senior people in the Pentagon looked at the stealth requirements

and decided they were inadequate, and they radically changed them.

So stealth became a really major, dominant requirement in the program.

In this politically charged climate, the U.S. Air Force created its Advanced Tactical Fighter,

or ATF, System Program Office.

Based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio,

Colonel Albert C. Piccirillo was placed in charge of the division.

One of the things we really wanted was the ability to leverage stealth in a high-performance fighter,

and we also wanted this high-performance fighter to still be capable of good close-in,

within visual range, maneuvering capability.

In fact, we wanted more than just existing capability in some areas.

Manufacturers were invited to submit concepts for an aircraft

with an operational radius of 800 miles,

enough to allow it to operate over the entire central region of Europe

from bases in central England

It should have low observable characteristics

and be able to cruise at Mach 1.5 for an astonishing 600 miles.

We weren't building an airplane for the 1990s, although that was what we were trying to do.

We were really building a fighter for the 21st century

that could take on all of the advanced threats that the Soviet Union was likely to throw at us.

All of the teams had their work cut out for them,

but on top of this, the military added another complicating factor.

At the end of the concept demonstration phase,

the decision was made by the Air Force to launch a demonstration validation

phase of the program that would involve building two flight demonstrators,

YF-type airplanes, that would then be evaluated.

They didn't have to have full armament.

They didn't have to have avionics.

They didn't have to have stealth coatings.

But essentially, they were going to go out and show us what you can do.

But building prototype aircraft was expensive, and no one manufacturer could afford it on their own.

They all know that they must invest so much money in developing

that if they don't get the contract,

they're going to be so out-of-pocket. It's going to hurt the company badly.

Each manufacturer would submit a design for the demonstration valuation,

or Dem/Val, competition

but agreed that the winning company would be the prime contractor

and its partners subcontracted to produce major components.

Everybody's investment will be at least partly repaid

because everybody gets a piece of the action.

Seven designs for the air force competition were submitted for final evaluation.

All of the seven contractors came in with designs

that were very feasible and that could have been built.

The question was which were the best

and then how did we determine that they really were good enough.

Two manufacturers with strong experience in stealth technology,

Northrop Grumman with its B-2

and Lockheed Martin with its F-117, led the way.,

Northrop's advanced tactical fighter, or ATF, design

was for an alien-looking aircraft with diamond platform wings and huge V-tails.

It was a design that stressed speed and stealth.

Northrop came in with an airplane that really, from the very beginning,

looked just like the YF-23 that eventually was built and flown.

Lockheed's entry echoed that of the F-117.

Its vectored thrust, arrowhead shape, trapezoidal wings,

and four tails ensured that the aircraft would be maneuverable.

The fact was that Lockheed and Northrop had significant advantages

in the fact that they had built stealth aircraft and flown them.

It's a big credibility factor there.

On October 31, 1986, both Lockheed and Northrop's ATF designs were declared the winners.

Under the terms of the Dem/Val competition, each team would build two aircraft.

At the end of the process,

one of two designs would become America's new advanced tactical fighter.

Costing billions of dollars,

the new fighter would make a technological leap into the 21st century

The F/A-22's RADAR system gives the aircraft a 'first-look, first-shot, first-kill' capability.

That means it can see an enemy plane first, fire a missile and destroy the target

without the other pilot ever knowing.

And in 1990, just months after the disintegration of the Soviet Union,

the shapes of the two rival designs were finally unveiled.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present to you the YF-22A

prototype for U.S. air superiority in the 21st century.

On behalf of the entire team, I am honored to present the YF-23.

Northrop's version, called the YF-23, closely resembled its original design.

Well, it was a most unusual-looking aircraft, very futuristic.

It had twin V-tails as opposed to what's called a cruciform,

twin verticals and twin horizontals.

It had a large trapezoidal wing, and it had a very slender shape

when looked at from the edge-on view.

In contrast, Lockheed's design, called the YF-22, seemed surprisingly conventional

with four tail surfaces, vectored thrust, a broad, solid body, and a conventional wing.

But unlike Lockheed's other stealth aircraft, the F-117, radar-absorbent materials

were not applied over the whole of the F/A-22

but used selectively on its edges, cavities, and other crucial surface areas.

You walk around the airplane, everywhere you look,

what you see is something that's designed to do the job in the most efficient and effective way

and no wasted space, no wasted capability.,

It's truly an airplane that's intended and has been optimized for its job.