The Pentagon Almost Made an F-22 Stealth Bomber

by Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization 

The F-22 may be regarded as the most pre-eminent air superiority platform the world has ever seen, yet the high-profile Raptor almost became a new bomber platform.

F-22 Raptor Bomber?

In the challenging time during the height of the Cold War in the 1980s, there was no shortage of a need for stealth and integrated air attack given the threat posed by the Soviet Union. There was not only a need to elude advanced Soviet-designed air defenses but also to exact a catastrophic effect quickly to cripple an enemy.

At the time, the B-52 had run its course over several decades and had not yet been upgraded to the extent it is today. The B-2 Spirit had been cut short. Perhaps this means that the Pentagon sought to address the bomber deficit created by the decision to truncate B-2 production and massively reduce anticipated fleet size. The Cold War was nearing and at the time it may have seemed as though there was less of a need for a high-end stealth bomber such as the B-2.

Newly intensified U.S.-Russian tensions in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union may have resurrected the belief in a need for a larger stealth-bomb attack fleet, a circumstance that may have inspired thinking to adapt the emerging 1990s-era F-22 as a new bomber.

At the same time, however, there was a pressing need to make efforts to stay in front of the Russian Su-27 and Chinese J-10. The considerations of a bomber platform for the F-22 point to a bomber fleet deficit the Air Force is seeking to correct today.

The service has been working on a bomber-vector fleet strategy for many years as the B1-B bombers are approaching retirement, the highly effective and revered B-52 is of course non-stealthy and the B-2 fleet had been massively truncated at the end of the Cold War.

Senior Air Force leaders say there is still a need to address a service-wide bomber deficit, one reason why there is so much discussion about fast-tracking the B-21 Raider and possibly expanding the planned B-21 fleet size.