Key Points – President Trump’s recent, somewhat confusing, remarks in Doha (May 15th) about potential new “F-22 Super” and “F-55” (a twin-engine F-35 “super upgrade”) fighter programs are not entirely without historical or conceptual precedent, despite drawing some derision.
-While the F-35 is undergoing known Block 4 upgrades and the F-22 receives modest sensor/systems enhancements, past proposals like the tailless X-44 MANTA (an F-22 derivative) and Japan’s F-X concept (envisioned as a twin-engine F-35-like platform) explored similar advanced ideas.
-However, restarting F-22 production or undertaking a massive F-35 redesign faces immense cost and programmatic challenges given current priorities like the F-47 NGAD.
Yes, the F-22 Super and F-55 Are Possible
The world of tactical aircraft is one in which there is a tendency to be fixated on designators – real or imagined. (Remember the “F-19 Stealth Fighter”?)
This why there can be changes made in those designations for reasons often more political than anything else.
When the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet was developed there were plenty of naysayers claiming it was not actually a modernized version of the old F/A-18A/B/C/D model of the aircraft, but actually a new design that should be called something else.
Calling it by a new model designator was something the Navy did not wish to do at the time, said a long-time and now retired Pentagon staff analyst. That would have mandated an extensive testing and evaluation program that was unaffordable.
The opposite maneuver was taken years later when Lockheed Martin (LM) was desperate to sell an F-16 for the second “2.0” running of the Indian Medium-Multirole Combat Aircraft (M-MRCA) tender.
They discovered that this was going to be an impossible feat. You could not sell an F-16 to India if there were other F-16 models – even it they were older and less capable ones – that had already been sold to New Delhi’s long-time adversary, Pakistan, years prior.
The answer: change the name to something else. But what could be a convenient rationale for doing so?
That rationale presented itself in the form of the Indian requirement that whatever aircraft they purchased had to be capable of being refuelled air-to-air by both the US Air Force (UASF)-style boom and the US Navy probe and drogue method.
Thus, the F-16 variant being marketed to India was then equipped with both methods and now a name change was in order.
47-Bashing and the Defense Media
Possibly due to what they see as his numerous unforgiveable sins – making war on any inordinate emphasis on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) within the US military and other foibles – Trump is denigrated (if not outright despised) by many of my fellow defense writers.
His 15 May announcements in Doha, Qatar about there soon being a new F-22 Raptor called the “F-22 Super” and a new two-engine variant of the F-35, which at times he also called the F-55, were greeted with no small number of snide comments.
The truth is, quite a bit of what he is saying is not “stupid”, as I have heard countless times since these “new aircraft” designators were uttered by the 47th president. Both an improved F-22 and a two-engine version of the F-35 are not only possible, but both have also been considered in the past and designs have even been drawn up on both counts.
The idea of a “Super F-22” is not a new concept. One such derivative considered more than 20 years ago was a design called the X-44 MANTA (Multi-Axis No Tail Aircraft) that was the forerunner to the F-47’s signature “tailless” configuration.
Later in the early 2000s, the USAF also proposed an FB-22 – a stretch version of the aircraft that would have made it an interim solution before today’s B-21 bomber was in service.
F-22 Super and F-55: Systems Architecture and a Two-Engine F-35
But any project to revamp the F-22 runs into the obstacles presented by the aircraft’s internal systems fit. F-22 falls in between the previous, pure 4th-generation fighter design of what is known as an “Federated Systems Architecture” and the current-day open-architecture configuration of the F-35.
This makes the aircraft’s internal make-up somewhat unique and very expensive to upgrade, depending on how extensive of a refurbishment is being proposed. One of the more feasible solutions now being discussed is retiring some of the earlier Block 10/20 aircraft and upgrading the 112 or more of the existing F-22s, mostly Block 30 models.
“But putting the F-22 or some souped-up, if-it-were-made-today version in back into production is not a simple prospect, however,” said a retired USAF senior officer who worked on the F-22’s initial concept definition. “That is something you would only do if you thought F-47 had high chances of failing and you were looking for a back-up plan.”
A two-engine F-35, however, has already been considered and would be possible despite all of the commentary out there to the contrary.
During the late 1990s US allies Japan and Australia were both interested in purchasing an export variant of the Raptor. These requests were always being shot down (no pun intended) by Congressional amendments that barred the aircraft from being sold abroad.
Japan’s solution was to engage with US industry to build what was at one time designated as the F-X fighter and sometimes also referred to as the “F-3”. The aircraft would have been jointly developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and LM.
For those who will tell you “this is not really a two-engine F-35” that was exactly the concept the aircraft was based on. A long-time LM Aeronautics executive with responsibility for the Asian market explained in 2018 that those out there claiming that this would be a “warmed-over F-22 with some F-35 hardware substituted here and there have got it all wrong.”
“This aircraft is intended to be a two-engine F-22-aized aircraft, but it will have a stronger airframe and will utilize materials developed for the F-35, as well as its avionics, radar, EW, etc. The aircraft’s make-up will be from the F-35 generation – as will be the outer skin that has the radar absorbing properties.”
The MHI F-X aircraft was also intended to outdo the F-47 in combat radius – 1200nm in comparison to the 1000nm that is now the design requirement called for with the 6th-generation fighter now being designed by Boeing. But the MHI F-X program never went forward due to several “mismatches” in both restrictions on what the US defense company could share with Japan and the capacity of MHI to be able to tackle such a daunting developmental project.
Japan eventually entered into the Global Combat Aircraft Program (GCAP) with the UK and Italy instead of partnering with the US.
However, the “two-engine F-35” is a concept that no small amount of effort has already been expended on. It is still there for anyone to pick up and take another shot at.
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
