US F-22s Land in Israel Amid Iran Nuclear Showdown

The American F-22 Raptor is almost certainly the best air-superiority fighter in the world. It's fast, agile, and very nearly invisible. It's so effective that we won't even sell them to our closest allies, which is more than can be said for the F-35. The only downside about the F-22 is that we don't have more of them, and production has been shut down; we're going to have to place our hopes in this area on the developing F-47.

For now, though, the F-22 is at the top of the heap - and we learned on Wednesday that a dozen F-22s have arrived in Israel.

A dozen American F-22 Raptor fighter jets, representing more than $4 billion of military spending, have arrived at an Israeli Air Force base amid a massive buildup of US military hardware in the Middle East.

The planes, widely considered the best in the world due to their speed and stealth, arrived in the Jewish state Tuesday evening as tensions with Iran soar, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Designed by Lockheed Martin, the F-22s cost around $350 million each, and are so vital to the US that the Pentagon has forbidden their sale or license to any foreign government.

The dozen jets were previously stationed at the RAF Lakenheath base in southern England and were seen taking off earlier on Tuesday, the Times of Israel reported.

This is part of a buildup of military assets in the Middle East; one might even call it a big, beautiful buildup.

F-22 and F-35 fighter jets, along with B-2 bombers, were used in June 2025’s Operation Midnight Hammer, in which the US struck three Iranian nuclear sites.

More than 300 US military aircraft are currently deployed across the Middle East, according to open-source intelligence monitoring and publicly available flight data.

The jets arrived just days after the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, arrived on Israel’s coast ahead of Thursday’s scheduled nuclear talks between the US and Iran in Geneva, Switzerland.

Iran May Be Pairing Ballistic Missiles With Chemical Warheads, Israeli Adviser Warns

For one thing, it's an expensive aircraft to operate. The Raptor requires not only expensive and highly proficient ground crews to maintain its cutting-edge systems, but it also requires between 10 and 30 man-hours of maintenance - claims vary - for each hour of flight. But when you need the best, well, the Raptor is the best, and if it's used in the skies over some Middle Eastern nation, like, oh, say, Iran - well, it will be facing some reassembled hangar-queen examples of fighters that were pretty hot stuff around the time of the Vietnam War.

The United States military has always operated on the theory that no war ever was lost because the losing side had too much ammo or too many shooters. The United States Air Force puts its best shooters in this best of all fighter aircraft, and now these aircraft are poised in a place where they can transit to Iran pretty quickly.

Negotiations with Iran are still ongoing. But the one thing we can count on regarding the current regime in Tehran is that they won't deal in good faith. Things are sure looking like President Trump intends, if we have to go in, to go in big. If I were in Iran's Supreme Leader's sandals right now, I'd be making sure my life-insurance policy was paid up.

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Multiple decades between the two platforms, even with upgrades, many things cant be updated on the f15

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Ah Yes, at least partially true.

The airframes are pretty much stuck at the 1970s. Some minor mods can be done, nothing major.

The engines can be upgraded, don’t know if this was done. I walked 45 years ago.

The electronics, particularly the radar and electronic warfare equipment and cockpit isplays, can be completely ripped out and replaced with new equipment. The art has improved considerably. That’s the edge we have over adversaries.

And the F-15 airframe is still pretty durned good; better than most.

Worked Eagles for about 4 years.

Venezuela had similarly acquired top-line ‘counter stealth’ Chinese radars that could detect stealthy/low-observable aircraft. It didn’t help them much though, and it’s doubtful the Chinese systems Iran have in their integrated air defense systems will help them either.

The issue with detecting stealth is this: it is possible to detect stealth/stealthy aircraft. Any relatively-advanced nation has the ability to detect low-observable aircraft. Radars in the UHF and VHF bands can detect LO aircraft. Even some old radars (again in UHF/VHF) in principle produce a detectable return from stealth platforms because the aircraft’s physical dimensions begin to approach the radar’s wavelength, inducing resonance effects that partially defeat shaping-based RCS reduction.

The problem though is not the detection, but to actually be able to use that for targeting. Detection and targeting are entirely different problems. A VHF system may produce a vague, low-resolution return suggesting ‘something is there,’ but it cannot generate a fire-control-quality track with sufficient accuracy (typically needing position errors well under 100 meters) to cue a SAM engagement. And it is that which makes LO aircraft really good …they are optimized for the X-band radar frequencies that would be used for guiding missiles.

So, you may know there is ‘something’ out there, but not be able to shoot it down. Definitely NOT before the ‘something’ out there shoots the enemy plane down or blows the radar station up.

Oh, and making it even worse for Iran, any stealth strike package operating over Iranian airspace would almost certainly be supported by EA-18G Growlers. They would jam the enemy radars so bad that one could probably fly 100 passenger jets over Tehran unharmed, let alone stealth fighters/bombers. Enemy radar technicians would only see a lot of snow on their scopes. Or maybe see hundreds of fake targets. Or maybe the Soace Force will just knock out all power. The USAF could likely fly crop dusters into Iran with all the jamming that would be happening. :)

So, I would bet that the Chinese radar systems will fail (and fail hard), that the Russian missiles will fail, and that the Iranian Air Force will either be blown up in the sky, ground, or pull an Iraqi stunt and simply refuse to fly (or fly to a neighboring country and land the planes there to save them).

The ONLY genuine beneficiary of any such engagement would be Israel’s signals intelligence collection effort. The electromagnetic signatures of the F-22 Raptor (its radar emissions, RCS profile at various aspect angles, and jamming responses) are among the most closely guarded technical secrets in the US inventory. Israel, as a sophisticated SIGINT user, would be deploying every available collection asset to characterize those signatures. This is entirely standard practice among allies: the RAF conducted extensive signature collection on B-2 Spirits during UK airshow appearances, and France is well-documented in exploiting joint exercises for technical intelligence collection on partner platforms. No one takes it personally … it’s simply what serious defense establishments do. I am sure, as an example, that the US Navy collect sonar data on the UK’s Astute attack submarines, and that the Brits try to do the same for the Virginias. As for the French, they probably spy on the States more than the Russians do. It’s just what friends do. Like neighbors bickering over a whisky on whether my 911 is ‘better’ than your SLS.

But for Iran …if they were wise they would just say yes to whatever President Trump wants to say and call it a day. President Trump is not one to joke with, and after what happened to Maduro …. I’ll

Yes I agree with what you said, but you cant make them stealth anywhere near as good as an f35, much less an f22. I know they have the SE version but theres only so much you can do. They can be improved but only so much.

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If you want real stealth you have to design it in from the git-go. Stealth wasn’t an item when the F-15 airframe was designed. Small mods possible but you’re correct, not much can be done.

Fun stuff: The F117 was designed using modifications to Maxwell’s curl equations describing radio-wave behavior. The guy who did the study and updates to Maxwell’s equations was a Russian mathematician, Anatoly Dnieprov. Lockheed Skunk Works took Dnieprov’s work and developed a computer program named “Echo” (if I remember correctly). The F117 airframe was basically designed by electrical engineers.

That’s the second time we really snookered the Russians. The first time was buying the titanium for the A-12/SR-71 programs

You Take Care..

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