Jackson Jambalaya

F-22 is a bad-ass plane. Iranians found out the hard way. The Aviationist reports:

The episode happened in March 2013, few months after a two Sukhoi Su-25 attack planes operated by the Pasdaran (informal name of the IRGC – the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution) attempted to shoot down an American MQ-1 flying a routine surveillance flight in international airspace some 16 miles off Iran, the interception of the unmanned aircraft failed. After this attempted interception the Pentagon decided to escort the drones involved in ISR (intelligence surveillance reconnaissance) missions with fighter jets (either F-18 Hornets with the CVW 9 embarked on the USS John C. Stennis whose Carrier Strike Group is currently in the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility or F-22 Raptors like those deployed to Al Dhafra in the UAE.

New details about the episode were recently disclosed by Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh who on Sept. 17 not only confirmed that the fighter jets providing HVAAE (High Value Air Asset Escort) were F-22 stealth fighters but also said that:

“He [the Raptor pilot] flew under their aircraft [the F-4s] to check out their weapons load without them knowing that he was there, and then pulled up on their left wing and then called them and said ‘you really ought to go home’”

If the episode went exactly as Welsh described it, it was something more similar to Maverick’s close encouter with Russian Mig-28s in Top Gun movie than a standard interception.

It would be interesting to know how the Raptor managed to remain stealth (did they use their radar? were they vectored by an AWACS? etc.) and why it was not the E-2 most probably providing Airborne Early Warning in the area to broadcast the message to persuade the F-4 to pursuit the drone before the Iranian Phantoms and the U.S. Raptors got too close in a potentially dangerous and tense situation?

Well, maybe not too bad-ass as it was an F-4 Phantom. Maybe this story from another message board will convince you:

several years ago when one of the first F-22 squadrons became operational up in AK, there was a dauntless, fearless, and quite handsome group of F-15 jocks that departed a navy Base near Bel Chase to go up there and teach these new whippersnappers a lesson. After the score reached 160-0, in favor of the raptor, the knife fighting was called off. Not one F-22 was seen visually, or otherwise during the scuffle. After the fighting was over, the raptor was gracious enough to vector the eagles in to have a look at the cause of their demise, shortly before peeling off and returning to base at 65k feet, no burner....

During the de-brief, many questions about the raptor were asked, most answered with "cant say, that's classified." About the only info. divulged, is that the largest radar cross section on the F-22 occurs for a bout a nano second when the missile door opens/closes to let one go. Awesome machine

If that is not enough for you, here is everything you wanted to know about the F-22.