c. 2005 CE
Ada: Now, by the time it finally gets a real name, the Raptor, the engineering is just staggering. The production-shape jet, the EMD aircraft, first flew on the seventh of September, nineteen ninety-seven. It entered service on the fifteenth of December, two thousand and five, with the First Fighter Wing at Langley, Virginia.
Theo: Okay, sell me on it. What makes it so untouchable?
Ada: Start with the engines. Two of those F-one-nineteens, each putting out around thirty-five thousand pounds of thrust, and the nozzles vector to pitch the nose up or down.
Theo: That's the swiveling thing again.
Ada: Right, and it gives the Raptor this trick called supercruise. It holds supersonic speed without lighting the afterburner, which normally guzzles fuel. Sustained, efficient supersonic flight.
Theo: How fast are we talking?
Ada: Accounts differ, honestly. You'll see it cited anywhere from around Mach one and a half to Mach one point eight. The exact figure's murky.
Theo: And stealth? How invisible is it really?
Ada: The famous line is that its radar cross-section is the size of a marble, a metal marble. But I want to be straight with you, that's an estimate. The true number is classified.
Theo: A fighter the size of a bus, showing up like a marble.
Ada: That's the idea. And then there's sensor fusion, all the radar and sensor feeds blended into one clean picture for the pilot, instead of a dozen screens to juggle.
Theo: What's it actually carry?
Ada: Everything hidden inside internal bays so it stays smooth to radar. AIM-one-twenty and AIM-nine missiles, and an M-sixty-one twenty-millimeter cannon. And it's supermaneuverable, it can do that airshow cobra, rear back on its tail almost standing still in the air.
Theo: So it's basically a magic trick with afterburners.
Ada: Pretty much. The problem was never the plane. It was finding anyone worth pointing it at.