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I am going to make a very direct statement, because this comes up in a lot of different questions I see on Quora regarding fighter aircraft.As of today, April 20th 2019, the F-22A Raptor is the absolute best at what it does. Hunting and killing other aircraft.There is no better Air Dominance fighter in service today by any military force. None. Zero. The Raptor stands alone as the top dog. This is not a biased statement from American pride or some defense industry propaganda. The F-22 has flaws, has aspects that could be better, and places that can (and will) be improved. But there is simply nothing in the sky today better at hunting and killing other aircraft than the Raptor. That includes the F-35.Now, that being said, is the F-22 “better” than the F-35? As a blanket statement? No. No it is not. There are plenty of great things about the F-35 that the F-22 can’t match. And full disclosure, I have been a frequent and vocal critic of the JSF program since, well, forever I guess. Plenty of mistakes to be found there. Plenty of bad calls, and just straight up ignorance when it came to the planning and execution of this ambitious effort. All that aside, the F-35 is an impressive aircraft.It is not an air dominance fighter in the weight class of the F-22, but it can operate in an Air to Air role. But it can also operate as a strike aircraft, and ISR asset, suppression of enemy air defense aircraft, penetrating ground attack, you name it. It has a CTOL variant, a STOVL variant, and a CATOBAR variant. It is less expensive, and has a smaller logistical footprint than the F-22.It can do a lot of things the F-22 can not do, such as share targeting data with other aircraft (as of today the F-22 can only share targeting data with other F-22s, though they can receive data from other aircraft). Other things it can do that the Raptor can’t is track and target ground targets with a whole bunch of nifty sensors, including its main radar. The Raptor radar, even though the 35’s radar was derived from it, is not set up to target and track ground targets like this. It also doesn’t have several other targeting and tracking sensor systems that the Lightnings do.Don’t get me wrong, the F-22 can engage ground targets. It can perform penetrating strike missions. It inherited that role when the F-117s were retired, before the F-35s came into service. But the F-22 ground attack capabilities are very modest when compared to those of the Lightnings. Keep in mind, the F-117s strike capabilities weren’t all that big of shoes to fill when you take away the stealth capabilities. The F-117 could only carry two weapons, and relied on laser guided munitions. The F-22 could take that mission easily, and could do so with the same radar penetrating capability. The F-35s now, they have taken this mission and added much depth and enhanced capabilities. The weapons that can be used are more diverse, and there are more options for targeting. Also, F-35s can strike moving targets (with the addition of the SDB II) something the F-22 and F-117s could not do.So, is the Raptor better than the F-35? No. Is the F-35 better than the Raptor? No.The Raptor is the absolute king of the sky. The F-35 is the absolute best multi-role fighter in service today. So one is not better than the other, but they are both the best at what they do.

Please tell me that you are trying to troll Navy and Marine Aviators. If not, there is a simple reason that the Navy Blue Angels use F-18’s and not the F-22 or F-16. The Navy flies the F-18 not the F-22 or the F-16. Next, as for your claim it is outdated - the F-18 and F-16 both came out of the lightweight fighter contest of the 1970’s but technically the F-18 is newer than the F-16.The contest entries were the YF-16 and YF-17.The YF-17 failed to win the Air Force contract, but the Navy ordered it and a couple of years later on November 18, 1978, a plane derived from the F-17 took to the air as the F-18. So if the F-18 is outdated, so is the F-16. The F-22 is an Air Force plane.The next plane to enter the navy’s inventory would be the F-35 unless it gets canceled

One experienced F-15 pilot who transitioned to the F-22 was the man who described killing F-15s in an exercise: "It's totally unfair” and “it's like clubbing baby seals." He had flown a single F-22 against four F-15s several times and had participated in other encounters where two F-22s went up against eight F-15s. The F-22s won every single time, close in or at a distance.Later when experienced F-22 pilots went back to the F-15 and tried to fight the same battles they lost every time, so even knowing the F-22 capabilities and tactics didn’t make any difference to the result.Now a few pilots in older aircraft who were perhaps better pilots than their opponents in F-22s have managed to score kills on F-22s when the F-22 pilots made errors or were careless. F-18s have done it, F-16s, F-15s, and Eurofighter Typhoons have made such kills in exercises. It is rare however. In some exercises the F-22 gets kill ratios around 50-0 or 80-0 or 100-1. In one exercise I think the F-22s got 144–0 which is remarkable. But flying an F-22 against an F-15 the F-22 pilot merely has to be good, and he can beat a brilliant F-15 pilot. Generally speaking the pilots flying F-22s in the US Air Force are the very best American air-to-air pilots, that's why they are chosen to fly that particular fighter. They are very fine pilots flying the best air-to-air fighter currently in service. Beating them is very hard; they have to be having an off-day, make a big mistake and you would have to be razor sharp and very quick to exploit their error.