Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor F-22A

The first F-22A, development aircraft tail number 91-4001, was rolled out on 9 April 1997 at Air Force Plant 6 at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Georgia, where it was officially named "Raptor"; it first flew on 7 September 1997. The designation was not stable: through the first half of the 2000s the aircraft was known as the F/A-22A to underline its air-to-ground capability, reverting to F-22A in 2005. The first production aircraft was delivered to Edwards in October 2002 for initial operational testing, and the first jet for the 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron arrived at Nellis in January 2003. Formal IOT&E ran from April to December 2004; a follow-on campaign in 2005 cleared the air-to-ground mission. The first combat-ready Raptor of the 1st Fighter Wing landed at Langley in January 2005, and that December the Air Force declared initial operational capability with the 94th Fighter Squadron. The planned buy shrank steadily from the original 750 aircraft to the 648 of the 1990 review, the 442 of 1993, the 381 the Air Force set as its requirement and finally the 183 production aircraft decided in 2004 and the 187 fixed by Robert Gates. The airframe improved over the production run — the Vought-built stabilators from Lot 3 onward, for instance — and the whole fleet went through a $350 million structures repair programme, completed by January 2021, which among other things corrected improper titanium heat treatment in early batches. The 195th aircraft was completed in December 2011 and delivered on 2 May 2012.