Lockheed Martin says it conducted six successful flight tests last year as part of work to add new capabilities on the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter. The U.S. Air Force’s small, but highly capable and heavily in-demand F-22 fleet is set to receive a number of upgrades to help keep the jets at the very tip of the service’s spear, potentially into the 2040s. This includes a new Infrared Defensive System (IRDS), as well as other additional sensors and stealthy range-extending drop tanks.
Representatives from Lockheed Martin provided an update on the F-22 program, as well as other company efforts, to TWZ and other outlets at the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2025 Warfare Symposium, which kicked off today. At present, the Air Force has just over 180 Raptors in service, 32 of which are in an older configuration and relegated to test and training duties as a result.
“We are all very keen to understand and recognize the need for air combat platforms that go farther to sense and see farther and to shoot farther,” Mike Shoemaker, Lockheed Martin’s vice president & general manager of its Integrated Fighter Group, said. “And so, we’ve been partnering with the Air Force. And last year, we completed six successful flight test demos for advanced sensors [to] extend the Raptor’s ability to detect, track, ID, and eventually target, at range – I’ll say tactically significant ranges – so it gives them the advantage in any fight.”
Shoemaker did not provide more specific details about the “advanced sensors” being added to the F-22. Raptors, as well as sensor testbed aircraft, have been observed flying with stealthy underwing pods for years now. Those pods are widely understood to be part of plans to integrate an infrared search and track (IRST) capability onto the jets. This would align with Shoemaker’s comments here and is something we will come back in a moment.
“Also recently on contract to integrate the next-generation infrared defensive measure systems on the F-22, which give it upgraded missile warning capability and long-range detection,” Shoemaker added. “So both of these are increasing Raptor’s lethality and survivability.”
What Shoemaker is talking about here is the IRDS contract, which Lockheed Martin announced in January. The company has already said that IRDS will feature a distributed sensor array leveraging the TacIRST system, which was unveiled back in 2022. TacIRST sensors, at least as they have been shown to date, feature a compact staring-type design with a fixed field of view. F-5 Advanced Tiger aggressor jets belonging to private contractor Tactical Air Support (TacAir) are the only aircraft known to have an integrated TacIRST system currently.
Shoemaker’s comments today indicate that the “advanced sensor” capability that the F-22 is set to receive is distinct from the IRDS.
Having additional, dedicated IRST capability in podded form on top of IRDS would make a certain amount of sense, and TWZ previously posited this could be the case. Traditional IRSTs, both ones integrated into aircraft and carried in pods, have historically had larger aperture sensors in gimbal mounts with flexible fields of view, unlike what TacIRST offers. In 2017, Ken Merchant, then Lockheed Martin vice president for the F-22 program, also told what is now Air & Space Forces Magazine that “we really don’t have the real estate” to install an IRST system, at least one akin to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS), inside the Raptor. EOTS, which is primarily a sensor for air-to-ground targeting, has an infrared search and track function, as well.
Just by itself, IRDS sounds like it will offer a major improvement over the F-22’s existing AN/AAR-56 Missile Launch Detector (MLD) system, which currently offers spherical infrared threat warning. The distributed array of TacIRST sensors might also be able to help provide additional overall situational awareness and other capabilities broadly similar to what the F-35’s Distributed Aperture System (DAS) and other DAS-like setups offer.
Integrated and podded IRST capabilities together would also be a valuable combination. As TWZ has previously explained:
“IRSTs, in general, are typically only able to instantaneously determine a target’s angle and bearing, and track it, with it taking more effort to determine its range using just a single sensor platform. Two IRST sensors on separate aircraft that are networked together can instantly triangulate the target’s range, which can then provide more robust engagement-quality target tracks. Lockheed Martin has demonstrated this kind of networked IRST capability in combination with its Legion Pod in the past and it is a common practice for aircraft equipped with advanced IRST capabilities. The IRST21 sensor used on the Legion Pod, as well as in other podded configurations, is a more traditional gimbaled type, as you can read more about here.”
No matter how the IRST capabilities are integrated into the F-22 in the end, it is something the Raptor was supposed to have originally but was cut ostensibly for budgetary reasons late in the jet’s development. There has been a global resurgence of interest in IRST systems in recent years, especially within the U.S. military, due in large part to the benefits they offer over traditional radars for spotting and tracking stealthy targets. IRSTs can also help cue radars to targets of interest, and fused data from these, as well as passive radiofrequency sensors, can produce higher-quality target tracks, enhance situational awareness, and help with positive target identification.
In addition, IRSTs are passive sensors that can be used without pumping out signals that could alert an opponent to the fact that it has been detected and is being tracked. Signals from active sensors like radars can also make friendly aircraft easier for enemy forces to spot. IRSTs are also immune to ever-growing electronic warfare threats.
“All of our engineering work and design work that’s done will ensure that we preserve the stealth capabilities of the [F-22] platform,” Lockheed Martin’s Shoemaker noted today.
Stealth aircraft, crewed and uncrewed, as well as stealthy munitions, are increasingly part of the threat ecosystem U.S. forces expect to face, especially in any future high-end fight. China, in particular, is making major strides in this arena, and just showed off two previously unseen stealth combat jet designs in December.
“As I said, one of the things we think you’ve got to be able to do is to sense and see farther,” Shoemaker also said today. “And if it can now see and sense farther, it can also share that information.”
The F-22’s ability to function as a highly capable ‘quarterback’ for larger aerial force packages is something TWZ has highlighted multiple times in the past. Lockheed Martin, together with the Air Force and other industry partners, has also been working to expand the Raptor’s communications capabilities in recent years.
Lockheed Martin says the Raptor was the first combat aircraft to make full use of a software-defined open mission systems architecture to make it faster and easier, in general, to integrate new and improved functionality. A new software baseline configuration for the F-22 called Release 4 is in the final stages of testing now, and the hope is that it will be cleared for loading onto the fleet by the end of this spring, according to Shoemaker. This will also make it even easier to integrate third-party ‘apps’ into the Raptor mission systems.
“I think, right now, we’re looking at the next couple of years for when that will actually be delivered to the fleet,” Shoemaker added about the timeline for the Raptor’s new sensor capabilities in response to a direct question from TWZ‘s Howard Altman.
In the meantime, the F-22 fleet continues to be very much in demand.
“Our Lockheed Martin team has supported significant increases in both operations and deployments,” Shoemaker said today. “With this relatively small fleet size and over … half a million flying hours, those come with unique challenges.”
“But even with that pace, this aircraft won’t require any major structural improvements or upgrades to last well into the 2040s,” he continued.
How long the F-22s will continue to serve is an open question tied directly to the uncertain fate of the Air Force’s plans for a new crewed sixth-generation combat jet as part of the larger Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) initiative. Last year, the service conducted a deep review of the NGAD combat jet, originally envisioned as a Raptor replacement, and there are clear indications that the resulting analysis favors continuing as originally planned.
However, there are serious concerns about the affordability of the NGAD combat jet, especially when taking into account other top-tier modernization priorities, including stealthy aerial refueling tankers and Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones. The ballooning cost of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program was a key factor in launching the NGAD review in the first place. The optimal size of the B-21 Raider stealth bomber fleet is also currently under debate.
The entire Department of Defense is now also facing down the prospect of major cuts to existing programs to help redirect resources to new priorities under President Donald Trump’s administration, including the Golden Dome missile defense initiative.
For its part, Lockheed Martin still sees upgraded F-22s as a bridge to whatever next-generation air combat platform comes next. Raptor modernization work has already been feeding into NGAD.
The F-22 fleet does look to have many years, if not decades of service still ahead of it, buoyed by a long-promised and ever-more important IRST capability and other upgrades.
Howard Altman contributed to this story.
Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com