In 2005, the air force made itofficial. The F-22A Raptor was ready for combat. "If we go to war tomorrow, the Raptor will go with us," said then head of Air Combat Command, General Robert Keys, at Virginia's Langley Air Force Base. However, for the next nine years, what has been called the world's most capable fighter stayed on the sidelines, sitting out, for example, US. strikes against Libyan air defenses in March 2011. On the night of September 22,2014, tomorrow finally came: The 1st Fighter Wing, basedatLangley, flew four F-22s to strike ISIS militants in northern Syria. The Raptors flew in the second of three waves of coalition strikes. (Dozens of cruise missiles were the first wave.) The radar-evading, fifth generation fighters divided their time between escorting other aircraft and dropping 1,000-pound guided bombs on ISIS outposts.
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