Original subtitles

[narrator] The skies over Langley Air Force Base,

Virginia, 2005.

The most formidable jet fighter

the world has ever seen goes operational.

The United States' F-22 Raptor.

The skies over the trenches of the Western Front,

Europe, 1915.

The world's first specialised fighter goes into combat.

The German Fokker Eindecker.

The Raptor and the Eindecker.

One, the ultimate, the other, the first.

And in the years and wars in between,

a race to build the ultimate aerial fighting machine.

The prize for the winner,

air supremacy over any battlefield

and a massive military edge over any enemy.

The weapons race is for the jet fighter.

The Lockheed F-22 Raptor.

Designed during the Cold War

specifically to vanquish any Soviet fighter.

Top speed more than twice the speed of sound.

Service ceiling over 50,000 feet.

Armed with a 20mm cannon

and up to eight guided missiles and GPS-guided bombs.

Its revolutionary feature,

performance which outmatches any competitor

plus stealth.

It is virtually invisible to radar

or infra-red detection.

The Fokker Eindecker.

Top speed 81 mph.

Service ceiling 3,000 feet.

Armed with one 7.92mm machine gun.

Its revolutionary feature,

a single machine-gun that can fire through the propeller.

With this it dominates air combat for more than a year

and shows how vital it will be

to win this weapons race.

Between 1915 and today,

the fighter is reinvented for each new conflict.

World War Two,

Korea, Vietnam,

the Middle East, the Cold War, the Gulf.

Each sees a quantum leap in the weapons race.

In the hundred years that we've been flying

and involving war planes in battles,

no campaign has been won

where air supremacy had not been achieved.

That simple fact is why there's a race.

Key to the development of modern jet aircraft is technology.

There are qualities to be had.

Things like firepower,

sensors, speed and manoeuvrability

are offensive qualities you have to have.

Get them right, you win.

Do it badly, you die.

Dominating each stage of the weapons race

from the Eindecker to the Raptor,

are certain critical features that define success for a combat jet.

Taking part in the race certainly isn't simple.

Developing any new piece of equipment, let alone a fighter,

is demanding and incredibly complex.

In order to do that, a nation needs

to have a very strong technical and economic base,

and that's just to compete.

Winning the race requires something more.

1914. The beginning of World War One.

Even before the Eindecker, one factor is vital.

From the days of Eddie Rickenbacker to today,

fighter pilots will tell you speed is life,

and it's not just a throw-away line.

Speed in a fight means you control the fight,

you get into it the way you want.

It allows you to get out of the fight

if you are not in the offence.

World War One dogfights

show that other features are also critical.

Firepower and manoeuvrability.

But as fighter aircraft develop between the world wars,

the ultimate factor remains.

Speed.

By the mid-1930s,

new monoplane metal fighters

are taking existing technology to its limit.

There's a challenge and everyone is facing it.

Aircraft are powered by piston engines.

The propeller accelerates the air passing over the aircraft

and this gives it forward motion.

The faster the propeller spins, the higher the air speed.

But there's a fundamental problem.

There's a limit to the performance

of a propeller-driven aircraft engine can deliver.

At low altitudes, the propeller blades bite into the dense air,

but it's slow, it's slowed down by the dense atmosphere.

As you climb into thinner atmosphere, you get faster,

but simply the propeller blades can't bite into...

there's no air density to bite into.

And so you've reached a cut-off point

in terms of aircraft engine performance.

Whoever solves this problem controls the skies.

The race is on.

Three nations, and three men, take up the challenge.

In Britain, Frank Whittle.

In Italy, Secondo Campini.

In Germany, Hans Joachim von Ohain.

Britain, 1929.

Frank Whittle qualifies as a pilot and engineer.

He investigates the speed problem.

His solution is revolutionary.

He does away with the propeller and the piston-engine.

Instead, his engine draws in air

through a series of compressors or fans.

It is mixed with fuel and ignited.

The resulting hot gas blasts out the back of the chamber,

pushing the engine forward.

The exiting hot gas turns a shaft

that spins a turbine, creating a loop of intake and combustion.

Frank Whittle has launched the race for the combat jet.

He is just 21 years old.

He approaches the British Air Ministry for funding

but nobody is interested.

Italy, 1931.

27-year-old engineer Secondo Campini

proposes a jet-propulsion system to the Italian Air Force.

It shows no immediate interest.

Germany, two years later.

Hans-Joachim von Ohain

is taking a doctorate in physics.

He develops a demonstration model

of what is essentially the world's first turbo-jet engine.

This is a classic example of simultaneous invention,

with three separate people at three separate places,

inventing the same thing at just about the same time.

Then in 1934,

the Italian Air Ministry approves the development of a jet aircraft.

Campini teams up with Italian aircraft manufacturer Caproni.

The race is on.

Campini seems to have taken an early lead.

1935. In Britain,

Frank Whittle has patented his idea for a jet engine.

At last, he secures financial backing from the Royal Air Force.

He sets up a company, Power Jets, and gets to work.

1936, Hitler sends German troops into the Rhineland.

In England, Whittle bench tests a prototype jet engine.

1937. In Germany,

Hans-Joachim von Ohain tests his first prototype.

It is shown to one of Germany's leading aircraft designers,

the formidable Ernst Heinkel.

He takes on Von Ohain and his revolutionary idea

and throws the weight of his massive company and reputation

behind his jet aircraft project.

In contrast, almost at the same time in Britain,

the RAF decides it can no longer afford to back Whittle

and halts his funding.

Germany and Von Ohain pull ahead.

In 1938, Hitler annexes Austria

and then sends his troops into Czechoslovakia.

War is approaching.

Very soon, the race for the jet fighter

will no longer be just a technological challenge.

Very soon, air supremacy

could determine the fate of the world.

The United States, 1939.

Clarence Kelly Johnson

is head of the design team at Lockheed,

the US aircraft manufacturer.

He too puts forward a proposal for a jet engine.

But the United States Army Air Force

shows no interest and declines to finance anything.

Johnson's idea stays on his drawing board.

And the United States stays out of the race.

Temporarily.

Five in the morning. Sunday, August 27th, 1939.

A strange-looking propellerless aircraft

taxis out at an airfield in Germany.

As it takes off, the men on the ground

hear the high-pitched whistling sound

of a jet plane in flight for the first time ever.

At this critical moment,

Von Ohain and Heinkel put Hitler's Germany into the lead

in the race for the jet fighter.

Five days later, Hitler invades Poland.

Two days after that, September 3rd, 1939.

Britain and France declare war on Germany.

World War Two has begun.

1940.

Concerned by rumours that the Germans are testing

revolutionary new power plants,

the British Air Ministry changes its mind,

and instructs the Gloster Aircraft Company

to work with Whittle on a prototype airframe

to test fly his jet engine.

It's not a moment too soon.

August, 1940.

At an airfield near Rome,

Campini watches test pilot Mario De Barneradi

take the Caproni prototype on its maiden flight.

But Campini's isn't a true jet engine.

It relies on a conventional piston engine

to compress the air that mixes with fuel and ignites.

Thus it suffers from the same speed restriction

as a standard propeller-driven aircraft.

And Italy doesn't have the economic or industrial capacity

for the research and development Campini needs to solve this.

Campini and Italy drop out of the race.

But things are about to change in a big way.

Hitler's Blitzkrieg has crushed France,

Belgium and the Netherlands.

But by October, his Luftwaffe has failed

to achieve the air superiority necessary to invade Britain.

The stakes in the battle for air supremacy couldn't be higher.

For the country which gets a jet fighter into combat

could overwhelm its enemy.

World War Two hangs in the balance.

May 15th, 1941.

Frank Whittle watches as test pilot Gerry Sayer

lifts his experimental jet aircraft,

the Gloster E-28/29 into the sky.

It reaches a speed of 370 mph.

Britain is back in the race

as the Air Ministry now commissions Gloster

to develop the nation's first combat jet fighter.

But Whittle's success has reawakened the interest

of the giant from across the Atlantic.

The United States is not at war.

But US military intelligence

has been receiving reports about jet propulsion.

Air Force General Hap Arnold

formally requests that Britain

share its technology with America.

October 1st, 1941.

A mystery aircraft

lands at Bolling Field near Washington.

It is carrying one of Whittle's jet engines.

Two months later, December 1941,

Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.

The United States is at war.

Less than nine months later,

October 1st, 1942,

at Muroc Army Air Field,

test pilot Bob Stanley

takes the Bell XP-59A down the runway

and up into the sky over the California desert.

But the P-59 is essentially a test bed,

not the combat-capable aircraft

the US Army Air Force needs.

Lockheed's Kelly Johnson

is given 180 days to come up with an answer.

The US is now fully in the race.

But its rivals are well ahead.

Europe, May 1943.

After a competition between Heinkel and Messerschmitt,

the German Air Ministry orders 100

of the Messerschmitt jet fighter design, the Me-262.

Now that the race is on to put a viable jet fighter into combat,

designers have to address another feature.

Allied bombers are striking deeper into Hitler's Reich.

The Luftwaffe wants the Me-262

as a high-speed interceptor against them.

But after the Allies invade Italy in mid-1943,

Hitler wants the Me-262 as a fighter-bomber

to annihilate the anticipated invasion of France.

He orders the Me-262 adapted to carry bombs.

But the Luftwaffe and Messerschmitt

continue to develop it primarily as a fighter.

What you have is the beginning of a huge bureaucratic in-fight

involving Hitler, that would cause terrible delays

in the introduction of the aircraft.

The delay is a major set-back for Germany

in the race for the jet fighter.

It's really scary to consider what would have happened

if that one-year delay had not occurred

in the introduction of the Me-262.

[Lloyd Clark] In retrospect, that one-year delay

probably cost the Germans

the chance to break the Allied bomber offensive

and to turn the tide of the war.

But just as Germany is falling behind,

across the Atlantic, the race for the jet fighter

is shifting into high gear.

January 8th, 1944.

Kelly Johnson and his team

watch the Lockheed XP-80 make its first flight.

They'd been given 180 days to build the prototype.

They deliver it 37 days ahead of schedule.

The real genius of Kelly Johnson in the design of the P-80

was that he accepted that 180-day deadline

to fly the aeroplane, knowing

he had his 1939 design to build upon.

[Bruce Gudmundsson] The American jet fighter programme made rapid progress,

not merely because of the considerable talent of the team

that was putting the aircraft together,

but also because of the large infusion

of British technology.

In later tests,

the XP-80 tops 500 miles an hour.

American planners aim to have it operational over Europe

in less than a year, by January 1945.

The race is now moving into the skies.

June 6, 1944.

D-Day.

Allied soldiers storm ashore.

That same month,

20 of Gloster's new fighter, the Meteor,

are delivered to the British Royal Air Force.

Hitler is already sending over his V1 flying bombs,

over to the British Isles, and it becomes an RAF priority

using the jet fighter to catch them,

to destroy them and to end the menace.

July 27th, RAF ace Dixie Dean

intercepts a V1 targeted at London.

His guns jam.

Dean then uses his wing to steer the V1

straight down to the ground.

Combating the V1s will be the Meteors' primary task

until the end of the war in Europe.

That same month, Hitler's jet fighter-bombers

finally reach France, but it is too late.

With Allied bombers devastating Germany's cities,

the Me-262s

are at last deployed as interceptors.

July 25th.

The first recorded air combat involving a jet fighter.

An Me-262 pounces on an RAF Mosquito,

which barely escapes.

August 28th.

The first jet fighter is lost to enemy action.

Two US Army Air Force P-47 Thunderbolts

shoot down an Me-262 near Brussels.

October 7th.

US Army Air Force Lieutenant Urban Drew,

flying a P-51 Mustang,

shoots down two Me-262s as they take off.

January, 1945.

America's P-80 Shooting Star enters service,

The British Meteor is deployed over Germany,

but it never comes up against the Me-262.

World War Two ends without a head-to-head

between the jets produced to fight in it.

Defeated Germany drops out of the race for the jet fighter.

But now there's a new player -

the war's other victor, the Soviet Union.

As the Allies occupy Germany,

the race enters a new stage,

with every country sweeping through the ruins

for technology and scientists,

including the men behind Germany's jet programme.

Will the Soviets be able to catch up?

Although well behind,

they do have the essential technology base.

By the end of World War Two they were producing

single-engine fighters that were as good as anything

in the western world,

and consequently, with the German technology

that they scoured from scientists,

factories and documents at the end of World War Two,

they had a technology base that was the equal of anybody in the world.

April, 1946.

The Soviets test not one

but two prototypes of their first-generation jet fighters,

the Yak 15

and the Mig-9.

Both have German-based turbojet engines

which are short on power for their needs.

The Soviets are in the race in a big way.

But the development of their next generation jet,

the Mig-15, is being delayed by a major problem.

They lack the metallurgical knowledge

to produce a more powerful engine quickly.

However, help is on the way from an unexpected source.

Britain has already given away its jet secrets once,

when it gave the engine to the United States in 1941.

Now it goes even further.

As a gesture of goodwill,

the British government allows Rolls-Royce

to supply the Soviet Union

with 40 of its Nene jet engine,

one of the most advanced in the world.

It is 1946,

the Soviet Union is still supposedly an ally,

but it is an extraordinarily trusting decision.

The Cold War hasn't yet begun,

but the British action is incredibly naive.

It gives the Soviets the technological boost they require

to get that engine, and this is going to be

important for them during the Cold War.

Now the race moves into a new phase.

June 1950.

Communist North Korea invades the south.

The US leads a United Nations force to save South Korea.

The US Air Force deploys its first jets,

the F-80 Shooting Star

and the F-84 Thunderjet.

At first, they dominate the skies,

escorting B-29 bombers and attacking ground targets.

But in November 1950,

when the communist Chinese enter the war,

US pilots get a nasty surprise.

The swept-wing Mig-15 outperforms both their jets.

Only later is it discovered that the Mig-15

is powered by a pirated version

of the British Nene jet engine.

November 7, 1950.

American Lieutenant Russell J Brown

takes off in an F-80 Shooting Star.

Over the Yalu River, he engages an enemy Mig-15.

Russell wins.

It's the first time a fighter jet has shot down another.

The United States rushes its own swept-wing fighter into action,

the F-86 Sabre.

Now it's a head-to-head

between the two leading jet fighters of their generation.

The Soviet Mig-15.

Maximum speed 670 mph.

Combat ceiling 51,000 feet.

Armed with twin 23mm

and one 37mm cannon,

plus rockets or 2,000 lbs of bombs.

And the American F-86 Sabre.

Maximum speed 685 mph.

Combat ceiling 49,000 feet.

Armed with six .50 calibre machine guns

and eight 5-inch rockets or 2,000 lbs of bombs.

Ralph Parr, a double ace during Korea,

compares the two aircraft.

[Ralph Parr] The Mig had a smaller wingspan,

was shorter,

smaller all-over and therefore harder to see.

It could turn tighter, it could out-accelerate.

It could out-decelerate.

It could climb higher

and it had, for a while there,

it had a better than 2,500 foot per minute rate of climb advantage

and had bigger guns.

Generally speaking, one of those advantages the Mig had

will normally work for you in combat.

Although more agile than its opponent,

792 Migs are shot down

against 76 Sabres.

The crucial factor is the combat experience

of the World War Two veteran US fliers.

By the end of the Korean War, we've re-achieved air dominance,

because it is not just the airframe or the technology of the airframe,

it's a combination of the training, the tactics,

and particularly the people that are in the fight.

This is a lesson that technology people have to learn

with every generation of technology, it's about the people.

In their dogfights over Korea,

pilots are still using guns and tactics

developed in World War Two.

But the face of war is changing

and with it, the race for the jet fighter.

The threat now is seen as long-range bombers

carrying atomic, then hydrogen, bombs.

In the early 1950s,

the role of the jet fighter is redefined.

The aircraft designs that have been developed at this stage

are not the dogfighting fighters of the Battle of Britain.

These are very fast aircraft,

capable of climbing rapidly

and intercepting nuclear bombers

well out of range of friendly territory

and shooting them down before they can deliver their loads.

Emphasis swings back to the original mission

for the German Me-262 in World War Two.

Intercept the bombers.

But to intercept the bombers far enough from the homeland,

planners now have to balance three features

in the race for the jet fighter.

The first factor is the old one, speed.

But there is a new challenge.

Fast jets are now pushing against a new barrier.

In air, sound travels

at around 670 mph depending on the altitude.

This is referred to as Mach 1.

As an aircraft approaches Mach 1,

it is buffeted by shock waves.

This is the so-called sound barrier.

To travel any faster,

jet fighters have to get through it.

But now designers and pilots

are pushing into dangerous unknown territory.

Nobody knows if an aircraft

can force its way through the shock waves without breaking up.

In 1946,

just a year after World War Two ends,

the race for the jet fighter has become a race to go supersonic.

But the sound barrier proves a deadly obstacle.

One of the first attempts

is made by British test pilot Geoffrey de Havilland.

Over the Thames Estuary, his DH-108 Swallow

breaks up as it hits the speed of sound,

killing De Havilland instantly.

A year later at Muroc Field,

flying the experimental rocket-powered Bell X-1,

Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first man

to push an aircraft through the sound barrier

and fly at over Mach 1.

It takes the Soviet Union a full year to catch up.

1948, I E Fedorov

becomes the first Soviet pilot to break Mach 1.

Mach 2, twice the speed of sound,

becomes the next milestone in the race for speed.

US test pilot Scott Crossfield

achieves this in the early 1950s.

Test aircraft and test pilots

demonstrate what is possible,

but to go supersonic in a working jet fighter

the shape of the aircraft has to change.

Airframe structures are improved and strengthened.

The wings are already swept back, to reduce drag.

Now the cockpit is streamlined back into the fuselage.

Entering service in the mid-1950s,

the first US supersonic fighters

include the Mach 1.1 F-100 Super Sabre

and the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger.

The Soviet Union matches them

with the Mach 1.4 Mig-19.

Before the end of the decade,

top speeds explode again

with the Mach 2.2 Lockheed F-104A Starfighter.

The Convair Delta Dart.

And the Mach 1.85 Soviet Mig-21.

Other countries are also competing in the race

to produce Mach 2 fighter jets.

One of the best pure interceptors

is the British English Electric Lightning.

A big twin-engine design,

it carries two missiles and two cannons

and can get up to 50,000 feet in just one minute.

All of these interceptor jets had one thing in common,

their job was to go from a dead stop,

get to altitude, speed and distance,

and keep these incoming bombers at bay.

And thus you find Mach 2 speed,

guided missiles and other new features

that were common to all the designs.

The new generation of combat jets

triggers a revolution in another critical factor

in the race for the jet fighter.

To intercept the bombers as far away from their targets as possible,

guided air-to-air missiles are more lethal than guns.

It's no longer, who has the best fighter

to take on an enemy fighter?

Now it's who has the best fighter

to go against their bombers?

And missiles are the key.

The main impetus for the development of

radar-guided air-to-air missiles

was the desire to shoot down enemy bombers.

Once these missiles started to appear, however,

there were many who argued that they should be used

to make dogfighting obsolete.

In the US, in particular,

this idea combines with the realisation

that dogfighting in the traditional way

is impossible at supersonic speeds.

You see a number of aircraft

actually designed for the first time without guns.

The popular notion, both with politicians and with senior leaders,

was, "The dogfight is dead."

Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that way.

The need for close-air support of forces on the ground,

along with air supremacy over the battlefield,

is not completely forgotten in the race for speed.

The US produces fighter-bombers

like the specialist Republic F-105 Thunderchief

And the highly versatile McDonnell F-4 Phantom II.

Both of which can carry a 15,000 lbs bomb load,

as much as a World War Two heavy bomber.

The French come up with the much-smaller Mirage III,

which is capable of Mach 2,

but can still carry 3,000 lbs of bombs.

But the emphasis remains on speed.

The ultimate example of this fixation

is the Soviet Mig-25 Foxbat,

a massive interceptor,

designed to shoot down the proposed US B-70 Valkyrie bomber

which would have had a speed of Mach 3.

But by the time the Foxbat comes into service,

the Valkyrie has been cancelled.

As the 1950s end,

the rules of the race are changing again.

The manned bomber is beginning to be superseded

by the intercontinental ballistic missile

and the US military will soon be forced to rethink

whether the dogfight is really dead.

In the skies over Vietnam in the mid-1960s,

US pilots find themselves taking their fast jets,

like the Phantom II and the Thunderchief,

head-to-head against the smaller and slower

Soviet Mig-17 and Mig-21.

It should be an unequal contest.

The early Vietnam War is almost a...

classic illustration of the technology people failing again.

They had this enormous faith that the technology would replace people,

so they took the guns out of the F-4 for the Navy version.

They were going to rely entirely on the Sparrow and the Sidewinder.

They had the conclusive proof in their tests, 80% accuracy,

we'll win this from a distance.

And then they went into a real fight against real people.

The Soviet jets are more manoeuvrable.

They can get in close, into the lethal six o'clock position.

At which point, they can use their guns.

Unlike the enemy,

the US pilots are not allowed to fire

their long-range missiles at aircraft

unless they first visually identify them as hostile.

But close-up, their most lethal weapons are worthless to them.

Hurriedly, the Americans retro-fit their fast jets

with cannons in detachable pods.

Vietnam also emphasises another requirement

in the race for the jet fighter.

Although they can carry massive loads for ground attack,

the big supersonic fighter-bombers,

like the Thunderchiefs or Super Sabres,

can spend little time over the target or waiting for one.

Increased speed reduced the payload and weapons

and greatly reduced the accuracy that those weapons could be delivered

to support the fight on the ground.

During the Arab-Israeli War of 1967,

the Israelis show that fast jets can be lethal in ground attack.

Their fleet of mainly French-built Mirage IIIs and Vautours

demolishes the Egyptian and Syrian Air Forces

with 30mm cannon fire

and then establishes total air control.

After the Vietnam experience,

it's time for an even more radical re-think

in the weapons race for the jet fighter.

The early 1970s.

The war in Vietnam draws to a close.

After the problems which the obsession with speed has caused in combat,

the rules of the race change fundamentally.

You have aircraft designers and engineers

finally going to pilots and actually talking to them for the first time,

saying, "Well, what would you like

in the next generation of combat jets

in the way of new or improved qualities?"

And they very rapidly get three things that they want.

Guns are back.

And with them, so are head-to-head dogfighting skills.

At Red Flag and Topgun,

the US Air Force and Navy

begin to teach the skills of air combat again.

The renewed need for dogfighting skills

puts emphasis on another factor in the race for the jet fighter.

The need to give the pilot superb visibility and control.

Bubble canopies and raised cockpits give all-round vision.

Vital controls are positioned on the throttle and stick,

so-called HOTAS, hands on throttle and stick.

HUD, the head-up display,

projects an information display directly in the pilot's line of sight,

so he doesn't have to look down in the middle of combat.

You might have flying data like altitude,

air speed and such, weapons data,

and the firing cues for all your weapons were contained there as well.

Combined with the controls on the stick and the throttles,

it meant you could go and switch modes very, very easily

and literally redesign the aeroplane in flight,

with just the flick of a switch.

All of this is made possible

by a technical revolution in the race for the jet fighter.

The computer.

Which leads to digital fly-by-wire systems.

Electro-mechanical and hydraulic linkages

are replaced with a computerised control system.

And this impacts on the third factor the pilots wanted.

Fly-by-wire enables designers to build jets

which are aerodynamically unstable

and only controllable by computer.

Turns are faster, tighter.

The US produces a fighter designed specifically

to outfly and outfight any proposed Soviet machine.

The F-15 Eagle.

The Soviets respond with the Mig-29 Fulcrum

and the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker.

At the end of the 1980s, as the Cold War ends,

these are the main competitors in the jet fighter race.

They seem evenly matched.

The F-15 is a superb aircraft.

It's got amazing technology in it

and fantastic radars and fire-control systems.

The Russian aircraft are simpler,

and in some respects possibly more practical

in some of the battlefields over which they're going to be flying.

But when they do go head-to-head in the 1991 Gulf War,

five Iraqi-flown Mig-29s are shot down

by US F-15s with no losses.

The development of these jets is becoming enormously expensive.

There is a joke that soon even the richest nation in the world, the United States,

will only be able to afford three copies of its next jet fighter.

one for Europe, one for the Pacific,

and one more at home in the US for training.

Designers must find ways of controlling costs.

They are helped by a revolution in engines,

from turbo-jets to turbo-fans,

which are more fuel efficient, with higher thrust, and lighter weight.

The US produces a cheaper multi-role aircraft,

the Lockheed-Martin F-16,

which becomes one of the mostly widely used in the world.

For many air forces it proves the only jet fighter they need.

Until now, designers have been balancing five key factors

in the race for the jet fighter.

But now they have to consider another.

A massive problem,

even with some of the world's most sophisticated jet fighters,

became painfully obvious in October 1973.

The Yom Kippur War

between Israel and its Arab neighbours,

Egypt and Syria.

Israel considers its air force to be unbeatable.

But Egypt knocks the Israeli planes from the skies

with Soviet supplied surface-to-air missile or SAM systems.

And when the Israelis fly lower to avoid the SAMs,

they are decimated by new radar-directed gun systems.

The concern is that these are the same weapons systems

that would be used on the central European plains.

As a result of this, it's a time to rethink,

a time to change the game.

There are two ways an aircraft can avoid radar detection.

One way is to knock out the radar system.

In the Bekaa valley in Lebanon in 1982,

the Israelis show how to do this.

The other way is by making the aircraft itself invisible.

The race is on again

to find a way to eliminate an aircraft's radar signature.

1983.

The first combat aircraft

which is virtually invisible to radar goes operational.

The F-117A Nighthawk

is another revolutionary product

of the famed Lockheed Skunkworks.

All these stealth designs had their roots in the Cold War

and would undoubtedly have been used against the Soviet Union.

But equally, there's a great possibility

that the Soviet Union would have developed their own stealth designs

that would have been used against the United States.

By the end of the decade,

the United States has a commanding lead

in the race to develop stealth technology for jet fighters.

But the world is about to change.

Berlin, 1989.

The wall that symbolises the Cold War comes down.

It's the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union

and the Cold War.

And the beginning of a new phase

in the weapons race for the jet fighter.

Come the end of the Cold War in 1989,

and everybody now again has the same technology base.

So once again, as fighter designers go into

the new generation of designs in the 1990s, they're all even again.

Multi-role, with digital systems.

Improved cockpits and aiming systems.

New generation air-to-air missiles.

All capable of what the experts call super-manoeuvrability.

And the next generation of jet fighters

come to the start line.

The Mig-35.

The SU-35 Flanker.

The Eurofighter.

All have the same characteristics,

except one thing, stealth.

Now, as they did with stealth,

American designers are about to change

the rules of the race again.

They will skip a generation of jet fighter

and produce a new aircraft that leap-frogs ahead

of anything even on the drawing boards anywhere else.

The most sophisticated plane in the world,

the US F-22 Raptor.

Maximum speed at altitude,

1,325 mph.

Able to cruise supersonically.

Armed with long and short-range air-to-air missiles,

a 20mm cannon,

and GPS guided bombs and missiles for ground attack.

The raised cockpit allows maximum visibility in all directions.

The radar system allows a range of options,

from electronic counter-measures and jamming,

to air-to-ground and air-to-air target mapping.

It can jam or actually burn out enemy electronic systems

such as radar and data links.

Improved structures, aerodynamics

and flight control software maximise manoeuvrability.

Thrust vectoring allows it to literally stand in mid-air,

or twist around.

And...

it is virtually invisible to radar

and infra-red detection.

But all this comes at a cost.

Around one hundred million dollars per aircraft,

roughly twice the price of any other fighter.

Consequently, we're going to pay a price

in the number of aircraft we're going to be able to deploy.

[Bruce Gudmundsson] Stealth was a classic example

of spending a great deal of money

to gain a set of improvements

that, while useful, are far from revolutionary.

The fundamental problem with stealth technology

is that the countermeasures are far cheaper

than the technology itself.

The cost of the Raptor

is one reason why it may not be overtaken

until well into the 21st century.

There's another, the next generation of jet fighter

may well be a fundamentally different kind of aircraft.

The F-22 flight control system

intentionally has inhibitors built into the software,

so that the G-forces, when they're applied quickly,

will not go and tear the eyeballs and guts out of the pilots.

The aircraft is capable of a lot more,

but the human body cannot take the kinds of stresses

that go beyond what the Raptor can do.

The manned jet fighter may have reached its limit

due primarily to the physical limitations of the pilot.

Thanks to its combination of costs and capabilities

in the growth of unmanned aircraft systems,

it's very likely the Raptor will be the last

pure manned fighter ever built.

When you ask what's the future of fighter aeroplanes beyond the Raptor,

the answer is robots and remote control.

Unmanned, uninhabited aircraft systems.

And its future rivals

may not even try to equal its extraordinary capabilities.

I think one of the things we've got to worry about is an asymmetric response

in the air as well as on the ground.

Instead of going for the high-priced aircraft,

they could go for swarms of very low-cost drones,

and the idea is they may lose 50 or even 100 drones

to get one of ours, but they're cheap enough to produce that that gets a win.

The quantum leap in fighter technology

from the Eindecker to the Raptor,

would have seemed like science fiction in World War One.

Almost certainly, the next stages in the weapons race

for the jet fighter will mean leaps

which will make the Raptor look as primitive

as the Eindecker does today.