The airstrike was the first time an F-22 Raptor had brought down an aircraft since the plane debuted in combat in Syria and Iraq almost a decade ago.
marked the first time the F-22 Raptor fighter jet brought down an airborne target since it debuted in combat in Syria and Iraq almost a decade ago, defence analysts said.
“Shooting down China’s balloon was indeed the F-22’s first air-to-air kill,” Rebecca Grant, an Air Force systems specialist and president of IRIS Independent Research, said by email in response to questions. “Americans watched an unfriendly aircraft get shot down over our skies.”said on its website that the incident “may be the highest altitude air-to-air kill ever.
The Air Force touted the F-22’s success in those missions as vindication for a plane long criticised for its cost and the service’s failure to use it. The Pentagon spent $US67 billion to buy 187 of the supersonic jets., which China said was a climate-research vehicle that drifted off course, injected new tensions into US-China relations.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said China was using the balloon “in an attempt to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States.” US officials expect to learn more about the balloon’s capabilities from a recovery operation underway off the coast.
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