PROCUREMENT BLUES: The US’s military edge over Russia and China has come down to one plane.

Only one US airframe remains head-and-shoulders above any and all competition: the F-22 Raptor.

The F-22 was the first fifth-generation fighter jet, and it is like nothing else on earth. The plane can execute mind-bending aerial maneuvers, sense incoming threats at incredible distances, and fly undetected by legacy aircraft.

The coming F-35 Lightning II, a stealthy technological marvel in its own right, has an impressive radar cross section approximately the size of a basketball. The F-22, however, blows it out of the water with a cross section about the size of a marble.

For this reason, the F-22 Raptor remains the US’s only hope for breaching the most heavily protected airspace. Even so, an expert on Russian air defenses told Business Insider that F-22 pilots would have to be “operationally, tactically brilliant” to survive strikes against Russian-defended targets.

And we built fewer than 200 of them.