Sometimes, very briefly, the character of modern war in the domain of air-to-air combat is made so clear that only a few minutes suffice to demonstrate this. A similar event occurred in 2013 over the Persian Gulf, where two Iranian F-4 Phantom fighters were unexpectedly greeted by one of the most advanced and lethal aircraft of the U.S. Air Force, an F-22 Raptor. Without actually becoming engaged in fighting, the encounter transformed from an ordinary patrol to an instructive session on the supremacy of stealth and superior technology.
It began with an MQ-1 Predator drone conducting its mission in international airspace, 16 miles off the coast of Iran. To the two Phantom pilots who had detected it, the slow, unarmed drone was a tempting target.
The Phantom, which in the 1960s had been the symbol of American aviation excellence, was no longer the future of flight, but it was still more than enough to shoot down such a target. What the pilots did not realize was that Lt. Col. Kevin “Showtime” Sutterfield was within eyesight, piloting an F-22 Raptor undetectable to their radar.
The Raptor crept closer stealthily, flying under the Phantoms until Sutterfield was close enough to examine their planes up close with his own eyes. In a scene out of a movie, he slid past the front plane—close enough to look in the cockpit—before activating his radio.
“You really oughta go home,” he said matter-of-factly. That did it. The dynamic was suddenly reversed. The Raptor had all the advantage, and the Phantom crews well knew it. Without a struggle, they retreated.
That brief conversation told us all about the F-22’s real potential. It’s not another fighter plane—it’s a completely different style of dominating the skies. Its stealth capabilities, razor-sharp angles, and cutting-edge sensors provide it with the power to suddenly materialize out of thin air, dictate the terms of engagement, and then disappear into thin air without ever being seen.
To that add its thrust-vectoring engines and supersonic cruise capability without the use of afterburners, and the Raptor is not only stealthy, but quicker and more agile than almost anything currently in the air.
For Iran, the meeting was a grim reminder of the weakness of its Phantom fleet. Those planes, which were delivered in the late 1960s and early 1970s, were state-of-the-art when they arrived. Decades of ingenuity—improvisational fixes, replacement parts, and upgrades—have sustained them since.
But even the finest refits can’t hide the reality that they are products of an earlier era of flight. They were born during an era when stealth existed only as a concept and well before pilots were able to depend on integrated computer screens within helmets.
That small Gulf confrontation was more than a footnote; it underlined the disparity between yesteryear’s machines and stealth jets today. The Raptor’s actual strength wasn’t sheer speed or ammo—that was its psychological dominance over the combat scene before the other side ever had a clue. That psychological blow can be just as lethal as any missile.
To the military commanders, the moral is plain: the greatest power is determining the rules of the fight well ahead of the enemy’s knowledge about it. That day across the Gulf, Sutterfield’s unobtrusive “You really oughta go home” was more than an admonition. It was a message to every pilot flying outdated hardware in a new battlefield: at times, the most effective strike is the one you never have to make.