When people ask about the fuel efficiency of the F-22 Raptor, they are usually hoping for a clean, car-like number. Miles per gallon. A neat comparison. Something intuitive. What they get instead is a shrug wrapped in caveats. The honest answer is that the F-22’s fuel efficiency depends on almost everything: how fast it flies, how high it flies, what it carries, how it fights, and whether it is trying to stay invisible while doing all of the above.
A slightly longer answer is this: the F-22 is surprisingly efficient when supercruising and when carrying weapons internally, but like all high-performance fighter jets, it is still brutally inefficient by any civilian standard. Fighters are not designed to sip fuel. They are designed to dominate airspace, and fuel is the price paid for that dominance.
Understanding how “efficient” the Raptor really is requires abandoning automotive thinking and stepping into the messy, classified-tinged reality of combat aviation, where fuel burn is measured in thousands of pounds per hour and efficiency is often defined by whether the jet gets home at all.
Fuel efficiency is rarely discussed in fighter aviation because it is not the design driver. Speed, climb rate, sensor fusion, stealth, survivability, and weapons employment all come first. Range and endurance are managed through tactics, aerial refueling, and basing, not by building economical engines.
Still, fuel matters. It defines how far a jet can reach, how long it can loiter, and how much flexibility commanders have once a fight begins. For a stealth air-dominance fighter like the F-22, fuel also shapes how deeply it can penetrate defended airspace without tankers getting too close to the threat.
In civilian terms, the Raptor’s efficiency is dreadful. In military terms, it is quietly impressive — especially once you understand the tradeoffs baked into its design.
Unlike cars, aircraft do not talk in gallons per mile. They talk in pounds per hour. Jet fuel is heavy, and aircraft performance is deeply tied to weight. A gallon-based measure only becomes useful after converting pounds of fuel into distance flown, which is why any “miles per gallon” figure for a fighter is necessarily an estimate.
That estimation problem is compounded by classification. Exact fuel flow figures for different flight regimes are not public. What analysts rely on instead are derived figures from U.S. Air Force documentation, Congressional testimony, historical flight data, and known performance envelopes.
These estimates are good enough to sketch the real picture, even if the sharpest edges remain blurred.
One of the defining features of the F-22 is that it carries both fuel and weapons internally. This is not just about radar cross-section. It is also about drag.
External stores — missiles, bombs, fuel tanks — impose parasite drag and interference drag. They wreck aerodynamic efficiency. This is why older fighters like the F-15 suffer massive range penalties the moment they are loaded for combat.
The Raptor avoids most of that penalty by keeping its weapons inside the jet. The cost is volume. Internal bays limit how much fuel and how many weapons can be carried. They also prevent the routine use of external drop tanks in stealthy configurations.
For years, this has been one of the F-22’s biggest operational constraints. The jet can carry two non-stealthy 600-gallon drop tanks, but doing so sacrifices stealth. Those tanks are typically used only to get closer to a theater of operations before being jettisoned.
In 2024, that limitation began to change.
In 2024, observers spotted an F-22 flying with what appeared to be new low-observable external fuel tanks. Later reporting confirmed that the U.S. Air Force is actively developing stealthy drop tanks for the Raptor, with production targeted for the mid-2020s.
According to The War Zone, the goal is to begin delivering these tanks to operational squadrons by the end of March 2026. Their exact capacity remains classified, but they are widely expected to be smaller than the existing 600-gallon tanks to preserve stealth shaping and signature control.
If fielded as planned, stealth tanks could significantly extend the Raptor’s unrefueled reach while preserving much of its low-observable advantage — a major boost for Indo-Pacific operations where distances are vast and tanker vulnerability is a growing concern.
Using internal tanks alone, the F-22 carries roughly 18,000 pounds of fuel, equivalent to about 2,700 gallons. Adding two standard external tanks increases total fuel by roughly 8,000 pounds.
In a full ferry configuration with external tanks, total fuel can approach 26,000 pounds. However, not all fuel is usable in every flight regime. High-performance maneuvers and afterburner use impose limits on what fuel can be safely accessed.
This distinction between capacity and usable fuel becomes critical once the jet starts flying like a fighter instead of a transport.
The F-22 is powered by two Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 engines. Each produces approximately 26,000 pounds of dry thrust and about 35,000 pounds with afterburner.
These engines were revolutionary when they entered service. They enable sustained supersonic flight without afterburner — a capability known as supercruise — while maintaining relatively low fuel burn compared with older designs at similar speeds.
Still, “relatively low” is doing a lot of work.
In an optimal ferry configuration — clean, subsonic, and high — the F-22 is surprisingly reasonable by fighter standards.
At around Mach 0.85 and altitudes above 35,000 feet, fuel burn is estimated at roughly 9,000 to 10,500 pounds per hour. In this regime, a clean Raptor can fly between 850 and 1,000 miles one way, with a combat radius of about 450 to 500 miles.
Converted into civilian language, that works out to roughly 0.34 to 0.40 miles per gallon.
That number sounds absurdly low until you remember that this is a twin-engine stealth fighter flying faster than most airliners while carrying combat systems that would make a small data center blush.
Supercruise is the F-22’s signature trick. At around Mach 1.5 without afterburner, the Raptor enters a flight regime where almost no other operational fighter can follow without paying a massive fuel penalty.
In this mode, fuel efficiency drops — but not catastrophically. Estimates suggest around 0.30 to 0.37 miles per gallon, or roughly 0.045 to 0.055 miles per pound of fuel.
Range in supercruise falls to about 600 to 750 miles one way, with a combat radius of roughly 300 to 375 miles. That is still remarkable for sustained supersonic flight without afterburner.
Any fourth-generation fighter attempting the same profile would burn two to three times more fuel and would likely need tanker support almost immediately.
This is where the Raptor’s aerodynamic design and engine efficiency shine. Supercruise is not cheap, but it is affordable — at least in fighter terms.
Once afterburners light, all bets are off.
At speeds approaching Mach 1.8 to 2.0, fuel efficiency collapses to around 0.11 to 0.13 miles per gallon. In pounds, that is roughly 0.025 to 0.030 miles per pound of fuel.
Afterburners can consume 10 to 15 percent of the jet’s total fuel per minute. Sustained afterburner flight is simply not viable for anything other than short sprints.
In a pure afterburner profile, the F-22’s combat radius could collapse to 150 to 200 miles or less. Worse, afterburners produce massive infrared signatures, undermining the jet’s stealth advantages.
As a result, afterburners are treated as a special-purpose tool. They are used for emergency climbs, short dashes, breaking contact, and survival — not for cruising or routine combat.
In a benign ferry scenario with full fuel and external tanks, the F-22 can stay airborne for roughly three hours. In a clean combat configuration without stealth tanks, endurance drops significantly.
Low-level flight, maneuvering, and combat weaving can increase fuel burn by 20 to 60 percent compared with high-altitude cruise. At very low altitudes — below 5,000 feet — fuel consumption can spike to around 16,000 pounds per hour, cutting endurance to just over an hour.
A sustained dogfight with heavy afterburner use could drain usable fuel in under 20 minutes. The Raptor is designed specifically to avoid such fights by killing adversaries long before they get close.
Most range figures assume straight-line flight. Real combat does not.
Stealth aircraft route around radar coverage, exploit terrain masking, and maneuver to maintain sensor advantage. Loitering, holding patterns, and repeated engagements all eat into fuel reserves.
A realistic combat profile can reduce effective range by 20 to 30 percent compared with a clean ferry flight. Even so, the F-22 suffers less of a range penalty than older fighters because it carries its weapons internally.
This is one of the least appreciated advantages of stealth. Reduced drag does not just make a jet harder to detect — it makes it more efficient.
The F-15 was built in the 1970s around raw thrust and external payloads. In combat configuration, its range penalty can reach 30 to 45 percent due to drag from missiles and fuel tanks.
The F-22 was designed explicitly to avoid that penalty. With internal air-to-air missiles only, its range penalty may be as low as 10 percent.
This difference is one of the core reasons the Raptor exists. A combat-loaded F-15C might manage a combat radius of 300 to 350 miles. The F-22 pushes that out to roughly 400 to 450 miles — without relying as heavily on tankers.
Stealth, in this sense, is as much about endurance as invisibility.
By any civilian standard, the F-22 is wildly inefficient. At best, it manages around a third of a mile per gallon. At worst, it drinks fuel like a fire hose.
By fighter standards, it is a masterpiece of efficiency within its mission envelope. It flies faster, farther, and cleaner than anything else designed for air dominance, especially when carrying weapons internally and exploiting supercruise.
Fuel efficiency was never the goal. Operational reach, survivability, and combat flexibility were. On those terms, the F-22’s fuel performance is not a weakness — it is one of the reasons the jet remains unmatched more than two decades after its first flight.
In the end, the right question is not how many miles per gallon the Raptor gets, but how many miles of contested airspace it can own before it has to turn back. On that score, the answer is still deeply uncomfortable for any potential adversary.
