The Air Force's most beloved fighter jet missed out on the last ten years' worth of warfare. Now that the United Nations has approved a no-fly zone in Libya, the service is indicating the F-22 Raptor will get its first taste of combat.

Speaking at a Senate budget hearing yesterday, Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force's chief of staff, said that the first phase of a campaign against Moammar Gadhafi's aircraft would attack Libyan radar sites. That's just as airmen with no-fly experience predicted to Danger Room. Taking down the radar sites, which direct Libyan air defenses, will require the use of radar-evading stealth jets. Enter the F-22 Raptor, Norton said, according to The Hill's John Bennett.

Last week, retired Maj. Gen. Irv Halter, who once ran the U.S. no-fly zone over northern Iraq, told Danger Room he doubted the "high-end" Raptors would be necessary for a Libya campaign, largely due to the unsophistication of Libyan air defenses. "I wouldn't deploy F-22s unless there was a political reason," Halter said. "They'd be absolutely great at it, but their stealth capability isn't really part of the issue. This airspace you're gonna be able to get into easily."

The use of the F-22s might speak to a U.S. desire not to chance a shootdown. Early polling shows that 65 percent of Americans don't want to get involved militarily in Libya. And the U.N. resolution authorizing force against Gadhafi is silent on the endstate of an international mission. Bringing in the Raptors is like killing ants with a sledgehammer, in the immortal words of Jay-Z – the better to take momentum away from Gadhafi ASAP.

It would also have the effect of proving the value of a sophisticated jet in a complex campaign, something the Air Force certainly wouldn't mind. Difficulties in envisioning likely uses for the F-22 led Defense Secretary Robert Gates to cap its procurement in 2009. And Gates nudged the Air Force earlier this month to think beyond high-end aerial combat when visualizing the future of airpower.

Even so, if it's deployed, F-22 will hardly be the only air asset the U.S. contributes to the no-fly zone. Schwartz saidF-16s will also attack radar sites; Rivet Joint surveillance airplanes will join in; and jammers aboard the EC-130H Compass Callwill block Libyan communications. But sending in the F-22 will be a sign that the U.S. doesn't to take many chances in Libya – and it'll let the Air Force demonstrate why it's so hot on the jet in the first place.

Update, 8:59 a.m.: Or not! Libya's foreign minister just declared an "immediate ceasefire" and "end to all military operations." That might just freeze a siege around rebel capitol Benghazi and dare western powers to get involved even further; or it might indicate that Gadhafi is freaked out about getting bombed. Ball's in your court, NATO.

*Photo: U.S. Air Force

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