The US's military edge over Russia and China has come down to one plane
Since World War II, the US has dominated the skies in any region in the world it wishes to project power in - but recent competition from world powers like Russia and China threaten to erode that edge, and only a small group of elite pilots maintain the US's edge in air superiority.
Russia has deployed powerful missile defense batteries to Syria and its European enclave of Kaliningrad. Effectively, the US Air Force can't operate in those domains without severe risk. Obama himself admitted that these missile deployments greatly complicate and limit the US's options to project power in Syria.
Meanwhile, China has undertaken the breathtaking feat of building and militarizing islands in the South China Sea, outfitting them with runways and radar sites that could allow Beijing to establish an air defense and identification zone, the likes of which the US would struggle to pierce.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein, speaking during the "State of the Air Force" address at the Pentagon, said of the Air Force's dwindling dominance, "I believe it's a crisis: air superiority is not an American birthright. It's actually something you have to fight for and maintain."
The US has the world's largest Air Force, but it's important to remember that it's a force stretched thin across the entire globe. In the Pacific or the Baltics, smaller, more concentrated powers have reached parity or near parity with the US's gigantic fleet.
Only one US airframe remains head-and-shoulders above any and all competition - the F-22 Raptor.
The F-22 is the first fifth-generation jet fighter ever built, and it is like nothing else on earth. The plane can execute mind-bending aerial maneuvers, sense incoming threats at incredible distances, and fly completely 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 air spaces on the planet. Even so, an expert on Russian air defenses told Business Insider that F-22 pilots would have to be "operationally, tactically brilliant" to strike against Russian-defended targets and live to tell the tale.
However, a recent article by The National Interest's Dave Majumdar seems to confirm that the US's Raptor pilots are indeed brilliant.
"Typically, we'll train against the biggest and baddest threats because we want to train against the newest threat on the block," one F-22 pilot told Majumdar.
"We're fighting against the most advanced operational threats we can," said another.
Even though the stealthy F-22s hold an overwhelming advantage at long range, because they can target enemies long before those enemies can see them, the Raptor pilots train for up-close-and-personal conflicts as well. While close range confrontations hugely disadvantage the F-22 pilots, they continue to train uphill and achieve impressive results.
As the most capable plane in the world, the F-22 pilots exist as a kind of "insurance policy" against the most advanced threats in the world, according to Majumdar.
"Even when flying against the most challenging simulated threats-advanced Russian fighters such as the Su-35 and S-300V4 and S-400-it is exceedingly rare for an F-22 to be 'shot down'. 'Losses in the F-22 are a rarity regardless of the threat we're training against,'" an F-22 pilot told Majumdar.