With a small number of F-22s and problems with America's newer stealth fighter, the F-35, every F-22 is precious. //

A U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth fighter crashed in Florida on Friday. The crash leaves the Air Force with 185 Raptors out of the 195 that Lockheed Martin LMT built starting in the mid-1990s. //

Lockheed built 195 production- and development-standard F-22s for a total cost of $67 billion, a sum that includes development but doesn’t include ongoing upgrades to the jets. The last Raptor rolled out of Lockheed’s Georgia factory in December 2011. //

As recently as the early 2000s, the Air Force anticipated buying more than 400 F-22s in order to replace, on a one-for-one basis, all the F-15C Eagle fighters then in the inventory.

Instead, Defense Secretary Robert Gates in 2009 abruptly ended Raptor production. “There is no doubt that the F-22 has unique capabilities that we need—the penetration and defeat of an advanced enemy air-defense and fighter fleet,” Gates explained at the time.

“But, the F-22 is, in effect, a niche, silver-bullet solution required for a limited number of scenarios—to overcome advanced enemy fighters and air-defense systems,” Gates added.

Within a few years, however, it was clear that Gates’ decision was premature. The explosive growth in Chinese military power and the appearance of Chinese and Russian stealth-fighter designs underscored the growing challenge to America’s command of the air. Older American planes such as the A-10 and F-16 could be vulnerable without adequate protection from F-22s.

Meanwhile America’s other stealth fighter, the ground-attack-optimized F-35, proved to be a mediocre dogfighter. Design flaws also have limited the F-35’s ability to fly at supersonic speeds. Desperate to shore up its fighter numbers, the Air Force in its 2020 budget restarted acquisition of the Boeing BA F-15 after a 16-year break.