F-22s suddenly pulled from Super Bowl flyover due to ‘operational assignments’

Two F-22 Raptor stealth jets originally slated for Super Bowl LX flyover have been removed due to “operational assignments,” the Air Force announced Friday.

Katie Spencer, who helps organize the Department of the Air Force’s sports outreach programs and coordinated the flyover formation, said the F-22s were part of the original concept but were reassigned as operational demands increased.

“We wanted fifth-generation aircraft from the Air Force and fifth-generation aircraft from the Navy,” Spencer said in a Friday interview with The Military Times. “But as things happen in our military, operational tempo has increased, and so the F-22s got pulled for some operational assignments.”

Spencer declined to detail the specific missions that required the aircraft’s reassignment, but F-22s have recently been involved in several high-profile operations. In June, the fighters played a key role in Operation Midnight Hammer, a B-2 Spirit bomber-led strike campaign targeting Iranian nuclear facilities.

Using their advanced sensors and stealth capabilities, the F-22s monitored for potential threats and fed real-time intelligence back to the strike package.

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Iranian aircraft failed to intercept the U.S. military, and Iran’s air-defense systems failed to spot the stealth aircraft involved in the mission. In the lead-up to the operation, roughly 10 F-22s, along with other U.S. fighters such as F-35s and F-16s, were deployed to the Middle East to support the strike and provide air dominance if needed, according to The National Interest.

More recently, in January and early February, a mix of U.S. aircraft conducted strikes on ISIS targets in Syria during an operation known as Hawkeye Strike.

Even for the aircraft approved to take part in the Super Bowl flyover, Spencer said that the event serves a practical military purpose beyond ceremony. As defense officials have said in previous years, flyovers double as training exercises and do not require additional taxpayer funding.

“These flyovers serve as time-over-target training for our crews,” Spencer said. “They serve as recovery efforts with our maintainers. And so the reason that we are so proficient at operations like Midnight Hammer and other things that you’ll see is because we can replicate those real-world scenarios with this type of flying.”

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The revised flyover for Super Bowl LX will feature aircraft representing 250 years of American airpower. Scheduled to pass over the stadium are two Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers from Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, two Air National Guard F-15C Eagles, a pair of Navy F/A-18E Super Hornets and two F-35C Lightning II fighters from Naval Air Station Lemoore in California.

“Our Guard members have stepped in to fill that role, and we’re super grateful for that,” Spencer said.

The Super Bowl LX kickoff is set for Sunday at 6:30 p.m. EST.