F-22 with external missile pylons

[FredT]

Given that the NGAD may be dead at this time and Zaphod58's recent thread about the Raptor getting a distributed IRST capability I though I would post up the Edwards Raptor I caught last August near Boron, California with the seldom seen external a2a missile pylons attached. Make you wonder what a beast mode raptor will look like and they may look to expand its capabilities as a stop gap https://theaviationist.com/2024/08/13/f-...-missiles/

[Avicula]

I have often wondered why they took so long to make these LO pylons a reality. Seems to me that a relatively forward thinking person would have seen the benefits of pylons and external fuel tanks that could expand the airplanes capabilities without compromising its RCS too severely. Was this one of those “we will get to it when we need to get to it” things or did Lockheed have their own Milton Waddams plugging away in a broom closet in the basement just to keep him busy?