Aligarh school kids build a flying F-22 Raptor for Rs 6,000

A video out of a small government school in Uttar Pradesh has stopped millions of people mid-scroll this year. Students at Composite Vidyalaya Bhilawali, in Aligarh’s Akrabad block, built a flying model of the F-22 Raptor, the fifth-generation stealth fighter jet made by Lockheed Martin for the United States Air Force, and the model actually took to the air.

The children involved study in Classes 4 to 8. They had no 3D printers, no imported robotics kits, and no dedicated laboratory. What they used instead was thermocol waste, the kind of packaging material usually thrown away, along with toy motors, basic wires and simple electronics sourced locally. Reports say the finished model can fly up to 1.5 kilometres, and the total cost of building it came to approximately Rs 6,000.

The F-22 Raptor itself is considered one of the most advanced aircraft ever built, designed for stealth, air superiority and supersonic speed, with aerospace companies spending years and billions of dollars developing aircraft in its class. That a scaled, flying version of it was assembled by primary and middle-school students from scrap materials is what pushed the story into the national conversation.

Behind the project is a grassroots programme called Robotics Ki Pathshala, which brings hands-on science and engineering learning to government school students across Uttar Pradesh. The initiative is built around the idea that children learn science by building things rather than only reading about them, and the Aligarh school has drawn attention for robotics workshops that turn scrap materials into learning tools under the guidance of a teacher at the school.

The finished aircraft was built in March 2026, and the video documenting it has since been viewed by millions online. It has been described as evidence that the country’s government-school students, often working with the fewest resources, are capable of engineering work that rivals what better-funded schools produce.

Wikimedia Commons/by Scott Wolfe, U.S. Air Force (representational image of a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor in flight; not the actual student-built model)