(Luft) Lockheed Martin F-22

[Quintus Fabius]

Die Diskussionen nehmen zu in denen eine Wiederaufnahme der Produktion der F-22 gefordert wird. Insbesondere nachdem durch das F-35 Programm auch für die F-22 wesentliche Verbesserungen erzielt werden konnten.

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The secretary of the air force has become the latest official to douse hopes of restarting Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor production, which was capped at 187 aircraft and closed in 2011.

The tooling and equipment needed to produce the twin-engine air-superiority fighter, which was barred from export because of its sophistication, remain in storage along with video instructions for various assembly processes.

This equipment will aid in the remanufacture of spare parts for the aircraft and its two Pratt & Whitney F119 engines, but some Raptor advocates want to see the assembly lines in Marietta, Georgia and Fort Worth, Texas reborn. This was done for improved versions of the Lockheed U-2 and Rockwell B-1.

That idea is “pretty much a non-starter,” service secretary Deborah Lee James said when asked about the prospect of resuming serial F-22 production at a recent CSIS event in Washington DC.

“If you were to ask [air force chief of staff Gen Mark Welsh] or any of the uniformed officers in the air force, they would probably tell you they would love to have more F-22s.

“The original plan was to have quite a few more additional F-22s, and it was a regrettable set of circumstances – a combination of budget overruns and taking way longer than originally projected – that actually caused what became an early termination for the F-22 programme.”

Optimised for air-to-air combat in a Cold War fight against Russia, the original requirement was for 750 aircraft. That number later dropped to 339, and then 187 plus eight test aircraft.

750 F-22 wären günstiger gekommen als die jetzt geplanten über 2000 F-35, sie wären ausreichend gewesen und sie wären für eine Luft-Boden-Rolle weiter entwickelbar gewesen wie es jetzt ja auch geschehen ist. Leider hat man diese Chance um ca 2010 herum endgültig verschenkt.