When will the F-22 production line reach the point at which it will start shutting down without more orders? Sometime in summer of 2008, according to Larry Lawson, Lockheed Martin’s F-22 program manager. The long-lead items on the Raptor need to be ordered about 30 months before they are installed on the airplane, Lawson said Tuesday at AFA’s Air & Space Conference in Washington. The last of 183 planned Raptors rolls out of Lockheed’s Marietta, Ga. plant in 2011.
A helicopter instructor pilot failed to take sufficient corrective action in time to fix the mistakes of a student pilot taking off from a slope, resulting in a rollover that caused nearly $11 million in damages to a TH-1H chopper last spring.