A federal district court in California on Nov. 2 granted Lockheed Martin’s motion to transfer an F-22 lawsuit filed in 2007 by a former employee to a district court in Atlanta, close to the company’s F-22 assembly facility in northern Georgia. Darrol Olsen, a stealth engineer who Lockheed fired in 1999, alleges that the company knowingly used “defective” stealth coatings on the F-22 in the late 1990s. He wants the company to pay the government back $50 million per F-22 built, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. A Lockheed spokesman told the Daily Report Thursday that the company requested the move since northern Georgia is “where the relevant documents and witnesses are located.” Lockheed has not yet filed its answer to this lawsuit, but “does not believe there is any merit to the allegations and will vigorously defend this matter in court,” he said.
After a long period in which munitions were almost an afterthought and sacrificed to pay for other priorities, the Air Force needs to focus on them in order to have the right “package” of capabilities for future conflicts, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said June 7.