gkainz
Final Approach
Got this via email from a long string of forwards, so I have no idea if it's legit or not. If true, they've got problems!
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Lockheed's Flying Dud
The Self-Locking F-22
By ROBERT BRYCE
Last week, Lockheed Martin announced that its profits were up a
hefty 60 percent in the first quarter. The company earned $591
million in profit on revenues of $9.2 billion.
Now, if the company could just figure out how to put a door handle on
its new $361 million F-22 fighter, its prospects would really
soar.
On April 10, at Langley Air Force Base, an F-22
pilot, Capt. Brad Spears, was locked inside the cockpit of his
aircraft for five hours. No one in the U.S. Air Force or from
Lockheed Martin could figure out how to open the aircraft's canopy. At
about 1:15 pm, chainsaw-wielding firefighters from the 1st
Fighter Wing finally extracted Spears after they cut through the
F-22's three-quarter inch-thick polycarbonate canopy.
Total damage to the airplane, according to
sources inside the Pentagon: $1.28 million.
Not only did the firefighters ruin the canopy, which cost $286,000,
they also scuffed the coating on the airplane's
skin which will cost about $1 million to replace.
The Pentagon currently plans to buy 181 copies of
the F-22 from Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest weapons
vendor. The total price tag: $65.4 billion.
The incident at Langley has many Pentagon
watchers shaking their heads. Tom Christie, the former director of testing and
evaluation for the DOD, calls the F-22 incident at Langley "incredible."
"God knows what'll happen next," said Christie, who points out that the F-22 has
about two million lines of code in its software system. "This thing
is so software intensive. You can't check out every line of code."
Now, just for the sake of comparison, Windows XP, one of the
most common computer operating systems, contains about
45 million lines of code. But if any of that code fails, then the
computer that's running it simply stops working. It won't cause
that computer to fall out of the sky. If any of the F-22's two
million lines of computer code go bad, then the pilot can die, or,
perhaps, just get trapped in the cockpit.
One analyst inside the Pentagon who has followed
the F-22 for years said that "Everyone's incredulous. They're asking
can this really have happened?" As for Lockheed Martin, the
source said, "Whatever the problem was, the people who built it should
know how to open thecanopy."
Given that the U.S. military is Lockheed Martin's
biggest client, perhaps the company could provide the Air Force
with a supply of slim jims or coat hangars, just in case another
F-22 pilot gets stuck at the controls.
As if the latest canopy shenanigans weren't bad
enough, on May 1, Defense News reported that there are serious
structural problems with the F-22. Seems the titanium hull of the aircraft isn't
meshing as well as it should. Naturally, taxpayers have to foot the bill for
the mistake (improper heat-treating of the titanium) which is found on
90 aircraft.
The cost of repairing those wrinkles? Another $1billion or so.
Lockheed Martin's F-22 spokesman, Joe Quimby, did not return
telephone calls.
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Lockheed's Flying Dud
The Self-Locking F-22
By ROBERT BRYCE
Last week, Lockheed Martin announced that its profits were up a
hefty 60 percent in the first quarter. The company earned $591
million in profit on revenues of $9.2 billion.
Now, if the company could just figure out how to put a door handle on
its new $361 million F-22 fighter, its prospects would really
soar.
On April 10, at Langley Air Force Base, an F-22
pilot, Capt. Brad Spears, was locked inside the cockpit of his
aircraft for five hours. No one in the U.S. Air Force or from
Lockheed Martin could figure out how to open the aircraft's canopy. At
about 1:15 pm, chainsaw-wielding firefighters from the 1st
Fighter Wing finally extracted Spears after they cut through the
F-22's three-quarter inch-thick polycarbonate canopy.
Total damage to the airplane, according to
sources inside the Pentagon: $1.28 million.
Not only did the firefighters ruin the canopy, which cost $286,000,
they also scuffed the coating on the airplane's
skin which will cost about $1 million to replace.
The Pentagon currently plans to buy 181 copies of
the F-22 from Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest weapons
vendor. The total price tag: $65.4 billion.
The incident at Langley has many Pentagon
watchers shaking their heads. Tom Christie, the former director of testing and
evaluation for the DOD, calls the F-22 incident at Langley "incredible."
"God knows what'll happen next," said Christie, who points out that the F-22 has
about two million lines of code in its software system. "This thing
is so software intensive. You can't check out every line of code."
Now, just for the sake of comparison, Windows XP, one of the
most common computer operating systems, contains about
45 million lines of code. But if any of that code fails, then the
computer that's running it simply stops working. It won't cause
that computer to fall out of the sky. If any of the F-22's two
million lines of computer code go bad, then the pilot can die, or,
perhaps, just get trapped in the cockpit.
One analyst inside the Pentagon who has followed
the F-22 for years said that "Everyone's incredulous. They're asking
can this really have happened?" As for Lockheed Martin, the
source said, "Whatever the problem was, the people who built it should
know how to open thecanopy."
Given that the U.S. military is Lockheed Martin's
biggest client, perhaps the company could provide the Air Force
with a supply of slim jims or coat hangars, just in case another
F-22 pilot gets stuck at the controls.
As if the latest canopy shenanigans weren't bad
enough, on May 1, Defense News reported that there are serious
structural problems with the F-22. Seems the titanium hull of the aircraft isn't
meshing as well as it should. Naturally, taxpayers have to foot the bill for
the mistake (improper heat-treating of the titanium) which is found on
90 aircraft.
The cost of repairing those wrinkles? Another $1billion or so.
Lockheed Martin's F-22 spokesman, Joe Quimby, did not return
telephone calls.
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