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.
Here are more photos.
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.
What could I possibly add to this simple description of your taxpayer dollars at work?
Thanks, David S.
don’t even mention the bill from the fire dept. 🙂
If you read through the article – it sounds like this was a software error. Pretty scarey!
I wonder if they tried opening the door with a cell phone. I hear that works.
That’s what windows should be based on! You shouldn’t be able to log off, without a chainsaw!
Geez, they act like it was the firefighters’ fault. They were just trying to rescue the guy. It’s not like there was a red dashed line that said, “Cut here.”
It cost more than the ENZO they wrecked on the way to the airfield.
I would have ejected.
#7
gquaglia for president! 😀
Upgrades for the F22 will include ONSTAR for situations just like this. 🙂 Actually, the F22 is a great fighter plane. One of the big reasons for its high price tag is the fact that the government kept cutting back the number of planes it would order from the original contract. Imagine how much your car or truck would cost if the manufacturer only made 183 of them.
didn’t anyone have a sawsall?
The United States Government spent $1.28 million on repairing the damages of an F-22 fighter jet. The Russians used a MIG.
Lockheed CFO: “Hmmm, I’m sorry to report, but I don’t think we’re going to make our projected earnings for this quarter…”
Lockheed CEO: “Damn! We need more money! That’s it, I’m going to activate Plan L!” (He opens a small drawer on his desk, revealing a secret panel with some buttons. He pushes one.)
Lockheed CFO: “Plan L, sir?”
Lockheed CEO: (chuckles evilly): “Yes, we built secret remote-controlled locks into the F-22 canopies! I push this button, and the very next one someone tries to open, it won’t open! They’ll have to cut him out. And then we get to sell them replacement parts for MILLIONS!”
Lockheed CEO and CFO together: “Ha ha ha!!”
It was couple of weeks ago on CNN that when a group of F-22s crossed the international date line their navigation systems crashed. The planes had to fly to Hawaii keeping a visual contact to their tanker plane.
You’d think they’d never heard of OnStar!
#7
What if the cockpit wouldn’t open either, then the inside of the plane would be coated a preety red colour.
what, nobody at the air base had a slim jim?
Just what we need, $65 billion dollars worth of toys for our Nintendo pilots.
They should have towed it to a street in Baltimore. That thing would have been open in about 3 minutes and the radio would be gone.
18. Best comment yet. LOL!!!!!
So that happened last year?
What if the cockpit wouldn’t open either, then the inside of the plane would be coated a preety red colour.
The cockpit canape is blown off with explosive bolts during ejection. Believe me, it would have come off.
WTF? Do I really need to read about events almost a year old? LOOSERS.
#22 – LOOSERS
Nice work dude… you’re bashing the editors, and you can’t even get the spelling correct.
#22. Looser than what?
#24. His mom?
Only 5 hours? (Jet Blue) I’ll bet that was one honked airman (considering all the ribbing he took later that day.)
Seriously, this plane has a lot fewer problems than the B-52 back in the 50’s. These fine aircraft are still flying today and work well with all the latest mods. They might just last another 25 years. Go, SAC !!
“No other military organization has ever had such awesome power,”
http://www.strategic-air-command.com/
Apparently the cost of the canopy is inflated by $100,000 in the original post. But this may represent the cost of the current low-volume production.
What seems odd is that there is no “pop the canopy” emergency process. Who designed this? Microsoft?
-iNova
This is old news, one year old to be exact. The problem has been fixed since then
What? Couldn’t they just use System Restore? They didn’t create a Restore Point to an earlier time on that plane to the time before taxi to Take Off? If it was a software problem then they should create restore points more often on those planes to help them save money on silly little software problems like this one 🙂
Well if you buy this, then you are the reason for allowing gross oversight in federal spending.. The do this crap all the time, it is a mere pub stunt for a black op re-route of money that is funded via tax payers in this bally hoo hoo.. COME ON!