the companies that do military systems have veteran hiring programs.
in addition to the ones AeroE mentioned, Rockwell Collins and Thales.

Also L3

I'll work on my resume' and see what's out there then.  Really haven't done any looking yet, I sort of fell into a job earlier in the year and dropped my papers quite a bit earlier than I had planned to.

Apples to hand grenade comparison.  Reagan resurrected the B-1 program, not the assembly line.  There were never production B-1As, and the B-1B was a significantly redesigned airplane.  The F-22 program was funded to produce 750 aircraft, to replace all of our F-15s, the R&D was all spent, and then we let the penny pinching morons in congress cut the buy to fewer than 200, squandering the investment in R&D.

Thanks. That makes sense. I've always heard how Reagan resurrected the B1, and always wondered how that compared to the discussion about the F22.

Where is the tooling for the future 6th generation fighter? What about the supply chain for it?

Seems to me like an F-22B model would still be less expensive than designing a completely new airframe from the ground up.

Do it sort of like the hornet/super horner deal.

Let's start with maximizing sunk cost in JSF/F-35.

Best air superiority fighter except Raptor.

Best strike fighter.

JSF is where we need to focus.

Fuck that pile of shit.  The F-22 buy was killed prematurely precisely because of the overpromising (and later under-delivering) of that pile of dogshit.

Yup.  I remember both.  B-1As were only prototypes.  Carter and Congress shut it down in favor of more ALCMs on B-52s while developing the B-2 in secret.

B-1B prototypes were actually B-1As with upgraded systems for the B-1B.  Biggest external differences were the radomes, both front and rear, as well as the ejection capsule.

My dad was on the B-1B CTF at Edwards when we returned from West Germany, and I remember many things about the program, to include Doug Benefield's death in the crash they had in one of the prototypes that still had the capsule.

I remember all kinds of CTF posters, as well as cockpit diagrams.

Well here is sort of the facts regardless of your goofy rant.

F-22 will never be in production again, FACT.

JSF will be produced in big numbers,. FACT.

It simply is what it is and wanting something else won't change facts.

JSF is a beast of an killer.

Maybe we could have gone a different route but JSF is where we are right now and in the future.

If there ever was an appropriate application of this gif, it's this one.

We could get 50 of them for 20 billion!!! Hell ya!

We could get 100 for 30 billion.

So congress finally is coming to the conclusion that GD has long ago: that F35 is horsefeces and we need something else



We need to be on the payroll

I worked on the F22 program for many years (I started in the mid eighties). A lot of us have retired and we took our knowledge with us. Management wasn't interested in maintaining the old design tools we used to create the F22. Most of the work I did would have to be completely redone from scratch. I retired about 8 years ago and even back then our knowledge base had moved on to other jobs. So there is no such thing as a re-start, there is nothing left to restart. Any such thought would be the near equivalent of starting from zero with a few minor exceptions.

Cater cut the B-1A to free up money to fund for what ultimately became the F-117 Nighthawk.

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/lockheeds-senior-peg-the-forgotten-stealth-bomber-1534057907

Why try to bother? Half the stuff you would need may have gotten stored somewhere, so it may be found once again in a few decades by accident.

But most of the stuff you need to build F-22's was destroyed, and tossed in the Cobb County landfill, and all the people that built them are dead, retired, or working other projects locally.

Might as well just work out the F-35 to cost less long term since they air frames are being build in Marietta, Ga before being shipped to Texas to be completed.

F-35 has a trained staff working week in and out, and ready and willing to keep building F-35's long as they can, and all the equipment needed isn't under a few hundred plus feet of local landfill, or stored middle of bumfuck wherever it can get lost, so just make more F-35's since in the end, they seem to work good in the end.

Just build F-35' still we get something like Stargate SG-1's F-303's flying?

But F-22 while bad ass? I don't see a redo working. To many issues that would force you to start from nothing anyways.

Nothing you do to the F-35 will make it as capable as an F-22, short of alien technology.  It's never getting two engines, a larger radar aperture and therefore more powerful AESA radar, no side weapons bays, no ridiculously high mach number in supercruise.  Conversely, you could add the EOTS to the F-22 without redesigning the entire airplane.

Yes

About the time the joint strike fighter attack drone is rolling down the production line and the last F-35 is in the Boneyard.  

You know that my post is dripping with sarcasm.

You have mistaken what I said.
People think the F-35 is supposed to be an air superiority fighter.
It's not.

People think that the F-35 is supposed to be the second coming of the A-10.
It's not.

People think that the F-35 is supposed to be the next A-6 bomb truck.
It's not.

It's like a KLR650, it can do all of those things, just not as well as a dedicated single function aircraft.

The F-35 is going to be the motherfucker of motherfuckers.
Mark my words.

We'd better because if things continue as they are, the 2020's are gonna be wild.

USMC is still flying the EA6B, had dinner with a pilot last week.

I know it's not my ideal solution either. But you can keep on cranking out F-35's so you have the numbers, or hope we don't have to need aircraft in numbers for another decade or two while the F-35 gets done to it, what happened to the F-22. 8(

Oh you could make a new "F-22", but between now and then seems like we need more aircraft anyway we can get them. But my Uncle Don that helped figure out where to put lot of the wiring on the F-22's we have today died two months ago, and I don't think Lockheed kept any of his records.

As is same plant is making the main F-35 air frames day in and out, and most of the people that know how to do the work are alive and well, and far from
retirement.

Rather have a few thousand F-22's, but China or someone steps off, gotta run what ya brung.  F-35's are better than nothing

So I guess we can never build anything again?

Go to India..........

Lulz.

Not the kind of avionics I'm talking about.

That is okay when you are fighting a 7th century culture.

.


Pfft.
If he wants to hang with the Indians he can go to SoCal or Seattle, where the majority of people have solid bowel movements, bathe, and use TP.

So now we are talking about upgrading the plane before restarting production?  Yeah, this is totally going to happen in a reasonable time frame with a reasonable price tag.

So is just about any F-1X that is already in production at a lower cost.

All of the significant components under the skin were custom made for the F-22, true for just about any fighter.  The suppliers who made these things have moved on to other stuff.  Those lines, production lines unto themselves, have been shuttered, the engineers scattered to other projects, programs, companies, industries or retired.  This equipment was difficult to produce and integrate the first time - it won't be substantially easier to do so a second time.  The learning curve is significant.  Hell, the re-learning curve is humbling enough.

Many of these suppliers have changed processes from the ones used originally - any time processes are changed, that's a significant hurdle to qual' that component for use on the aircraft.  Maybe they could bring back the old process, maybe not?  Maybe resurrecting the old process is more expensive?

And now we are far enough along that design software obsolescence is a problem.  You're talking about putting together two guys who are probably each two companies removed from their original contractor/vendor relationship.

Currently, the program is in "sustainment".  The folks working sustainment are top notch - most were there for production.  But, bringing the aircraft back into production and flight testing is far bigger than just scaling up their skillsets.

Congress's "vision" for restarting the F-22 is essentially stringing together enough funding to rehire/retask/relocate a bunch of engineers for about two years, at which point the decision will be made that it isn't worth it, and the restart will be terminated.  Nobody is going to show up for A-12 part II.

Put together a meaningful plan that either takes full advantage of the in situ mission system capabilities, or possibly take mission systems to the next level, and then you'd get more interest.  Until then, it just looks like a road to nowhere, and you'd be a fool to hitch a ride down that path.

tl;dr
It's going to be very expensive to bring the aircraft back.
Congress isn't going to commit to the proper level of funding to do so.
At the first sign of cost overruns/schedule delays/mission creep, Congress will kill it.
Congress will claim the moral high ground by saying they tried to do the right thing, but their job is hindered by stupid Americans who can't get their act together.
Everyone who's BTDT sees where this is going.

You should consider Cybersecurity if you're retiring in the next year or two.  Hiring like crazy right now.

Why America Simply Can't Build Anymore F-22 Raptors

Wait a minute… You were over Macho Grande?

No.  Not even close.

I was under the impression the F-22's computers were built to be exactly the opposite -- very easy to upgrade and modify and add to.  

Also, talking about the processors being "25Mhz" as though that's an issue is silly -- it all depends on what that particular processor is supposed to do and whether or not it's adequate to do that job.  There are a lot of things a 25mhz processor can do just fine, especially if you have banks and cards full of them all doing their own discrete tasks and voting and talking to each other as I would *assume* one would build an aviation computer to do.

probably be cheaper to put these into production...or approximately the same cost as restarting the F-22 line.

They're going to have to bid out all the sub-assemblies that were made by companies that no longer exist, and re-certify every fucking one of them. Might as well build something new.

If those things were 25MHz, the F-22 wouldn't have hundreds of pounds of dedicated two-phase vapor cycle refrigeration equipment in it.

Well, 25mhz just doesn't tell us anything about the computer system.  They don't have a PIII ATX motherboard in there, they've most likely built a bunch of custom hardware, possibly custom silicon, and done quite a bit of integration -- so even if there is a "25mhz" processor there, that might be perfectly adequate to do the things it needs to do.  

For a reference, we went to the moon with a computer that used discrete ICs to build its processors, had a 2mhz clock (sort of...) and 2k of core memory -- by which I mean literal magnetic cores in a grid - and had the programs manually woven into rope memory.

3 25mhz computers with 300MB of ram each would be many many times more powerful than that -- even if that's all it has in it.  

I've heard the CIPs compared to multiple CRAYs in terms of computing power.  Not sure how accurate that is, but that would explain your cooling requirements at least -- keep in mind, of course, fabs in the 90's compared to today.

That's a decent description.

They are impressive space heaters if you forget to power them down.

That was an expensive pain in the ass to clean up I bet.

Contacting is great if you are retired and have health insurance from somewhere else. I miss the $ but there is no way I could pay for the insurance for a family a 6.

Really?  Bombs don't show up on radar?

It's unlikely it's coming back, but never say never.

U-2 manufacturing ended in 1969 after a production run beginning in 1955.  Production resumed in 1980 as the TR-1/U-2R and the number of U-2 airframes produced doubled from somewhere in the 50s to over 100.

The C-5 is another example.  C-5A production ended in 1973 and the line was mothballed.  In 1985 after much lobbying by Lockheed the C-5B entered production.

If Lockheed Martin is putting pressure on Congress to re-open the F-22 production line as an F-22B that uses the F-35's avionics then I will not close the door to any chance of F-22 production restarting.

They have a track record of making such things happen.

I get that it would be expensive - but you have drawings, specs, working models, and you know it works.   You have skilled manufacturers that know how to build / engineer critical hardware, even if they haven't built that specific piece before.   It's always easier to recreate something that's been done before than it is to start over.

Difficult? - Sure.

Expensive?  Sure, but it has to be less than starting over since you have a working design and you don't have to repeat that phase of the project.

Get military aircraft mfgs together that aren't working on the JSF and get it going if there is a need for it.

Hence my use of "dirtied up".

Stealth is only part of what allows JSF to penetrate contested air space.

The F-35 carrying bomb loads externally is still much more advanced than any 4th Gen.