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What do you do when the canopy on a new F-22A fighter jet doesn't open and the pilot is trapped inside for five hours?
Get out the chainsaws.
That's what maintenance technicians at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia did a couple weeks ago after calling Lockheed Martin Corp., the plane's manufacturer, to find out how to free the pilot.
The cost of a new canopy: $182,205.
"Since the American taxpayers have already spent billions of dollars on the F-22, our servicemen and women shouldn't need a chainsaw to get out of the aircraft," said Nick Schwellenbach , an investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, which posted pictures of the incident on its Web site.
An Air Force spokesman said the canopy problem was a first for the base's 25 F-22A's, planes originally designed to provide air supremacy in a war with the Soviet Union over Europe.
"Something like this is an anomaly . . . part of the growing pains" of a new weapons system, the spokesman told our colleague Charles Babcock. A Lockheed spokesman said a fix has been found and is being implemented.
Get out the chainsaws.
That's what maintenance technicians at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia did a couple weeks ago after calling Lockheed Martin Corp., the plane's manufacturer, to find out how to free the pilot.
The cost of a new canopy: $182,205.
"Since the American taxpayers have already spent billions of dollars on the F-22, our servicemen and women shouldn't need a chainsaw to get out of the aircraft," said Nick Schwellenbach , an investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, which posted pictures of the incident on its Web site.
An Air Force spokesman said the canopy problem was a first for the base's 25 F-22A's, planes originally designed to provide air supremacy in a war with the Soviet Union over Europe.
"Something like this is an anomaly . . . part of the growing pains" of a new weapons system, the spokesman told our colleague Charles Babcock. A Lockheed spokesman said a fix has been found and is being implemented.
Dr. Mordrid
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