I have a different aircraft to obsess over this week.
The US Air Force has confirmed to Flight International that a decision is pending on whether to launch a major upgrade for 63 of its Lockheed Martin F-22s.
Although the decision will be made internally within a few months, the service will wait to publicise the outcome until the Obama administration releases its fiscal year 2012 budget request next February.
Under review is a proposal to upgrade nearly half of the USAF’s fleet of 186 operational F-22s with a suite of advanced new weapons that have entered service during the last few years, plus advanced communications equipment that is still in development.
The proposal comes after the Department of Defense decided to terminate F-22 production in early 2012. As part of that decision, it accepted a USAF proposal to spend $1.3 billion on a “common configuration programme”, which is consolidating six different versions of the F-22 into three basic types.
More after the link
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August 14, 2010 at 5:10 am