As Bill Sweetman Notes, the F-22 is not even close to achieving its desired maintenance goals:
- The mean time between maintenance intervals is less than one hour.
- That number is half what it should have been at the end of system development and demonstration, in December 2005.
- It’s one-third of the “mature” goal, which is supposed to be achieved in 100,000 operational flying hours, in 2010.
- It hasn’t improved in the past year.
This is not academic. Last year, there was a class-A mishap when an F-22 sucked in a piece of RAM and trashed an engine.
The wild blue yonder boys seem determined to innovate themselves out of any meaningful military capability.