Pilot Locked in F-22

This is embarrassing, from Military.com:

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...

As if the latest canopy shenanigans weren't bad enough, on May 1, Defense News reported that there are serious structural problems with the F-22. Seems the titanium hull of the aircraft isn't meshing as well as it should. Naturally, taxpayers have to foot the bill for the mistake (improper heat-treating of the titanium) which is found on 90 aircraft. The cost of repairing those wrinkles? Another $1 billion or so.

America's Hi-tech military is cracking up. It was a flawed and unaffordable concept to begin with, now we can't seem to get away from it.