Whistle-blower Raptor pilots won't be punished

Virginia Air National Guard pilots Major Jeremy Gordon and Captain Josh Wilson won't be punished for speaking out... or so the US Air Force says. I have my doubts about that personally.

Meanwhile, in a somewhat weird twist, Lockheed Martin has apparently taken to Twitter to mount some sort of Raptor defense campaign. Basically, they sending out little F-22 factoids on a twitter feed...

But in this case, the only thing to do is to find out what is causing this problem and then to fix it... Only then will the public at large regain confidence in this jet. The USAF is apparently making some progress in that regard.

Let's hope they're well on their way to finding the root cause of this debacle.

In the meantime, here is a video of the last two tails Lockheed delivered to the USAF on their last company flight. Lockheed send the video over this morning. What's really good about this video is that it is not sullied by horrifyingly bad music... It's just the roar of a pair of Pratt & Whitney F119s as the universe intended (toward the end that is- it's mostly silent otherwise).

Here are some stills from that flight. Lockheed went all out and they have some fine photographers at their disposal.

Here is the last aircraft built 10-4195 flying alongside 10-4193, the third from last jet which is now the 3rd Wing flagship.