1998年4月01
五角大楼发言人肯·培根了。…………问:我想继续关注上周关于F-22的讨论。上周我们被告知，F-22的测试项目将会在年底做出生产决定之前加速进行。周五，美国空军表示，没有加速试验的计划。你能给我们解释一下那个情况吗?答:我和空军谈过这个问题，我没有拿到上周的成绩单，就说有机会加快这个项目的进程，而且可以加快进程。我的理解是，F-22测试已经中断，其中一个原因是，他们驾驶的最后一架飞机是在格鲁吉亚飞行的。他们把它拆开了。他们用C-5把它拆下来运到爱德华兹空军基地，我想，在加利福尼亚或内利斯或其他地方他们要在西部进行测试。他们正在把东西重新组装起来，我相信他们会在4月份再次进行测试。 I had a long discussion with the head of the F-22 program earlier this week or late last week, and it was my impression that one of the things they may be able to do is to fly it more frequently and accelerate the testing. Whether they've decided to do that, I can't say at this stage. Q: Can you tell us what you said about how much they can accelerate, given that they, by their own plans, only have two airplanes available? A: I can't tell you that, no. Q: You just characterized the F/A-18 as running ahead of schedule and below budget, and they're certainly flying those planes a great deal. How would you contrast or how would you compare the F/A-18 with the F-22 program? A: One is 1970s or '80s technology and one is 21st Century technology. Q: (inaudible) A: No, I didn't say that at all. I think we're talking about entirely different generations of airplanes. I think that basically the F/A-18E/F is a modification to a plane that's been in the fleet for some time. The F-22 is a totally new airplane. It has stealth characteristics. It has a new design. And it's a plane that the Air Force believes is going quite well. And one of the... There are several reasons for that. One goes back to a point I made earlier that the Pentagon has tried to change the way in which it designs and builds major weapons. Much more of this has been able to be done by computer, in wind tunnels, through new design techniques than in the past. The Air Force also thinks that there is a certain amount of testing that can take the place of actual flight testing. Obviously you can't replace flight testing and they're not trying to replace flight testing, but there has been an awful lot of wind tunnel testing, there's been a lot of avionics testing, and a lot of sort of computerized testing of the plane at every stage of its development. Planes now are made sort of like automobiles. They're made all over the place. They're rarely made in just one plant where you start from some metal and turn it into an airplane. The wings are made one place, and they're married with the fuselages made in another place. The avionics come in from other parts of the country. And that's the way this plane is being assembled, and computerization is one of the things that helps all this stuff fit together the way it's planned to be. I talked to Brigadier General Carlson about this, and he was quite confident that the program was going well. ............. (end transcript)