After the last Raptor was delivered in 2012, the production line subsequently closed down and the tooling went into storage. It is clear that the decision was made not to act on it, with the prohibition on any foreign sales of the F-22 still in place today. We don't know how this study was received or what further discussions it might have prompted. They also explored cost considerations based on the possibility that the production of jets for Foreign Military Sales (FMS) customers could immediately follow the service's own final orders, as well as what might happen if the production line went cold for a time after the last of those aircraft were built. For instance, the study team outlined a notional export F-22 derived from the expected configuration, Increment 3.1, of the last Raptors on order for the Air Force. Israel and Australia had also shown robust interest in purchasing Raptors.Īll of this had an impact on the various ground rules and assumptions the group working on the study set as their starting point, as well as the potential courses of action they ultimately crafted. Japan had inquired on multiple occasions about the possibility of acquiring Raptors, despite the passage of an amendment to another bill in 1998, put forward by David Obey, then a Democratic Representative from Wisconsin and Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, which had blocked any potential exports of these jets. This had apparently come up in response to one of the Japanese government's many overtures over the years expressing interest in buying F-22s. In June 2009, Reuters had also reported that legislators were considering asking the service this new F-22 export study. Despite initial opposition, Congress agreed to the plan in July of that year in the face of a threat from President Barack Obama to veto any appropriations bill that included money for additional Raptors. Air Force, something the service had acquiesced to in no small part to ensure continued funding would be available for what would become the B-21 Raider stealth bomber. In April 2009, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had announced his fateful intention to dramatically curtail F-22 purchases for the U.S.
You can read more about that more recent study here.
The War Zone had sought this document, which says the full unredacted version includes information that is still tightly controlled under multiple Special Access Programs (SAP), after noticing it among the references included in an unclassified report that the service sent to Congress about restarting F-22 production in 2017. The Air Force released a heavily redacted, though still extremely insightful copy of this briefing, which is titled "F-22 Export Configuration Study" and is dated March 2010, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Air Force to look into exactly what it might take to make an export version of the F-22, and The War Zone has now obtained a declassified copy of a detailed briefing into just what that study found. The matter of exporting the jets still stirs strong opinions more than a decade after Congress made it impossible to do so for fear of the secrets of the aircraft's many sensitive components and capabilities leaking out. The story of Lockheed's F-22A Raptor stealth fighter has been and remains contentious in many ways, especially with regards to the short-sighted decision to curtail its production run and debates over whether or not to start building them again.