Both of you are understandably incorrect. The very engineers who designed the F-22 are around. With Sequestration, many jobs dried up, and they went on to other jobs utilizing their talents. Many of the engineers were quite young in the pits. You will lose some of the older engineers, but certainly the majority are still out there, many underemployed at this time, they could retire, but hope the Trump Administration will give them another 10 years of employment. As for changes in design, your talking about materials, or new technologies that can be re-designed and retrofitted to engines, frames, wings exhaust nozzles, the talent is there, saying its too late is wasting that talent. To keep our design edge robust, you must keep employed and challenged the minds of our youth, the experience of our seasoned engineers, to pass on knowledge and experience to the engineers coming thru the ranks, and most importantly keep them employed and challenged to promote new people in schools wanting to become engineers and keep our edge in the world.
Would be nice if you were correct but others, more knowledgeable than me, say otherwise.
When you split up a team and send them to the four winds then brain drain happens. Yeah many are still around... but many aren’t. I work in the industry and know some that worked on that plane... but remember that was TWENTY years ago. The guys that were senior back then are gone. Fully Retired and some even dead by now. The guys that were middle of the pack, some are around but if they have not been doing aerospace in 15 years then you don’t want them back. Then young guys from then... yeah we are still around but we did not know the intimate details, the whys and what for’s of what was going on. We were just learning back then and the reasons for decisions weren’t obvious to us until later in our careers. I am nearly 40 and the F-22 development was before my time. I was just an intern when they were putting the finishing touches on the F-22 design. Anyone that was ‘senior’ then... well there aren’t many left and few would be willing to work on things.
Anyone that was my age in the mid-late 90s is by dad’s age now and he is retired from the industry now. Off doing other stuff. No intention to ever go back to a big aerospace company.
There is going to be a lot of rework when the start the line up again. Which isn’t all bad. The F-22 could use some updates. But shutting down production has consequences.