I got to tour Lockheed Martin's F-22 and C-130 lines today

[burkbuilds]

My school set up a guided tour for us at the Marietta, Ga. Lockheed plant today! It was awe inspiring. That place is jaw dropping. 3.5 Million square feet of conditioned space in the main building and a lot of it is underground. We got to see several F-22 Raptors under production and also the C-130's being retrofit with the latest stuff. Our guide told us that they were also heavily into Nano flying technology, as a matter of fact he said that there could be several flying nano "planes" in the room with us and we'd never know it! (I looked around but I didn't see any!) You could have eaten off the floor in that place and it was so color coded that it reminded me of preschool. My hat is off to all the men and women who work there making the only 5th generation fighter plane in the world! They told us the F-22 was faster than any other fighter in the world even before they hit the afterburners! Unfortunately that line will most likely be shut down in the near future since the government decided not to complete the original order for around 300 planes, but they will be building part of the assembly for the F-35 in that plant and sending it to the main F-35 assembly plant for final assembly so I don't think they will lose many jobs at that plant because of it. One interesting thing I learned is that if you Google Earth the plant you will see several C-130's sitting outside completed and ready to go, they've been there for a long time and probably will remain there. They were ordered and paid for by Libya before it was declared a banned country to sell to way back when and so they are just sitting there on the side of the hanger "frozen" as it were in time. Lockheed said they can't sell them to anyone else and they can't deliver them, so there they sit. (Oh yeah, and unfortunately, Lockheed had to keep the money for them too!) Anyway, it was a great tour and if you are ever in a position to get to go I think that you would really enjoy it.

[Water Warrior 2]

Sounds like a fascinating tour. Thanks for sharing.

[mrlmd1]

I don't suppose they let you take any pictures inside that place so we could all see that too.

[burkbuilds]

No, you can't take anything electronic inside, no phones either. They even make you remove loose jewelry and even earrings because they don't want to risk having something fall off and get into any machinery or products. I don't know how tough it is to get on a tour, we had to sign up in advance and I think they even ran a brief security check on us before we got there and then you had to show a government issued ID to verify that you were the person who signed up before they'd issue a visitors pass and put us in the tour group.

[dhgeyer]

Sounds like a good time. Glad you got to do it and share the experience.