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Air Force’s final F-22 Raptor—tail number 4195—conducted its first test flight in Marietta, Ga., this week, announced manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Company test pilot Bret Luedke flew the aircraft during Wednesday’s sortie. This aircraft—the last of 187 production F-22s built on the company’s Marietta assembly line—is slated to complete flight tests by the end of May. At that point, the company will formally deliver it to the Air Force, which plans to assign it to the 3rd Wing at JB Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska. Raptor 4195 rolled off of the assembly line in mid December, some 15 years after the first F-22. (For more on Raptor 4195, read The Last Raptor from Air Force Magazine’s February issue.)
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.