http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/201...future-use.html

Lockheed Martin confirms the US Air Force has decided to retain tooling for the F-22 after the production line in Marietta, Georgia, shuts down as scheduled in 2012.

The decision means that USAF officials will be able to repair and modernise the service's aircraft, or manufacture new Raptors.

Lockheed says tools with "near-term needs" will be retained on site. Others will be preserved and stored in large, bar-coded steel containers commonly used by the shipping industry, which it says reduces "costs associated with conventional warehousing".

Air force officials were not immediately available to comment, but have previously said that a decision to preserve F-22 tooling would be intended to support a future service life-extension programme for the stealth fighter.

Yay!

I wonder if the ever-increasing costs of the F-35 were a factor too, since buying more F-22s is not sounding too much more expensive than F-35s at this point.

Or the election of a President & Congress that understands that training is almost as hard on equipment as combat, and that you have to build enough to account for training attrition.

I'm not sure I follow - isn't this the same President and Congress that was in place when Gates canceled the F-22? Or do you mean that you think LM is expecting that to change in the near future?

Well I want to stay away from WCE, but let's just say that I think the next President and 112th/113th Congress will understand that A) you have to replace planes lost in training, and B) you can't expect 183 F22s (minus those lost to attrition) to do the job of 480-odd F15Cs for 25+ years. That sooner or later we're going to need quality AND quantity.

OK, I just wasn't sure what you meant - got it now, thanks.

I hope this leads to more F-22s some day.