#1 Not true...(BTW, that is a whole lot more sedate and printable than the way I originally wrote it.)
Here's what happened: the canopy actuator system failed. It happens, and especially on a new plane (all the birds at Langley are Batch 1 ships)you can expect the occasional problem. The pilot hit the handle, the system it was attached to didn't work. There is no way to access the actuator system except through the cockpit, so the guys were faced with a problem. The only other way to get it off the plane was to jettison it, which could have caused injury to the pilot and even more damage to the airframe - the jettison system simply severs all the mechanical linkages and the slipstream pretty much does the rest. Just sitting there on the ground means the canopy would have probably only gone a few feet in the air with no way to know if it would land IN the cockpit and injure the pilot, or on top of the plane and ding the airframe and RAM coating. Nobody wanted to cut that canopy, but it was teh only logical choice.
BTW, Lockheed is IIRC paying for the titanium flaws.
Mike
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