The Defence Department is planning to cut Air Force purchases of the Raptor, which would replace the F-15E Eagle as the top US air-superiority fighter, defence officials disclosed this week.
Overall, the Pentagon is aiming to trim $60 billion in the next six years, mainly in weapons purchases, starting with $10 billion in the fiscal 2006 budget to be sent to Congress in February, government and industry officials said.
The belt-tightening was ordered by the White House, eager to trim a federal deficit that now totals nearly $413 billion and offset higher-than-anticipated Iraq and Afghanistan war costs, now running at about $5 billion a month.
The radar-evading F/A-22 was originally conceived to fight the Soviet Union, and its planned production numbers have already been slashed from the 750 or so once envisioned.
Under current discussions, total production could drop to 160 aircraft, said Loren Thompson, a defence consultant at the non-partisan Lexington Institute research group with close ties to the Pentagon and industry.
If such a proposal makes it through Congress, program funding could remain largely intact until 2008, with production closed by the end of the decade, he said.
Quimby, the Lockheed spokesman, said the contracts announced by the Pentagon late Thursday were a continuation of funding for "long lead" purchases first awarded in late 2003.
The Air Force unit responsible for the contracts, the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Pentagon has cancelled two major weapons programs - the Army's Comanche armed reconnaissance helicopter in February and the Crusader self-propelled howitzer in 2002.