An aircraft made with a composite fuselage is 20% lighter, and costs less than one manufactured with an aluminum fuselage, and because of this, Raytheon Aircraft (Wichita, KS) decided to build its Premier I and Hawker Horizon business jets with composite fuselages rather than aluminum.
Because composite fuselage's are made up of layers of materials, Raytheon needed to find a way to increase production. Using the Viper FPS-3000 Computer Numeric Control (CNC) Fiber Placement System (FPS) developed by Cincinnati Machine (Cincinnati), Raytheon reduced production time to less than a week and the total parts on the Premier I by more than half.