F117 Stealth Fighter....

[GG Allin]

Retired 12 years ago, seen in the skies out west lately. What's going on with them?

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33593/f-117s-flew-directly-over-los-angeles-on-another-mission-off-the-southern-california-coast

[varmint]

There’s a carrier doing run ups off San Diego. Probably going to be deployed near China.

The chimes have been working on a stealth plane. So I guess this is practice.

[fanaudical]

There have been a few articles on "The Drive" (in the military section) stating/theorizing that they have brought some of these out for aggressor training. (The F-117's are used to train pilots of newer craft how to detect stealth aircraft.)

EDIT - OK - I take that back. I thought I read this on "The Drive" but now can't find the article or where I read that originally.

[Embraer]

They've been flying "again" since at least 2012. I controlled them daily when I was at ZLA.

[Por_sha911]

Speaking of training, Top Gun just started on the IFC channel (Charter/Spectrum) just in case you want to see it for the 1001st time

[Jeff Higgins]

The "Wobbly Goblin" was just such a truly horrible airplane right out of the gate that it got retired unusually early. Their flying qualities, armaments, and all of that were so severely compromised to achieve its "stealth" abilities that, once they were rendered somewhat less than "stealthy" anymore, it just wasn't worth keeping them flying.

Word had it that once they were deployed for awhile, and had undergone field level maintenance, that much of their "stealthy" nature became pretty compromised. Things like panel gaps, non-flush fastener heads, even things like Phillips heads that had the sealant dug out of them (so they could actually be turned with a screwdriver), and all of that kind of stuff that gets a little more ragged, a little bit rougher, drastically increased its RADAR signature.

That, and we learned a great deal about such things since its inception. The F22 actually is "stealthier", with none of the aero and armament compromises. So, in the end, the F117 was just a very short-lived kind of a "bridge" effort. They are only flying them again in these roles because they have them, and most are pretty low hours.

[Por_sha911]

As far as unreliable and impossible to fly goes, nothing beats the General Dynamics F-111. Affectionately dubbed as the F-what-a-lemon by aerodynamic engineers when it first came out.

[sc_rufctr]

I always thought they looked ultra futuristic & cool. That alone would have had a psychological effect on the enemy.
Correct me if I'm wrong but they were the first aircraft that had to have a working flight computer so they could be flown.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Thought that was the X-29 (with forward-swept wings making it inherently unstable - good for maneuverability but terrible for control) which never became a real production aircraft but...

[Sarc]

Per Wiki:

Congress had ordered that all F-117s mothballed from 30 September 2006 onwards were to be maintained "in a condition that would allow recall of that aircraft to future service" as part of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act. By April 2016, lawmakers appeared ready to "remove the requirement that certain F-117 aircraft be maintained in a condition that would allow recall of those aircraft to future service", which would move them from storage to the aerospace maintenance and regeneration yard in Arizona to be scavenged for hard-to-find parts, or completely disassembled.

On 11 September 2017, it was reported that in accordance with the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, signed into law on 23 December 2016, "the Air Force will remove four F-117s every year to fully divest them—a process known as demilitarizing aircraft".

Although officially retired, the F-117 fleet remains intact and photos show the aircraft carefully mothballed.[56] Some of the aircraft are flown periodically,[77] and have been spotted flying as recently as February 2019.[78][79][80][81] In March 2019, it was reported that four F-117s had been secretly deployed to the Middle East in 2016 and that one had to make an emergency landing at Ali Al Salem (AAS), Kuwait sometime late that year.[82][verification needed]

In February 2019, an F-117 was observed flying through the R-2508 Special Use Airspace Complex in the vicinity of Edwards Air Force Base, escorted by two F-16 Fighting Falcons that may have been providing top cover. Closer photographs of the aircraft revealed that the tail code had been scrubbed in an attempt to remove the paint. The partially-intact code identified it as a former aircraft of the 49th Operations Group.

An F-117 was also photographed in 2019 carrying unit markings previously unassociated with the aircraft – a band on the tail bearing the name Dark Knights, suggesting either an official or unofficial squadron is maintaining the Nighthawks.

In July 2019, one Nighthawk was spotted flying above Death Valley, trailing behind a KC-135R Stratotanker in a hybrid aggressor scheme. In March 2020, a spectator recorded an F-117 flying through a canyon, sometimes called the Star Wars Canyon. On 20 May 2020, two more F-117s were sighted in a common aerial refueling area of Southern California trailing a NKC-135R Stratotanker from Edwards AFB, CA. The Nighthawks trailed the tanker out over the ocean after that.

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by sc_rufctr

I always thought they looked ultra futuristic & cool. That alone would have had a psychological effect on the enemy.
Correct me if I'm wrong but they were the first aircraft that had to have a working flight computer so they could be flown.

If I'm not mistaken, the F-16 went into production in '76 and was inherently unstable and fly-by-wire kept it pointing the right way.

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by sc_rufctr

I always thought they looked ultra futuristic & cool. That alone would have had a psychological effect on the enemy.
Correct me if I'm wrong but they were the first aircraft that had to have a working flight computer so they could be flown.

Sammy has it right. The F-16 was statically unstable and required a flight computer and was "nearly" impossible to fly without the computer. The F117 and the B2 & B3 are similar.

On the original topic, the F-22 production lines SHOULD be reactivated. That was one of the STUPIDEST decisions. Right when the on-going production costs were the lowest, the plane was cancelled.

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

If I'm not mistaken, the F-16 went into production in '76 and was inherently unstable and fly-by-wire kept it pointing the right way.

Correct. First "fly by wire" fighter. On top of making an inherently unstable design actually fly, it was touted as being able to save itself from pilot inputs that might damage the airframe, to keep pilots from asking it to do something it couldn't do.

Chuck Yeager panned that idea when he pointed out that a good number of WWII fighter pilots were still with us because they asked their airplanes to "do something it couldn't do". Just this once... pretty please...

[sammyg2]

Word has it that the F-117 can be tracked (and shot down) with radar using good techniques. My wife's uncle used to work in RADAR R&D for the gubmint before he retired and while he never disclosed anything classified, gave me a better understanding of how vulnerable the F-117 was.

Stealth planes are not invisible, they are detectable especially at lower speeds.
The B2 flies at a higher altitude (50k and near 650 mph) and that helps a little.
The new F-22 cruises a lot faster than that and that helps.
The F-117 flew slow and low comparatively, a sitting duck.
That's why they rushed to deploy the F-22 so quickly and decommission the F-117.

The Serbian battery commander, whose missiles downed an American F-16, and, most impressively, an F-117, in 1999, has revealed many of the techniques he used to achieve this historic moment.
Colonel Dani Zoltan, in 1999, commanded the 3rd battery of the 250th Missile Brigade.
He had search and control radars, as well as a TV tracking unit. The battery had four quad launchers for the 21 foot long, 880 pound SA-3 missiles. The SA-3 entered service in 1961 and, while it had undergone some upgrades, was considered a minor threat to NATO aircraft.


In addition to shooting down two aircraft, Zoltan’s battery caused dozens of others to abort their bombing missions to escape his unexpectedly accurate missiles.


Zoltan used a lot of effective techniques that American air defense experts expected, but did not expect to encounter because of poor leadership by the enemy. For example, Zoltan knew that his major foe was HARM (anti-radar) missiles and electronic detection systems used by the Americans, as well as smart bombs from aircraft who had spotted him. To get around this, he used landlines for all his communications (no cell phones or radio). This was more of a hassle, often requiring him to use messengers on foot or in cars.

The Serbs had spies outside the Italian airbase most of the bombers operated from. When the bombers took off, the information on what aircraft they had, and how many, quickly made it to Zoltan and the other battery commanders. Zoltan studied all the information he could get on American stealth technology, and the F-117.

There was a lot of unclassified data, and speculation out there. He developed some ideas on how to beat stealth, based on the fact that the technology didn’t make the F-117 invisible to radar, just very hard to get, and keep, a good idea of exactly where the aircraft was. Zoltan figured out how to tweak his radars to get a better lock on stealth type targets. This has not been discussed openly.
The Serbs also set up a system of human observers, who would report on sightings of bombers entering Serbia, and track their progress. The spies and observers enabled Zoltan to keep his radars on for a minimal amount of time. This made it difficult for the American SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses) to use their HARM missiles (that homed in on radar transmissions.) Zoltan never lost a radar to a HARM missile.

Zoltan used the human spotters and brief use of radar, with short range shots at American bombers. The SA-3 was guided from the ground, so you had to use surprise to get an accurate shot in before the target used jamming and evasive maneuvers to make the missile miss. The F-117 he shot down was only 13 kilometers away. Zoltan got some help from his enemies. The NATO commanders often sent their bombers in along the same routes, and didn’t make a big effort to find out if hotshots like Zoltan were down there, and do something about it.

https://www.defenceaviation.com/2007/02/who-shot-down-f-117.html

[Shaun @ Tru6]

30 years ago I was the business manager for a company that made small air intakes for the F117.

[flipper35]

The F-117 was only stealthy in one band and mostly from the frontal aspect. We have other stuff that is far stealthier since they came out and with the F35 becoming mostly operational as a ground attack (even though it is a F not an A, though technically it should be an A35) there is no need for the F-117 other than adversary training. They are still stealthy compared to something like an F-5 or MiG-29 and still useful for training long rang intercepts.

[Por_sha911]

Originally Posted by sc_rufctr

Correct me if I'm wrong but they were the first aircraft that had to have a working flight computer so they could be flown.

The F-111 was computer aided and impossible to fly without it.

[sc_rufctr]

Originally Posted by Por_sha911

The F-111 was computer aided and impossible to fly without it.

Thanks, I didn't know this. We had a bunch of F-111 with the Australian air force.
They've all been retired. The last in 2010.

[Bob Kontak]

Originally Posted by sc_rufctr

Thanks, I didn't know this. We had a bunch of F-111 with the Australian air force.
They've all been retired. The last in 2010.

The Australian government ordered 24 F-111C aircraft to replace the RAAF's English Electric Canberras in the bombing and tactical strike role.[72] While the first aircraft was officially handed over in September 1968, structural issues delayed the entry into service.[73] The first F-111C was accepted at Nellis Air Force Base on 15 March 1973.[74] The RAAF's first six F-111Cs arrived at Amberley on 1 July 1973, and three subsequent flights of six F-111s arrived on 27 July, 28 September and 4 December.[74] F-111Cs were allocated to No. 1 Squadron and No. 6 Squadron, under the control of No. 82 Wing. In Australia, the F-111 was affectionately known as the "Pig", due possibly to its long nose, terrain-following ability,[75][76] and/or the origins of the word aardvark (i.e. a loanword in English from Afrikaans, in which it originally meant "earth-pig").[77]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-111_Aardvark