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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.
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