F-117A Stealth Fighter Retired

zonker writes "Nearly 30 years ago Lockheed Martin's elite Skunk Works team developed what would become the F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter. A few of their earlier projects include the SR-71 Blackbird and U2 Dragon Lady spy planes. Today is the last for the Stealth Fighter, which is being replaced by the F-22 Raptor (another Skunk Works project)."

Comments

Fuel leaking SR-71's

[LM741N]

I understand that the SR-71's leaked fuel until they got up high enough so that the vacuum pressed everything together tightly. But speaking of engines, how did they keep the fuel from igniting from the engine while it was leaking?

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Z00L00K]

No - it wasn't the vacuum it was the heat from the drag caused by the supersonic speed that heated the plane enough to stop the leaks.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Thelasko]

They leaked fuel until the heat caused by friction (like on the space shuttle) made the panels fit together by thermal expansion. The fuel was also very difficult to ignite.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[digitaldaemon]

I do not think that was vacuum, but heat/warmth that caused expansion and would do the job.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[PortHaven]

Because jet fuel does not combust as easily as the government cover-up of the shooting of Flight 800 would like you to believe. ;-)

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[shawn(at)fsu]

I heard of stories where the had the fuel in an open container and would drop a lighted match in it, the fuel would not ignite. Don't know the truthienss of the story but it does convey how hard it was to ignite.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[mhall119]

This is slashdot, so someone has to point it out. The shuttle experiences heating from ram pressure, not friction.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_shuttle_thermal_protection_system

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[UnknowingFool]

Also the SR-71 would have only just enough fuel to take off and revendevous with a jet tanker as soon as possible.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[PortHaven]

"Friction"

-->

"In physics, ram pressure is a pressure exerted on a body which is moving through a fluid medium. It causes a strong drag force to be exerted on the body."

-->

"n fluid dynamics, drag (sometimes called resistance) is the force that resists the movement of a solid object through a fluid (a liquid or gas). Drag is made up of friction forces"

So it looks to me to be friction, just the creation of a pressure buffer taking the direction friction.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

The Wikipedia link answered your question, in the section about fuel.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Frosty Piss]

But speaking of engines, how did they keep the fuel from igniting from the engine while it was leaking?

I was stationed at Beale and spent many nights on standby while they fueled the Blackbird. Its fuel is almost impossible to ignite without the catalyst tetraethylborane (TEB), which ignites on contact with air. There where often pools of fuel under the plane when they sat in the hangars for a few days.

The thing that I always thought amazing at the time I worked with them was that the avionics seemed so outdated in an age where most older airframes where being fitted with glass. Lot's of round gages and such.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[pklinken]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP-7

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[jedidiah]

....well, it combusts easily enough to be used as Jet fuel.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[sootman]

And AFAIK, that was by design. They knew it would expand, so they took advantage of that and optimized the plane for flight, rather than sitting on the ground, which makes sense to me. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR-71#Fuselage

To allow for thermal expansion at the high operational temperatures the fuselage panels were manufactured to fit only loosely on the ground. Proper alignment was only achieved when the airframe warmed up due to air resistance at high speeds, causing the airframe to expand several inches. Because of this, and the lack of a fuel sealing system that could handle the extreme temperatures, the aircraft would leak JP-7 jet fuel onto the runway before it took off. The aircraft would quickly make a short sprint, meant to warm up the airframe, and was then refueled in the air before departing on its mission... On landing after a mission the canopy temperature was over 300 C, too hot to approach.

I could read about the SR-71 all day long. That thing was a freaking marvel in every sense of the word and there are a million neat details about it, and it's amazing to consider that it was built in the early 60s. One little tidbit you'll often hear (so it must be true ;-) ) -- "if a surface-to-air missile launch were detected, standard evasive action was simply to accelerate and climb." The freaking thing officially flew across the country in 68 minutes.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

Because jet fuel does not combust as easily as the government cover-up of the shooting of Flight 800 would like you to believe. ;-) Liquid fuel, be it jet fuel or simply gasoline is very hard to get to burn. Fuel Vapor of either of these however, is extremely east to ignite... and that, as I recall was the problem with flight 800. That the forward fuel tank was empty. Meaning it was full of fumes, and thus highly volatile.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[DAtkins]

There was an episode of Mythbusters which, while not directly related, did show that diesel and jet fuel would not ignite even under a plumbers blowtorch.

As always, it's the air/fuel mixture that's the important part. This does not hold for gasoline, which gives off vapors quite nicely, thank you.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[MightyYar]

I heard of stories where the had the fuel in an open container and would drop a lighted match in it, the fuel would not ignite. Well, since that's true of plain-old kerosene, I don't doubt it for exotic blends of jet fuel.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[hador_nyc]

the fuel cannot be ignited with a match; like diesel. that's how it was safe.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[MightyYar]

Jet fuel VAPOR, on the other hand...

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[RoninOtter]

Actually it's because the SR-71 doesn't use normal Jet Fuel. Typical fuel for large jet engines is US Jet A1 which is a kerosene-based fuel and it is very flammable. The Blackbird's engines used something called JP7 which has a very high flash point. You can actually drop a lit match into a bucket of JP7 and the match will simply go out.

In order to get ignition to start the engines initially, an additive chemical needed to be used to get the fuel's flash point temporarily lowered.

And don't get me started on the "Pierre Salinger Syndrome."

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[sexconker]

But in Resident Evil (the remake for GameCube) you could dowse downed undead with kersone, and light them with a standard lighter. (To prevent them from becoming crimson head zombies which would chase you at high speed later.)

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Thelasko]

Mod parent up
As I understood there was something to do with the environment the aircraft flew in that required it to use the mechanical gages.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Stanistani]

So, post your evidence.

We've seen that if you have three feds in a conspiracy, one will blab to the Washington Post, so... name your source.

. . .

I suspect I'll be waiting a long time.

The center tank on TWA Flight 800 was almost empty, overheated and full of fumes, and likely a spark from a poorly wired fuel sensor detonated it.

Oh, if you were kidding, it wasn't funny, emoticon or no.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard the same thing said about diesel fuel, but I don't believe it, because I used diesel to start a fire once and it was easy to light.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[mhall119]

n fluid dynamics, drag (sometimes called resistance) is the force that resists the movement of a solid object through a fluid (a liquid or gas). Drag is made up of friction forces, which act parallel to the object's surface plus pressure forces, which act in a direction perpendicular to the object's surface. It's the last part of that that applies to ram pressure. There is very little in the way of friction involved in heating the space shuttle, it's tiles are quire brittle and couldn't handle much in the way of friction.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[tgd]

Um, you can do that with gasoline, too.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[ahabswhale]

I used to be in the Air Force and had the pleasure to watch these things launch. They took off with full afterburners and the entire base would shake from the roar of the engines. Blue flame rings would shoot many feet out the back of the engines. Watching the SR-71 take off was the most amazing thing I've ever seen and I would always stop to watch it. Others who had been in the AF over a dozen years would stop too even though they've seen it launch hundreds of times. Just an incredible and inspiring plane.

You always knew when they were going to launch one because they would start sending out tankers (3 to 4) a good hour or so before they launched the Blackbird.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[tygt]

The fuel was almost impossible to ignite; it took some really nasty explosive chemical to start the burners (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR71):

JP-7 is very slippery and extremely difficult to light in any conventional way. The slipperiness was a disadvantage on the ground, since the aircraft leaked fuel when not flying, but at least JP-7 was not a fire hazard. When the engines of the aircraft were started, puffs of tetraethylborane (TEB), which ignites on contact with air, were injected into the engines to produce temperatures high enough to initially ignite the JP-7.

Presumably the temperatures were only present in the engines, so the exhaust itself wasn't hot enough to catch any leakage on fire once the engines were going.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[MightyYar]

That would probably work. But throwing the undead into a vat of kerosene and lighting the vat would not. :)

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[sm62704]

Jet fuel is a mixture of gasoline and kerosine.

And don't believe everything everything you see on mythbusters; there was a slashdot story last yeat about some kids at MIT debunking Mythbusters, who had "proven" that the ancient Greek death ray was impossible.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[pato101]

Please don't try it!
Of course, at a very hot day *perhaps* you can do it because there is so much amount of gasoline evaporated that the fuel/oxygen ratio is bigger than the required for a combustion; but do not play ever with gasoline!!!.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[DynaSoar]

Also the SR-71 would have only just enough fuel to take off and revendevous with a jet tanker as soon as possible. A loaded B-52 certainly had to, but the SR-71 didn't necessarily have this profile. The only one I ever saw up close took off from our SAC base without a tanker going along. That's not to say there wasn't a tanker up there (there was another SAC base with tankers only 200 miles away).

More curious to me was the fact that the one we refueled had two LOX tanks, contrary to the manual's statement of only one. It had the normal one under the cockpit, and a second one in the airframe between the wings/engines. I surmise the second was a propulsion system oxidizer. The JP-7 fuel being a kerosene, the combination with LOX would have given it the propulsion profile of rocket motors being used from 1945 on. As a constantly afterburning ramjet at speed, the engines could have easily been adapted to do this.

And frankly I don't recall the one we loaded as having leaked, from hoses-on to taxi-out.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[WindBourne]

I have forgotten the fuel type and specs, but the fuel required extreme temps to ignite. As such, what was dripped on the runway was not an issue UNTIL the engines were ignited (which is what lead to the the telltale signature of fire on the runway). The 71 and the a-12 used a special chemical that was capable of igniting at much lower temps, but would burn extremely hot. Once the real fuel was ignited, it would stay lit under normal conditions. One interesting thing is that both birds had only a little bit of the chemical on board. If it suffers a flame out, it would have only enough for 1-2 dozens attempts. Since none of the birds crashed due to lack of ignition, I would say that it was enough.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

That must have been awesome to experience that in person. I recently went to the Pima Air and Space Museum while vacationing in Tuscon and was able to check out the SR-71 close up and get some pictures of it. Just seeing a retired one in person is such an amazing sight.. I can't imagine watching one take off.

I'm very envious.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

When were you there? Did those things use JP3 and JP4 like all the other USAF aircraft seemed to? (I was in the motor pool at Beale, I usually refer to it as "Arnmageddon AFB")

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[lazy_playboy]

The wikipedia article indicates that the specifically designed fuel (JP-7) was extremely difficult to light.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[morgan_greywolf]

That the forward fuel tank was empty.

Yeah. A jet, on a Trans-Atlantic flight, has any empty fuel tanks at takeoff. Uh huh. Did I mention that I live in Florida and that I have some swamp land to sell you?

Ask any airline pilot with Trans-Atlantic experience if there would be any empty fuel tanks on a Trans-Atlantic flight from NYC. Go on, really. I'll wait. I already know what the answer will be.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Stanistani]

It works like this for the airline industry, or it did until 9-11 changed the paradigm:
If terrorism => mechanical failure
If mechanical failure => pilot error. . . Spoken by someone who's never read an NTSB report.

... My aunt had a friend who... The plural of anecdote is not data.

I see no cited sources.

. . .

Can we move on to something more substantive, such as your evidence for the existence of Santa Claus?

The error made in the TWA 800 investigation was that the government assumed it was a missile strike, and made knee-jerk changes in airport security because of this assumption. When the evidence for a missile strike proved non-existent, they had to start from scratch. People jumped on the explanation, and then tried to turn it around on the government (The U. S. Navy shot it down!).

Remember Pierre Salinger?

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[pato101]

You are both right and wrong. I'll try to clarify. The heat transfer between a fluid and a solid wall happens a the viscous zone so called boundary layer, where friction happens. On the other hand, the temperature which modulates this heat transfer is the external flow total temperature which is where viscous effects are negligible.
The total temperature is given by the compressible isentropic flow behaviour:
Tt/Tamb = 1+ (k-1)/k*M^2, where
Tt is the total temperature in K or Rankine,
Tamb is the ambient temperature in same units above,
k is the heat coefficient ratio, for the air is 1.4 and
M is the mach number.
Thus, for a 3.5 Mach number, the maximum for SR-71, the total temperature is:
Tt = Tamb*(1+0.29*3.5^2)=Tamb*4.5,
and for a Tamb of -50 degrees celsius (-58 deg Fahrenheit), becomes,
Tt = 223*4.5=1003K = 730 deg C = 1346 deg F

At that speed, the ambient is sooooo hot! even when the atmosferic temperature may be soo freezing!!!!.
At the leading edge of the SR-71 wings and the fuselage nose, you reach such temperature without any kind of viscous effects; just because you stagnate the flow isentropically there: you are more right than wrong at the end :P

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Deadstick]

Likewise any high-speed aircraft. The temperature of a gas is simply a statistical measure of how fast its molecules are moving when they impact an object. Right now, you're sitting in the midst of lots and lots of N2 and O2 molecules that are bouncing around in the disordered manner that we call Brownian motion. Every time one of them hits you, it transfers a tiny amount of energy into the cell it hits. Turn up your thermostat and they'll bounce around faster; your skin will sense that it's being pounded on harder by those molecules, and you'll say it's getting hot. A thermometer will respond in exactly the same way.

Now get yourself moving very fast, and any molecules that hit the front side of your body will have an ordered component of velocity added to the statistical disordered component you've been experiencing, and they'll hit you harder. Likewise, the ones hitting you from behind will hit less hard. You'll feel hotter in front and cooler on your butt. You haven't noticed it, because you've never been in enough wind to make a significant difference, but high-speed airplanes are a different story.

Pressure is a related but different issue: it depends on the mass of the molecules and the frequency of impacts, in addition to the velocity. Friction is not an issue; the molecules heat the surface by bouncing off it, not by rubbing along it.

If you get the chance, watch a Shuttle landing on one of the NASA feeds that shows the view from an infrared camera that gives a black-and-white image with brightness representing the temperatures. You'll see the nose and leading edges glowing white from the reentry heating: that's particle impacts at work. Then as it touches down, you'll see the tires light up like spotlights; that's friction at work.

rj

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Deadstick]

In order to get ignition to start the engines initially, an additive chemical needed to be used

Triethyl borane.

rj

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[jgarra23]

how did they keep the fuel from igniting from the engine while it was leaking?

The fuel from the blackbird is very difficult to ignite. Unlike car fuel, if you throw your cigar into it, the cigar will go out.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Kreigaffe]

If it has a wick, it'll light

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Frosty Piss]

I usually refer to it as "Arnmageddon AFB"

Not the same fuel. I was there in 1989-1990 timeframe. Yup, not a lot to do there. And that big attena with all the dead birds in front of it...

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[TigerPlish]

I understand that the SR-71's leaked fuel until they got up high enough so that the vacuum pressed everything together tightly. But speaking of engines, how did they keep the fuel from igniting from the engine while it was leaking? Not vacuum -- heat. The entire plane would grow about half a foot or more when up to temp. Panels then would match up, gaps would go away, etc.

The corrugated look atop the wings? When up to temp, that section's flat as a sheet of glass. Very funny design ;o)

About fuel lighting off -- dunno, other than jp7 (the witches' brew for this jet) has a rather high flash point -- because in flight, it does get crispy-hot inside this birdie. JP4 / 8 would go 'whoof' in the 71.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[myth_of_sisyphus]

A good SR-71 anecdote. From "Sled Driver"

        "One day, high above Arizona, we were monitoring the radio traffic of all the mortal airplanes below us. First, a Cessna pilot asked the air traffic controllers to check his ground speed. 'Ninety knots,' ATC replied. A twin Bonanza soon made the same request. 'One-twenty on the ground,' was the reply. To our surprise, a navy F-18 came over the radio with a ground speed check. I knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, he had a ground speed indicator in his cockpit, but he wanted to let all the bug-smashers in the valley know what real speed was. 'Dusty 52, we show you at 620 on the ground,' ATC responded.

        The situation was too ripe. I heard the click of Walter's mike button in the rear seat. In his most innocent voice, Walter startled the controller by asking for a ground speed check from 81,000 feet, clearly above controlled airspace. In a cool, professional voice, the controller replied, 'Aspen 20, I show you at 1,982 knots on the ground.' We did not hear another transmission on that frequency all the way to the coast."

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[russotto]

There's a reason the empty center tank is also called the "Pacific" tank.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Thelasko]

From what I understood it had to take off and go supersonic very quickly to heat up the hull. Once the hull was warm enough it had to refuel immediately.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Somegeek]

I'm sorry but your sentence structure should really preclude you from complaining about other's grammar. :)

The fuel leaking issue is fairly well known so you loose points for picking on that issue too. Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/

The leaks were more a design compromise than a design flaw from what I have heard. The leaking expansion joints in the fuel tank were required to allow the relatively huge expansion that occurred when the plane got up into its common operating temperature ranges. At mach 3 the heat from air friction soaking into the plane expanded the metal around the joints (along with everything else) and stopped the leaks. The joints allowed the expansion to take place without overly stressing the fuel tank.

I can only guess that the planes that you saw were empty and thus not leaking.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand that the SR-71's leaked fuel until they got up high enough so that the vacuum pressed everything together tightly. But speaking of engines, how did they keep the fuel from igniting from the engine while it was leaking? It wasn't fuel that leaked. Oil, hydraulic fluid, things like that.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Yungoe]

At the risk of seeming pedantic, it is not friction that causes the heat on atmospheric re-entry, but rather the compression of the gases in front of the vehicle. I am not sure about the SR-71 as it does not leave the atmosphere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_reentry#Terminology.2C_definitions_and_jargon

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[mpoulton]

You know that plane is still classified and may or may not be in use or ready for use. I'm not sure details regarding the quantity and location of lox tanks are supposed to be well known.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[sm62704]

If my sentense structure makes the sentenses hard to parse than I should try harder and hope someone corrcets me. Because I only want to look stupid when I WANT to look stupid.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

It just barely seeped out and evaporated almost immediately. It didn't literally drip fuel... And it was the heating and expansion of the planes body panels that sealed it up... not vacuum.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Firethorn]

Very hot day would be the worst. Think about it, the hotter the day the more vaporized(and therefore potentially explosive) gasoline there will be in the air. Given disbursion, there'll be an explosive section somewhere in the transition from 100% natural air to 100% vaporous gasoline. Trying to move a lit match through it will create a boom, and the hotter the air, the bigger the cloud, the bigger the boom.

The best time would be in the middle of winter up north. -30 or so would limit the amount of spread. Then again, with a flash point of -50, you'd still have some distance to go. Maybe summer gas up there in the winter.

Then again, the heat from the match itself would probably be able to vaporized enough gasoline to cause problems.

So don't try it is very right.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[MrNiceguy_KS]

Midwesterners can see a retired Blackbird at the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson. If you're in Wichita, it's about 45 min away, and well worth the drive. They have a space museum that is absolutely amazing, including the Mercury "Liberty Bell" capsule and the largest collection of Soviet space program artifacts outside of the former USSR. I remember when they got the SR-71. They added a whole new entryway to accommodate it.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand that the SR-71's leaked fuel until they got up high enough so that the vacuum pressed everything together tightly. But speaking of engines, how did they keep the fuel from igniting from the engine while it was leaking? You should research what a vacuum is, dude.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand that the SR-71's leaked fuel until they got up high enough so that the vacuum pressed everything together tightly. But speaking of engines, how did they keep the fuel from igniting from the engine while it was leaking? An SR-71's fuel was also a gelatin rather than in liquid at rest. Fuel did seep a little bit but once it got going and sped up, like others here have said the panels of the tanks would seal with the heat expansion and then the fuel would turn to liquid. Before that point I believe the fuel would be preheated to liquefy it.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[iamsamed]

They still can't outrun a SAM, though.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Somegeek]

I didn't honestly have any problem parsing your post, but then I didn't with the parent's either. As an example though, starting a paragraph with "Have the engines fall off is" would draw a raised eyebrow from a 'literate editor'.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[fahrbot-bot]

According the the Wiki article, JP-7 fuel has a flashpoint of 140 F. I heard an anecdote that a lit match thrown into a bucket of JP-7 would simply go out (which may be common for these types of fuel, I don't know, but sound cool).

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[pato101]

I had not think the problem this way :P
I was told this when studying fuels, about dropping a match inside a car deposit. There, at a hot day the atmosphere would *potentially* be too rich in gasoline to produce any kind of ignition.
In an open environment, you are right, there is always a zone with the right mixture to produce a combustion
nevertheless, again, do not play with gasoline :-P !!! gasoline is far more flammable than other fuels like alcohol, so the results usually over exceed your experiences. Kids stop playing whit it :P

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope - note even close. The gasoline will ignite before the match even touches the surface.

Boy Scout Camp story time. Back in the mid 80s I worked summers at a scout camp in eastern PA. Every friday night they'd have a big bonfire, campfire songs, corny skits, etc. Of course they never actually had enough dry wood on hand for these fires, so they made do with wet wood and soaked the stack down with diesel fuel. A couple pieces of newspaper and it would light up nicely.

One friday night as we're building the stack one of the senior counselors (hereafter known as "The Idiot") decides he would get the fuel. Now back behind the maintenance shack there were two tanks - one with gas, the other with diesel. Guess which he got - that's right, 5 gallons of unleaded. Which The Idiot brings back and starts sloshing onto the stack.

Around the fire - maybe 20 - 30 feet out was a row of torches made from #10 cans with kerosene and a roll of toilet paper half buried in the ground - kind of like stage lights. They were lit. As this bonehead is sloshing gas onto the logs, the gasoline vapors crept out along the ground. When they reached the lit torches, a sheet of blue/yellow flame flashed back across the entire radius from the stack to the cans. When it hit the stack - *whooomp* - a fireball almost as high as the trees. I was standing just outside the can line. People inside got the hair burnt off their legs. The Idiot is now holding a 5 gallon can, on fire at the nozzle, with a significant amount of fuel still in it. Which he promptly throws into the woods where it continues to burn - luckily everything was wet. The idiot pretty much has 1st degree burns, and no hair, on his entire surface facing the stack - reminded me of a roadrunner cartoon.

And for all that, the stack didn't actually catch fire - unlike the diesel fuel, the gas burned off to fast and failed to ignite it.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[pato101]

s/deposit r/tank
dammned false-friends

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

Because jet fuel does not combust as easily as the government cover-up of the shooting of Flight 800 would like you to believe. ;-) Amazing how TWA 800 debris showed precisely zero signs of having been shot with a missile, then. I suppose that was covered up too, according to you?

Here's a hint: it's all about conditions. After all, jet engines burn jet fuel quite nicely, thank you; the correct conditions for easy combustion are deliberately created in the engine's combustion chamber. Unfortunately, sometimes empty or mostly-empty fuel tanks have the correct density of fuel fumes, oxygen, and ambient temperature to support a fuel-air explosion, given an ignition source, so it's very possible to have a bad day.

As a matter of fact, the very U.S. military you believe shot the plane down requires nitrogen purge systems on fuel tanks in its large transport aircraft. They install a liquid nitrogen tank somewhere onboard and use it to feed cold dry nitrogen gas into emptying fuel tanks so there's little or no oxygen to support fume combustion. Unfortunately this is viewed as too high an operational cost for commercial airliners, though I believe the NTSB and maybe even the FAA have pushed for requiring nitrogen purge in airliners in the wake of TWA 800.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[sm62704]

Well, that was a semiliterate error! It should have been "having" rather than "have". The "if you" part of "if you have" could be put in as well, but I agree that it isn't very readable.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[thekm]

The fuel was also very difficult to ignite.

Which is true. You read stories of the SR71 program being a dismal failure until they fitted the plane with cigarette lighters...

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[jandrese]

Eh? Mythbusters did a followup of that death ray episode where they actually invited the professor and his students out from MIT to recreate the experiment in the actual conditions (a boat on the water, not standing on a sawhorse in a parking lot 10' from the mirrors), and it turns out that while it's possible to aim mirrors at a stationary target, it is very difficult or impossible to ignite an anchored boat 200' away, at least not without computer guided mirrors (which Archimedes did not have) or some sort of mechanical aiming system far more sophisticated than has ever been described in any of the ancient texts.

Ultimately, even if you could get the death ray to work, it would be far less practical than the other solutions of the day (firing lit arrows at the ships). It's an interesting idea, and one that has promise at the small scale (testing on land with just a few mirrors to see if you can heat something up with concentrated sun beams), but on the large scale against a moving (hostile!) adversary you have almost no chance of success. Plus, the city was on the wrong coast anyway, so the whole idea was dead before it even started.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw one take off when they opened the new Nashville airport. Shot a violet flame out the back end. Most impressive thing I've ever seen.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[jddj]

They've got one of these beautiful planes at the Udvar-Hazy flight center, near Dulles airport (Outside Washington, DC).

It's worth a trip well-out-of-your-way to see the thing - you can get right up close to it, and it is astonishingly attractive; moreso for being so secret and rare.

There's a whole bunch more good stuff at Udvar-Hazy - a great aviation museum.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that some Air Force Boeing aircraft have had the same problem with fuel tanks and bad wiring resulting in explosions. Were they also shot down by missles?

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[all5n]

Amazing that it was (along with the B-52) designed using sliderules.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[CantGetAUserName]

I understand that although several crashed none were ever *shot* down. That would seem to indicate that they could.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Rick Bentley]

Here's the Pilot's Operating Handbook for the SR-71: http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/manual/

It's a very cool read.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[winkydink]

Trust me, it lacks the sphincter-puckering powqer of watching the B-52's do their bi-annual minimum interval take off.

That looks like the end of the world.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[DynaSoar]

You know that plane is still classified and may or may not be in use or ready for use. I'm not sure details regarding the quantity and location of lox tanks are supposed to be well known. I've no doubt it's still classified, as are many much older and now irrelevant things; I know for a fact its true top speed and ceiling still are. I also have no doubt the plane is no longer in service, having been retired 10 years ago. NASA retains two of the original trainers, the only models still living, mostly for high altitude astronomy. All the others are accounted for and in museums. Maintaining and operating an otherwise barely supported craft would be very expensive. One can now get the better results from existing orbital observation craft than the SR-71 could ever produce.

Its reported speed of Mach 3.2 was based on an average speed over a course; that wasn't necessarily the top. A Major Brian Shul reports having sustained Mach 3.5 at 80k ft. And an ex-USAF security police enlisted reports having guarded on in Thailand, and the pilot wore astronaut's wings (USAF astronaut standard is 50 miles, or 264k ft.). The former wouldn't require the mod I described, but the latter would have. The pressure suit used would have allowed flight to this altitude. In fact it does and then some -- it is the suit worn during ascent of the Space Shuttle.

I spoke with a colleague at another SAC base, and he "wouldn't deny" having seen one or more with this mod, but wouldn't say more.

The Blackbird had no effective stealth capability, so if one were still flying it'd be easily seen on today's modern radar and IR devices. Space program/satellite fans would have reported seeing something fitting the profile. Although I can only surmise what the second LOX tank was for, I have no doubt that if I saw it again, and the second fill port weren't removed, I could ID it.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[delong]

There's one at the Hill AFB flight museum in Layton, Utah as well. You can walk right up and touch it.

There's a B-2 parked out front that you can walk under. That's quite a sight.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[mrmeval]

SR-71
http://www.sr-71.org/blackbird/sr-71/

JP-7 has a high flashpoint (60 C). A Caesium compound in the fuel helped disguise the radar signature of the exhaust plume. Other additives are mentioned here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP-7

"The very low volatility and relative unwillingness of JP-7 to be ignited required triethylborane (TEB) to be injected into the engine in order to light it up, and to light up the afterburner in flight."

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[ChrisA90278]

The fuel used had a very high flash point. You could get a bucket of the fuel and drop a lighted cigaret and it would just go out. Basically it was a low grade of fuel oil that was pretty hard to ignite. The feul was developed just for this aircraft so that it would be safe. It had a dye in it, purple,I think sothat you could know the right fuel was used or if the stuff on the floor was not purple to "do something" about it.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[CodeBuster]

The flash point for the JP7 fuel was very high. Infact, it was so high that the fuel was actually used as a coolant in the heat exchangers to help keep the cockpit cool enough for the crew. from the wiki article

"the JP-7 jet fuel had a relatively high flash point (140 F, 60 C) to cope with the heat. In fact, the fuel was used as a coolant and hydraulic fluid in the aircraft before being burned. The fuel also contained fluorocarbons to increase its lubricity, an oxidizing agent to enable it to burn in the engines, and even a cesium compound, A-50, which disguised the exhaust's radar signature."

A charge of Triethylborane (the main SR-71 identifies it incorrectly as "tetraethylborane") was used to generate the necessary temperatures to ignite the engines on takeoff or restart them in the air in the event of a flameout:

"JP-7 is very slippery and extremely difficult to light in any conventional way. The slipperiness was a disadvantage on the ground, since the aircraft leaked fuel when not flying, but at least JP-7 was not a fire hazard. When the engines of the aircraft were started, puffs of tetraethylborane (TEB), which ignites on contact with air, were injected into the engines to produce temperatures high enough to initially ignite the JP-7. The TEB produced a characteristic puff of greenish flame that could often be seen as the engines were ignited.[20] TEB was also used to ignite the afterburners. The aircraft had only 20 fluid ounce (600 ml) of TEB on board for each engine, enough for at least 16 injections (a counter advised the pilot of the number of TEB injections remaining), but this was more than enough for the requirements of any missions it was likely to carry out."

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Cobalt Jacket]

They could in a sense. The SR-71 would already be going so fast and high that SAMs would conceivably run out of fuel before getting a chance to catch up. It might have trouble with some of the newer systems (SA-21 Growler), but there are several documented instances of SR-71s outrunning contemporary SAMs.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[vought]

There's also a great SR-71 on display at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in Oregon. It is remarkably well presented, with Buick and Chevrolet starter carts and an engine display.

You can also see one at the Dryden Flight Center in California - I've seen the Pima SR-71, and it is in decent shape, but not as good as the aforementioned examples of this amazing (especially so for a late-50s design) aircraft.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Headw1nd]

That looks like the end of the world.

With good reason, since depending on the circustances it could have actually been the end of the world.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[bondjamesbond]

I didn't think it was funny at all. And I'm the one with terrible karma? WTF??

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[steveo777]

It really depends on conditions. See, on a hot day, inside a closed area, yes, it would work quite well, I imagine. Do not try this, however, outside with a match because any breeze will counter the effect (no matter how hot and saturated the air is with gasoline). You will lose arm hair. Yes. I speak from experience.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[KoshClassic]

No, but to have even the slightest chance of hitting the SR-71, most SAM's (especially those around at the time when the SR first entered service) would have had to been launched well before the plane would have even been detected. Yes, a SAM could reach Mach 3+ and 80,000 feet, but if they didn't lead the target enough, no way to hit a plane flying that profile.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[KoshClassic]

This is true. JP7 could have a lighted match dropped on it and it would extinguish the match. They had to use a special chemical to ignite the engines. They'd also use the chemical to ignite the afterburners - when the trottles were moved from dry thrust to afterburner the chemical would automatically be injected into the afterburner. They carried enough of the chemical to do so about 20 times.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

An SR-71's fuel was also a gelatin rather than in liquid at rest. Gelatin, hunh? Preheated to make it a liquid?

How, pray tell, do you start a jet engine with gelatinous fuel? I'm eager to hear about the radical technology in this new gelatin engine. Perhaps Bill Cosby can do TV ads for the new gelatin technology.

(Seriously, how hard would it be for all the know-it-all-shouldn't-be-posting-if-you're not-positive posters here spouting incorrect information to look something up to confirm their aerospace assumptions? I mean, it's not as through the SR-71 and its fuel foibles are not well documented.

Strangely, I am unable to find "gelatin jp-7" anywhere on teh intertubes! Perhaps a vital tube was blocked with a mucilaginous mass.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[tha_mink]

I heard of stories where the had the fuel in an open container and would drop a lighted match in it, the fuel would not ignite. Don't know the truthienss of the story but it does convey how hard it was to ignite. You can drop a match into diesel fuel and it won't ignite.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[KoshClassic]

They needed a fuel with a very high flashpoint because the fuel itself was actually circulated while in flight and used to cool the airframe. At the temperatures reached at mach 3, regular fuel would explode before it reached the temperatures that JP7 in the SR-71 reached even before entering the engines.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Egdiroh]

I really, REALLY wish you people would learn to use an apostrophe, damn it! And more importantly, when NOT to use one.
Are you in the U.S.? If so then you need to stop with the angry flower. English isn't a well defined standard. Don't believe me? Ask a American and Brit to spell color, and you will get to different answers.

If you try to counter by trotting out experts, then I will simply ask you who certified them as experts. The answer will be that other older experts did, and so I could ask again who certified them as experts. It could repeat like that for a long time, and probably in the end the authority of all the experts could be traced back to some monarch, most likely the monarch of England. Since many of us are outside the authority of all such monarchs, we are also outside the all of the authority that is bestowed by them. Which means that your experts mean nothing to many of us.

At best there are multiple dialects of English, with different degrees of standardization, but since it's been observed that new words get added to official standards for the language from being used, there must either be an unstandardized dialect, or room in some of the dialects for people to experiment with new usages. So, since Slashdot has no official dialect of english, it can't be assumed that anyone is using a strictly standardized one. As a result there is no room to rant about grammar.

The hard truth of the matter is that the there is are new constructs in use in the English language, that will require some modifications to the rules of grammar. One construct I am talking about is the non-punctuated mixed case abbreviation, which unlike acronyms are not fully pronounced like words, and can be generic nouns. CPU is a common example of this. However because these abbreviations can end in a lowercase s, just adding a lowercase s to the end of them for pluralization, can cause ambiguity so people have searched for a new way to express that pluralization and have latched onto is apostrophe s. Another construct is the repeatable named processes, such as a command. An example of this is "du -k" if you wanted to refer to multiple of these commands by just tacking on a lower case s, you'd make something highly ambiguous. So again people have tried apostrophe s, and found it to their liking. Also the apostrophe-s pluralization leads to more clear pronunciation. Everyone knows that apostrophe-s means tack on the sound the letter makes not the name of the letter, and since the pronunciation of these constructs often involves speaking the names of the characters involved, the apostrophe makes it clear that once should transition from saying the names of the characters to making the sounds they produce. This is also why apostophe-ed is used for the past tense when these constructs are verbs.

So the new usage is out there. Since people tend to like it, I suggest getting used to it, or finding a better solution, because at this point I think that hoping for lowercase s pluralization of these constructs is not going to be very fruitful.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[tha_mink]

I understand that although several crashed none were ever *shot* down. That would seem to indicate that they could. Or that nobody ever shot at one. Though that's not true because it's well documented that it has outrun them missiles in the past. Real high and real fast is hard to shoot down unless you've got a real big head start.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[KoshClassic]

Yes, it was enough. The chemical was used to ignite the afterburners as well (even once the engine was running) and the plane was designed to inject the chemical into the afterburners each time the throttles were advanced from dry thrust to AB. So the chemical was necessary both for restarts and igniting the AB, and there were even counters in the cockpit that would estimate how many restarts / AB lightings were left in each checmical tank (there were two, one for each engine).

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[regularstranger]

>> I'll wait. I already know what the answer will be. You clearly do not. The range for a modern 747 (which is what Flight 800 was) is about 8000 nautical miles. A transatlantic flight is quite a bit less than that (less than half). Why would an airline want to transport a bunch of extra fuel for no reason? Please tell me. I'll wait.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[tha_mink]

To put it more clearly...

n physics, ram pressure is a pressure exerted on a body which is moving through a fluid medium. It causes a strong drag force to be exerted on the body. For example, a meteor traveling through the Earth's atmosphere produces a shock wave generated by the extremely rapid compression of air in front of the meteoroid. It is primarily this ram pressure (rather than friction) which heats the air which in turn heats the meteoroid as it flows around it.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

They can sure as hell outrun some of them!

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[m50d]

A trick from my misspent youth: you can put out a flaming torch in a can of gasoline, but the act of doing so creates enough vapour that when the guy you showed it to tries to do the same it'll flare up at them.

/it's all fun and games until someone's hospitalized with second degree burns

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[tha_mink]

Um...I think it's an undisputed fact that the center tank had about 300 pounds of fuel in it. Even by the conspiracy theorists. In fact, the pilot who flew the Athens->New York flight prior to the New York->Atlantic Ocean flight said he (as is normal) pumped all that fuel into the other tanks during flight and it would be refilled in Paris.

On a side note, why do you people want to think that there's funny business with this? If a government can't cover up a president getting a blowjob, or a governor getting a hooker, then I have serious doubts in them being able to cover up shooting down an airliner.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

In "Sled Driver" it's stated that the SR-71 was shot at a bunch of times. Result: there was one near miss during Vietnam (but the Blackbird took no damage - it wasn't *that* near), and despite dozens of SAMs launched during the bombing of Libya the SR-71 was never in real danger. Brian Shul (former pilot/author of "Sled Driver") won't say what the real top speed was, but there are hints that he had it running fine at Mach 3.4+ on several occasions, including over Libya. In ramjet mode (ie, Mach 3+ cruise) the SR-71 got more fuel efficient the faster you went, so there was no real penalty to pushing the speed if you were careful. An absolutely brilliant piece of engineering, and IMO one of the top "hacks" of all time considering it was hand-built with late 50s technology at a time when no tools existed to work with titanium.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[tha_mink]

I see no cited sources But dude, he sighted his aunt's friend. He was a *trooper* man. *And* a vet. What more do you want?

Third hand knowledge. My aunt had a friend who was a state trooper on Long Island. He was a Vietnam vet, and stated it her that it was a missile. Best quote EVER.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Matt_R]

The range for a modern 747 (which is what Flight 800 was) is about 8000 nautical miles TWA-800 was a 747-100, the oldest type of 747. It was 25 years old when it crashed in 1996, hardly a modern plane.

The -100 has a 6000 mile range. JFK-CDG is only 3600 miles, so you're right - it still didn't need full tanks.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[tha_mink]

The important thing is that you were *wrong* about the leaky airplane. Plus, you were smarmy. *Plus*, you went on a rant about apostrophes with poor sentence structure. So like, three strikes. Go away now.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[regularstranger]

Thanks for the fact check. I made a poor assumption there.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

The SR-71s had a special fuel grade, basically kerosene as with ordinary JP4, but formulated with somewhat higher molecular weight fractions for a lower vapor pressure to reduce the chances of accidental ignition of leaks. I think this was designated JP8. It was harder to ignite in the engines, as well. Earlier poster was correct in identifying friction-induced airframe heating as the means by which the leaks sealed during flight. Basically, the titanium skin expanded due to heating and squished the elastomer seals between skin panels enough to keep the fuel aboard. Mostly.

What a plane. My brother ran some ground-based sensors in the aircraft's flight testing in various nameless Nevada sites. Said that at on a moonless night, Mach 3+ passes at very high altitude showed the engine exhaust gases as dim blue streaks against the sky, and depending on the flight profile, he could occasionally see the air data probe and the chines' leading edges glowing red.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

You sir are correct. The Air Force lost a KC-135 to a mid-air explosion in the late 80's when the crew forgot to turn off a fuel transfer pump in a nearly empty fuel tank, well no liquid fuel but lots of fuel vapors.

Caused some state department issues because it occurred in Canada just across the border from Loring AFB ME and us firefighters forgot to get permission before crossing the border to put the fires out.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[sconeu]

I don't think there's a supersonic tanker, much less one that can do refueling ops supersonic. That dangling probe *has* to fuck up any supersonic aerodynamics.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

Roger that. An SR-71 on full afterburners and with a light fuel load at take off (going to rendezvous with a tanker in a few minutes) made an incredible sight. Even more so at night (I only saw one such). Too bad for anyone who never saw or heard one. Of course, those who got to see a Saturn 5 moon launch say the same thing.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Juliemac]

I was in the Air Force when the SR71 was shot at by Nth Korea. It was a top of the line Soviet SAM. It missed the craft by 11 miles :)

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[CantGetAUserName]

And when it's as big a radar target as the SR-71 (yes, I know it's the exhaust) you'd better be both if you wish to survive the reconnaissance mission.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Mahjub Sa'aden]

Thank you ever so much for clarifying. I feel as if the wool has lifted from my eyes... and been replaced with bricks.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

A good SR-71 anecdote. From "Sled Driver"

        "One day, high above Arizona, we were monitoring the radio traffic of all the mortal airplanes below us. First, a Cessna pilot asked the air traffic controllers to check his ground speed. 'Ninety knots,' ATC replied. A twin Bonanza soon made the same request. 'One-twenty on the ground,' was the reply. To our surprise, a navy F-18 came over the radio with a ground speed check. I knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, he had a ground speed indicator in his cockpit, but he wanted to let all the bug-smashers in the valley know what real speed was. 'Dusty 52, we show you at 620 on the ground,' ATC responded.

        The situation was too ripe. I heard the click of Walter's mike button in the rear seat. In his most innocent voice, Walter startled the controller by asking for a ground speed check from 81,000 feet, clearly above controlled airspace. In a cool, professional voice, the controller replied, 'Aspen 20, I show you at 1,982 knots on the ground.' We did not hear another transmission on that frequency all the way to the coast." 1982 knots = mach 3.46
just an FYI, had to look that up

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

another thing about the 2nd LOX tank I might add is how it routinely would %@%#@NO CARRIER

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

Just in case you were being serious... the SR-71 goes supersonic, heats up the airframe... and then slows down to refuel.

You are correct that there are no supersonic refueling planes, although the SR-71 and its relatives DID have their own special tanker: The KC-135Q, mostly because they had their own fuel (JP7) that nothing else used.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[God_Retired]

In the seventies I was a kid living on Okinawa. We would see Blackbirds just about every day at recess. My Dad drove me over to the air base one day when a typhoon was coming and we watched several take off before the storm hit. Very cool memories. I couldn't tell you how many times I would sit in class and the windows would flex from sonic booms. Of course, at the time the plane didn't even officially exist.

Oh yeah, and every year or two some of the SR-71 pilots would come to our elementary in their spacesuits and talk about their job. Nice memories.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[cbunix23]

Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio has an SR-71A, B-2A, F-15A, F-111F, and U-2; and that's just in the Cold War gallery.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I know, no X-15 pilots have flown the SR-71 but one may have taken her for a spin that day.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Sideswiped]

It may have been a hardpoint carried over from the Lockheed D-21/M-21 (modified A-12s that had a recon drone ridding piggyback).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-21_Tagboard
http://www.habus.org/revealed/pics/gallery/a12drone.jpg
http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/771/504805.JPG

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Kagura]

That sounds awful. :( Where did they end up burying the survivors?

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Somegeek]

Troll?!?

What, did I piss off an Blackbird crew member talking about the fuel leak or something? How the hell was this a troll in any way shape or form?

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Moofie]

I love the folded-open engine bay. One of the docents said that they did it just to fit the aircraft in the room, but I think it's my favorite SR-71 display anywhere.

I love that museum!

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[AikonMGB]

According to Ben Rich's book "Skunk Works", it wasn't that they optimized it for flight as opposed to on the ground.. it was that no one could come up with a tank sealant that could withstand the intense heats required for Mach 3 flight.

From the book (page 206):

[Kelly Johnson] offered five hundred bucks to anyone who could come up with an effective high-temperature fuel-tank sealant. No one collected that dough either, and our airplane would sit on the tarmac leaking fuel from every pore. But fortunately the tanks sealed themselves in flight from the heat generated by supersonic speeds.

I find this announcement re: the Nighthawk (and this discussion re: the SR-71) quite fascinating, as I am about 2/3 of the way through "Skunk Works" =P

Aikon-

p.s. Kelly Johnson ran the Skunk Works back in the U-2 and A-12 days, then retired and Ben Rich (the author above) took over. It was under Rich that they developed the F-117.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

heh, mod parent up

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Beatlebum]

81,000 feet over the U.S. *is* controlled airspace (class echo).

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[TFer_Atvar]

There's one at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Pima, Arizona that you can actually sit in on open-cockpit days. It was well worth the experience and wait to get a chance to do that. I'd highly recommend it.
It was almost like climbing inside a glove, it was such a tight fit. Most of the instrumentation had been replaced by blank panels that were stenciled with an inscription that they had been removed for security purposes. Still, the flight stick was still there, and so were the pedals and throttle.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Killjoy_NL]

That makes me wonder though, heating up that frame to quell the leaks, was this by design?
or did they make the plane and thought "Oh crud, it's leaking" and later "Ok if you heat up from flight, they stop leaking, this is acceptable"
?

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[peterbye]

And for those of us in the UK, the only Blackbird on display outside the US is at Duxford in Cambridgeshire.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Bastard of Subhumani]

I'm a cockroach, you insensitive clod! Bring it on, I say. You monkeys have been in charge long enough.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Hognoxious]

I have the book the parent is speaking of, I'd thoroughly recommend it.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[God'sDuck]

I believe it was by design -- like expansion joints on a bridge -- since everything needed to expand as it heated, the easiest thing to do using the non-pliable materials available was leave gaps. Just a guess.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[God'sDuck]

There is one way you could make it work very well: spread the RUMOR you have a ship-burning death ray, and build a bunch of really shiny blinding mirrors. When ships charge, shine it in their faces while shooting fire-arrows. Voila, surviving sailors report you have fire arrows AND a death ray (not knowing only one actually worked), and nobody attacks your city from the sea for a century.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always wanted to test this concept myself. However, unlike I had seen on Mythbusters who attempted to direct arrays of individual mirrors onto a target, I would think it more reasonable to have a stationary controlling dish. Polished metal has a pretty decent reflective quality. Figure you have a 10 foot or larger diameter polished copper/bronze parabolic dish to focus sunlight at a given distance. And you have 1500 soldiers with bronze shields (also parabolic in shape) who are directing their reflections onto the 10' stationary dish. Now you have a situation where coast side is less of a factor because you are redirecting sunlight as needed, you have many people able to focus sunlight on a semi stationary object with relative ease, and only one ray of considerable focused energy to direct on said moving targets.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Killjoy_NL]

It sounds plausible enough :)

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[trenien]

Ah.

Dick size comparison using massive phallic substitutes.

I see military types are the same all over the world...

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[jandrese]

Given the maximum reflectivity of the materials of the day, I suspect you'd have a lot of trouble with your dish melting. Also, parabolic surfaces are surprisingly difficult to create, especially with ancient world technology. The other problem is that it would have one specific focal length (albeit a longer area of near-focus) which means it would only be really effective against ships a certain distance away.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[sailingmofo]

Great thing about the SR-71 is it was designed with a slide rule. There is a SR-71 at RIC airport as well.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[hidave]

The particular fuel used had a very low vapor pressure.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't the vacuum of altitude, but heat from the friction of wind resistance. The fuselage actually heats up to between 250 and 450 degrees F from the tremendous air pressure at Mach 3.2 (cruising speed). You're right, this was a big design consideration, so that in flight the thermal expansion tightened up all the components (relatively loose-fitting on the ground). The first step after takeoff in any sortie was to perform a quick sprint which heated up the airframe.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[StikyPad]

Reminiscent of the USS Enterprise/Lighthouse story. All the hallmarks of urban legends, but funny nonetheless.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Guysmiley777]

The big danger of going too fast was the compressor inlet temperature (CIT). That, more than anything else, was the limiting factor for speed.

For the SR-71, Mach 3.3 was the maximum allowable ("when authorized by the Commander"), providing CIT does not exceed 427 degrees C. Could probably go faster if you were willing to start melting things in the engines.

Also, the JT11 engine was not a ramjet, it was a bleed-bypass turbojet. The turbine was always spinning and burning some fuel, after Mach 2.0 or so the inlet guide vanes and the internal bleed air bypass system diverted some HP air around the core into the afterburner.

Check out http://www.sr-71.org for some amazing reading.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[AK Marc]

Ultimately, even if you could get the death ray to work, it would be far less practical than the other solutions of the day (firing lit arrows at the ships).

It's a matter of numbers. Persians invaded Greece with about 2.5 million soldiers. The "elite" force was about 10,000. Get something along those lines and you have 10,000 people with flat shields all pointing them at a ship, and even if poorly made, poorly aimed, and far away, 100,000 square feet of sunlight will make a ship warm. If there were only 100 mirrors, then lighting a ship would likely be impossible. But 10,000 reflective shields aimed at one point would be about 1,000,000 watts. That's quite a heatlamp. When Mythbusters gets an entire full football stadium of 50k+ people pointing flat hold-up mirrors at a structure on the 50-yard line, then I'll consider it tested. Until then, it's never been tested what can be done with lots of people and mirrors. For cost and authentic crappyness, make the mirrors out of aluminum foil wrapped around cardboard. Have it on a real field (astroturf will be more expensive to replae than burnt grass). And have the structure something that is fireproof. I'd bet that if you put out a metal shed painted black (to prevent painful reflections, the energy absorbtion just a side effect), you'd reduce it to molten slag in under a minute. Put out the tar-covered ship and you'd have a nice bonfire.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. It's strange that the maximum temperature the skin of the X-15 reached was around 1300 F.

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-60/ch-5.html

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[amRadioHed]

Watch it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPfegCqTKxA

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[greysunrise]

Do you know what altitude the Mach 3.2 was achieved at? Altitude makes a pretty big difference if you are comparing the speed at which the plane flies. Mach 3.5 at 80k ft corresponds to a speed of roughly 2312 mph which at sea level would correspond to a Mach 3.0. This is purely due to the definition of Mach, Mach=Velocity/Speed of sound. Speed of sound at 80k ft is 660mph where as at Sea Level it is 761mph A much more interesting topic than the thermal expansion of the SR-71 and how fast it flies is NASA's research into high altitude, perpetual flight planes. They are being developed to replace existing satellites and potentially fly for something around 5 years without refueling.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[RealGrouchy]

Yes, but how much bigger is the heat transfer coefficient in the viscous zone when you replace wool with bricks?

- RG>

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[pato101]

The SR-71 did fly such M 3. for hours!. X-15 flew only a couple of minutes.
I'm talking about ambient temperature, SR-71 was painted in nearly black color in order to emit as much thermal radiation thus reducing its equilibrium temperature. X-15 did not reach the equilibrium temperature of a M 7.5 flight; which could not withstand.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be in the Air Force and had the pleasure to watch these things launch. They took off with full afterburners and the entire base would shake from the roar of the engines. Blue flame rings would shoot many feet out the back of the engines. Watching the SR-71 take off was the most amazing thing I've ever seen and I would always stop to watch it. Others who had been in the AF over a dozen years would stop too even though they've seen it launch hundreds of times. Just an incredible and inspiring plane.

You always knew when they were going to launch one because they would start sending out tankers (3 to 4) a good hour or so before they launched the Blackbird. I worked Supply in the AF, and during the original Desert Storm I was deployed to Taif AB in SA, where we had the F-111's....those babies might not have been as impressive as SR-71's, but the Ardvarks sure did give a rumble and shot blue flames out of their tails, too!
We would sometimes go to the end of the runway, and they'd fly a couple of hundred feet overhead - awesome!
I'd often draw Calvin & Hobbes cartoons on the bombs they dropped - they would park them in the hardened aircraft shelters, one of which also housed our little BX.

Re:Fuel leaking SR-71's

[PortHaven]

Never said I believe the military shot down TWA 800.

I still want to know...

[WiglyWorm]

why are they called "stealth fighters"? They're actually a tactical bomber, and so far as I know, they don't have any method of attacking another air craft.

Re:I still want to know...

[OrochimaruVoldemort]

because they avoid radar detection by the shape of their hull (it makes the radar bounce back or something like that)

Re:I still want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because back in the day when it was being designed they called it a fighter to confuse potential spies.

Re:I still want to know...

[digitaldaemon]

Actually, just the F117 Night Hawk is a bomber as far as I know. They were called fighters because of the "Stigma" that fighter pilots have towards bombers...

Re:I still want to know...

[bigkahunafish]

the theories regarding this are two-fold...

First, fighters generally attract the better pilots than bombers, and since the F117 was a first strike or tactical strike craft, good pilots were of utmost importance...

Second, naming it as a fighter helped with the secrecy surrounding its true capabilities and use, especially in Cold War times...

Re:I still want to know...

[KeithJM]

why are they called "stealth fighters"? Wikipedia says they named it F-117 rather than B-something (which would be usual for a bomber) because it was harder to fly than regular bombers, and they wanted to attract fighter pilots to fly it. I believe the Ministry of Truth named it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-117_Nighthawk (scroll down to "Designation."

Re:I still want to know...

[operagost]

Obviously, he meant the "fighter" part. The answer would have to be something like "pride" or "ego"-- AF pilots prefer the aggression of a craft with AA capabilities like an F-15, although the really twisted ones like hitting ground targets in a more personal fashion with the A-10.

Re:I still want to know...

[Thelasko]

why are they called "stealth fighters"? They're actually a tactical bomber, and so far as I know, they don't have any method of attacking another air craft. I suspect they called it that to make advisories confused about the aircraft's capabilities.

Re:I still want to know...

[TellarHK]

I loved that game, but what always struck me as mildly depressing was playing the classic "Jetfighter II" which had the YF-23 "Black Widow" in it, the plane that eventually lost out to the F-22 in that round of fighting proposals. The YF-23 was such a gorgeous concept.

Of course, the best thing about Jetfighter II was mid 90's game physics. I fondly recall the time I landed a YF-23 on a carrier with a three-point landing due to intentional stalling at 10 feet off the deck. Low and slow, vector thrust upward, kill the throttle entirely and glide over the deck until you pop flaps and yank the nose up until you nail a stall then level off with gear down and just drop.

Re:I still want to know...

[Thelasko]

Correction:
I suspect they called it that to make adversaries confused about the aircraft's capabilities.

proving once again that spell check isn't fool proof.

Re:I still want to know...

[mgabrys_sf]

Um - no it doesn't "make the radar bounce back". Radar works by bouncing back a signal to detect. Meaning if it did - it wouldn't be invisible at all - it'd be working with radar just dandy. It deflects the radar's signal to produce a much smaller return signal. Meaning it was never "invisible" but had a small enough cross-section to be regarded as a non-threat.

Re:I still want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the 117-B had the AMRAAM and Sidewinder missile capability, but was largely unused.

One reason was obvious - you had to have the bomb bay doors open to fire them.

I believe they also had to fly level to the ground to deploy the missile properly.
Then in order for the missile to track, painting the target with radar also broke stealth.
So a bad combo for an interceptor, esp given the price tag versus other fighters.

Given the level of C&C where the 117 was flying, there was probably never a significant
threat from enemy aircraft in any sortie, anywhere. That threat died with the CCCP.

Re:I still want to know...

[Richard_at_work]

The USAF fleet underwent significant consolidation in the cold year wars, with some of the light to medium bombers roles being moved to the new heavier multirole fighters of the era, with great effect. Thats where the F-117 gets its fighter designation.

Re:I still want to know...

[smellsofbikes]

My understanding, based on talking to people who have designed systems to detect stealth aircraft, is that the OP is half right. The reason the F117 has all those big blocky facets is specifically to bounce the radar back in very direct lines, like a planar mirror, rather than in all directions, like a sphere. The idea being: you absorb as much as possible in your weird ferroabsorptive paint, but what you have to reflect, you reflect in thin lines rather than in broad arcs, and if possible you reflect them upwards, away from the radar receivers.

Re:I still want to know...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

why are they called "stealth fighters"? They're actually a tactical bomber, ...

When the Continental Congress put together the country's very first army, they named it the "Second Army".

The military is about hurting people and breaking things until the other side knuckles under. As Patton pointed out this works better if few of your own guys die for their country while getting the other poor saps to die for their own. A good military operation grabs every opportunity to improve their odds, both of success and survival.

If calling a bomber a fighter both confuses the spys and gets the best pilots to enjoy flying its exceptionally high-value missions (with support and sensor technology limited to preserve stealth), why not do it?

Re:I still want to know...

[Klaus_1250]

To add to that. It also used a special paint to adsorb radar-signals as much as possible.

Re:I still want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who modded this informative? Speculative bullshit, with a sprinkling of truth.

>First, fighters generally attract the better pilots than bombers...

Yes, fighters attracted better pilots, but ANY pilot flying x-craft was SELECTED.
That means rigorous process of testing, training, eval, and THEN they tell you who made it to 1st base.
There was no shortage of bomber vs fighter pilots at ANY time - Not in X-programs especially.

>Second, naming it as a fighter helped with the secrecy surrounding its true capabilities and use, especially in Cold War times...

Yeah, nevermind that they already had a "stealth bomber" in the B2 which predated the F117.
Oh yeah, also forget that NOBODY called it a stealth fighter before it was 'introduced' to the public.

So if you're done speculating nonsensically, go ahead and mod me a troll and eat your MRE in the barcalounger.

Re:I still want to know...

[N1ck0]

Thus the "your weird ferroabsorptive paint" part in the original post.

Re:I still want to know...

[mgabrys_sf]

upwards = deflect
reflect thin lines = small cross section

Thanks for saying the same thing.

Re:I still want to know...

[jhylkema]

eat your MRE in the barcalounger.

Ahh yes, MREs.

Meals Rejected by Ethiopians.

Meals Refusing to Exit.

Re:I still want to know...

[bigkahunafish]

Sorry, but the B2 was operational in 1993 while the F117 was operational in 1983 (and kept secret until late 1988). Perhaps you are thinking of the B-1 Lancer, which was NEVER a stealth aircraft. The F117 was the first real operational "stealth" aircraft.

Re:I still want to know...

[servognome]

As Patton pointed out this works better if few of your own guys die for their country while getting the other poor saps to die for their own.

The irony on the political side is it works better when you keep your own guys willing to die for their country while convincing the other guys not to.

Re:I still want to know...

[smellsofbikes]

deflect = bounce.
Unless you're claiming the F117 has something like a negative index of refraction, the reflection will be in the general direction from which the radar originated, which means 'bounce back'.

Re:I still want to know...

[Mr. Underbridge]

The idea being: you absorb as much as possible in your weird ferroabsorptive paint, but what you have to reflect, you reflect in thin lines rather than in broad arcs, and if possible you reflect them upwards, away from the radar receivers.

Right, so you want it to bounce away, but definitely not bounce back. As the original response pointed out, bouncing the radar back to it's source would result in a lot of unhappiness for the occupants of the plane.

Re:I still want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't about confusing spies, but rather adhering to treaty obligations. Various disarmmament treaties had limited the number of bombers each power would have operational. Many B52s had tail sections removed to render them "non-operational". Obviously, a fighter can carry a bomb. Bomb carrying does not, in and of itself, make an airplane a bomber. That is defined by characteristics such as range, size, payload, etc. Of course, such a careful play on the rules would be lost if you just went and called the thing a bomber.

Re:I still want to know...

[Scrameustache]

calling a bomber a fighter both confuses the spys and gets the best pilots to enjoy flying it Cue 80s guitar solo.

Re:I still want to know...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

It wasn't about confusing spies, but rather adhering to treaty obligations [limiting number of bombers]. ... a fighter can carry a bomb. [Being a bomber] is defined by characteristics such as range, size, payload, etc. Of course, such a careful play on the rules would be lost if you just went and called the thing a bomber.

Good point.

(But I thought the designation "fighter-bomber", designating a small, fast plane that had significant bombing capability without meeting the treaty definition of strategic bomber, was already in use for some only-details-secret US aircraft.)

Re:I still want to know...

[BlackSnake112]

Wasn't the B-2 in use in the early 80's (for testing at least)? Also since Jack Northrop (who developed the Northrop flying wing) was brought in to see it. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Knudsen_Northrop ) It was working in 1981 just few people knew about it. They brought in Jack Northrop as a tribute since his flying wing and the B-2 were the same size wing tip to wing tip. His design actually did indeed work.

Re:I still want to know...

[snuf23]

Actually before the unveiling of the F-117 there was MUCH speculation as to the existence of a secret stealth fighter. There was in fact a game released called F-19 Stealth Fighter.
There was also the speculative Testor's model kit of a F-19 Stealth Fighter from the early 80s that caused much uproar on the US senate floor.
The "stealth fighter" was much speculated before it was revealed. Designation was assumed to be F-19. Of course when the F-117 was revealed it looked nothing like the model designs .

Re:I still want to know...

[GigG]

Becasue tactical fighters are sexier than bombers and they certainly didn't want to put the A- (Attack) tag on it then they would have had to park with the A-10s.

Re:I still want to know...

[wbaxter1]

Though I find this discussion on the working of radar defeating technology oh so intersting. I don't understand what the subject of this discussion has to do with the question. What does radar absorbtion/reflection have to do with a bomber being called a fighter. A fighter is a fighter because it can intercept and neutralize aircraft while the target is in the air. Attack aircraft is an attack aircraft because the can destroy targets on the ground, a bomber is a bomber because it was designed to drop bombs. Yes there are a lot of blurred lines in the modern military, but it has nothing to do with radar absorption / reflection.

Re:I still want to know...

[Nimey]

Modern MREs are pretty good, actually. I ate one a few weeks ago. Only complaint was that the ersatz pork rib (kind of like a McRib) was too greasy. Everything else was good.

I'm saying this as a civilian who's /not/ used to military food.

Re:I still want to know...

[egommer]

This is why the F22A is called a fighter when in fact, it's really a Bomber. If you watch this video you can see why we don't need the F117A any longer.

Re:I still want to know...

[fat_mike]

You just made my day and I wish I was still at work. I still have this game, and the manuals and it works in DOSBox.

One of my favorite aspects was that it really did focus on the whole stealth aspect with the way your waypoints were chosen. That game was intense.

Also, nothing like barreling into the Fulda Gap with an evil laugh and a grin on your face preparing to bomb those dirty Commies!

Re:I still want to know...

[thestreetmeat]

Not exactly. The F-22 fills the air superiority role primarily, replacing the F-15C. Bombing is secondary. The strike/fighter role, currently performed by hornets, harriers, and vipers, will be done by the F-35 C,B, and A models respectively. There are plans to have it replace the A-10 for CAS as well, but I can't see that happening. Ever.

Re:I still want to know...

[badasscat]

Actually before the unveiling of the F-117 there was MUCH speculation as to the existence of a secret stealth fighter.

Yeah, we all knew about it for years beforehand. It was probably the military's worst-kept secret.

Some of it may have been intentional. It's possible that some stories were leaked to put our enemies in a tizzy. There was already no shortage of paranoia on both sides of the Cold War. I was young at the time so I didn't consider this, but most people knew there was some big secret program going on involving black jets that only came out at night.

The cat was pretty much out of the bag when one of them crashed into a hill in California. I remember seeing news footage and there was just a lot of black wreckage. It was not really definable, but it was clearly odd looking. And the news media immediately made the connection that this must be one of those top-secret black planes flying around that everybody had been talking about. I think the military finally announced the program soon after.

I wonder were it not for that crash if the Air Force would have been content to just go the entire length of the program without announcing it. The Iraqis and Serbs would never have even known what was hitting them. It may have saved that one from getting shot down over Serbia, since they knew what to look for by then (the radar signature with the bomb bay doors open).

Anyway, this is the first major military aircraft that I've now lived through the entire development, operation and now retirement of. Makes me feel old. But also interesting that other aircraft like the F-15 and F-16 are even older and still going (though not for much longer).

Re:I still want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

A similar situation existed with the SR-71 Blackbird, aka the most beautiful plane ever made. The "SR" denotes Strategic Reconnaissance, but it was nearly designated "RS" for "Reconnaissance-Strike", due to the possibility of it being used as a nuclear SRAM carrier.

Re:I still want to know...

[toddhisattva]

Congress quit funding aircraft whose designations begin with "A" sometime during the Reagan Administration.

If you want a strike aircraft, you must give it an "F/A" designation. "F" is "fighter" and cool.

Yes the Congress is that shallow.

Re:I still want to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

why are they called "stealth fighters"? They're actually a tactical bomber, and so far as I know, they don't have any method of attacking another air craft.

See the little F at the front of the aircraft designation? That stands for Fighter. Contrast that to the B-1, where the B at the front stands for Bomber.

Re:I still want to know...

[__aawdrj2992]

although the really twisted ones like hitting ground targets in a more personal fashion with the A-10. Hey! I like hitting ground targets you insensitive clod!

Re:I still want to know...

[Doctor Faustus]

Did you get this from the old Wings episode about the late-40's / early 50's Northrup flying wing bombers? I seem to recall from that episode that they showed Jack Northrup a model of what they were working on shortly before he died, but that it wasn't anywhere near being a prototype.

Re:I still want to know...

[Doctor Faustus]

But also interesting that other aircraft like the F-15 and F-16 are even older and still going (though not for much longer).
The B-52 is a lot older, and is going to continue flying longer. They're talking about an eventual service life of 80 years, although I kinda think they ought to replace them with a modified 787 for the non-dangerous bombing jobs. It would probably save money in the long run, especially if the KC-135 and P-3 replacements (and anything else the military flies that's basically an airliner) were also 787's.

Re:I still want to know...

[Runefox]

As you said, yes, that's the F-22 (formerly F/A-22, changed from F-22 and back again). But I don't think that the M61A2 is specifically bad news for the bad guys. It's got a high rate of fire and 20mm isn't anything to sneeze at, plus its integration into the F-22 retains the aircraft's stealth design, but there are higher grade cannons out there that can be used to greater effect on both ground and air targets (not specifically the GSh- series of cannons found on Russian planes (they carry too little ammo), but also things like the BK27 (on the Eurofighter Typhoon) and the DEFA (Rafale)), since they have higher accuracy and stopping power while the M61 series has high rate of fire and lower inertia plus initial firing spinup latency (especially on the F-22 with its gun bay door).

Of course it's a powerful weapon, but it's old news; It's been around forever, and it could definitely be improved upon. The GAU-12/U and GAU-22/A Equalizer series are good examples of an advancement on this weapon, though specifically they build upon the menacing GAU-8/A Avenger used on the A-10 with astounding success.

For the record, the F-22 is also capable of mounting weapons on wing-mounted pylons, though these are strictly optional and would definitely reduce the aircraft's stealthiness. There are supposedly ongoing tests to creating a coating that can be applied to external stores to keep this from becoming a big deal. As it stands, the F-22 can carry (along with two sidewinders in the side bays) at maximum 6 AIM-120C AMRAAM missiles in its internal weapons bay, fewer if air to ground stores are carried. Its limited payload ensures that a single F-22 isn't going to dominate the skies anytime soon in comparison to its predecessor, the F-15C, which could carry much more than that. The name of the game, though, is survivability, but I don't personally think that means as much. All the talk about "beyond visual range" combat is pretty silly. Many fighters can do that, but most rules of engagement would strictly prohibit it. True, it would be easier to get into the range required to positively ID the target without being seen, but once in visual range, you're in visual range, and radar absorbing materials won't help much against the naked eye. It just seems to me that the F-22 is a very expensive, less capable fighter that simply won't be shot down as easily. But what was wrong with the F-15? As I recall, it's never been shot down in aerial combat, and the F-15S/MTD ACTIVE, while just a tech demonstrator, in my mind may have been a better candidate for the next generation of fighter aircraft. But that's getting off on a tangent.

Just so you know and back on-topic, the F-117A Nighthawk has no radar - Only IR and laser targeting. It has no gun, and no Air-to-Air weapons support. Its internal bay can carry up to two bombs, generally laser-or-GPS-guided smart-bombs such as the JDAM and GBU- series. It's a single seater, has no afterburners and is strictly subsonic, while its canopy offers very little in the way of a view of the outside world.

Re:I still want to know...

[drsquare]

and they wanted to attract fighter pilots to fly it.

So airforce pilots get to decide what they want to fly?

Re:I still want to know...

[lzed]

The comments from one of the chief designers, Allen Brown, are that the Air Force wanted to pull their top pilots for the program. At the time top pilots were more likely to give up their current jobs to jump into an unknown program sight unseen if the aircraft had an F designation rather than A.

Re:I still want to know...

[lzed]

No F-117 variant as you described was ever built; just a proposal. Opening the bay doors isn't really a huge problem as it is done on the F-22 now. You simply punch the AMRAAM out of the bay at 40Gs and close the bay quickly. The bigger issue is the F-117 was never designed with a radar. and if you look at the front of one there isn't any room for a multi-mode tactical radar. As a result that would require a major re-design. Also by the time these proposals came out YF-22/23 were already in play and F-117 faceting was already obsolete.

Don't worry about it...

[thewils]

I'm sure it will retire to a nice well-paid job in the defense industry.

Re:Don't worry about it...

[sm62704]

Retuire to a job? What a stupid airplane!

When I retire I'm not even going to mow the lawn.

Re:Don't worry about it...

[Anonymous Coward]

If it can recite Bush talking-points, expect to see it on CNN and MSNBC as a Military Expert.

Microprose

[tangent3]

My fondest memories of the F117 is playing the Microprose simulator. The original version was named F19 Stealth Fighter until the F117 was declassified in which the version 2.0 of the game, updated with VGA graphics and Persian Gulf campaigns was renamed F117A Stealth Fighter.

It was quite an interesting change, whereas in most other combat flight simulators like Falcon 3.0 and F15 Strike Eagle I would be actively seeking a fight with any enemy on my radar and pumping them full of sidewinders or 20MM, in F117A the mission is to avoid the enemy patrols and ground radars

Re:Microprose

[PortHaven]

I used to play that on my Commodore 128 along with Red Storm Rising. (Ironically the graphics were better for my Commodore 128 than on my family's 386DX30mhz.)

Anyways, I found this weird bug that if I had my pitch at just the right degree and was flying at the max ceiling. I could fly across the entire mediteranean on zero fuel. Of course, this meant only one chance to land the sucker...

But on more than one occasion I took out my target, was low on fuel...jetted up to 50,000ft and pointed my noise in just the right angle and let it run out of fuel.

Anyone else ever do this?

Re:Microprose

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to do something similar on F-15 Strike Fighter. If you ran out of fuel during the game, you could hold the afterburner key down and get little periodic spurts of speed, right up to vmax. Used to play for hours on Joker fuel....

Sounds like F15 and F117 sims had some interesting fuel/speed-related glitches.

Re:Microprose

[Zocalo]

I didn't know about the 50,000ft across the Med. thing, but I used to conserve a huge amount of fuel in the initial "F-19 Stealth Fighter" take by climbing to the ceiling, then just switching everything off and gliding in low EM mode. Of course, the real plane with its notoriously quirky aerodynamics would drop like a rock if you tried that, but how were Microprose to know that when they'd got the basic design of the plane completely wrong - I think they must have used some artist's concept from "Flight" or something.

There was one particularly sweet mission profile that let you really rack up the points too; I think it was in the "warm war" state where you could pretty much take out any target you wanted but not get swarmed by hostiles or reprimanded upon return. Basically, you took a "touch and go mission" where you had to land at some secret airstrip, loaded up on A2S weapons and popped a couple of high profile missile sites on the way in or out. Hit the secondary target and kill a few hostile AWACS with your cannon and it was pretty much one of the top medals (I think I had five CMoH's on one pilot) and a promotion every time.

Happy days in EGA for me and, pack rat that I am, I probably still have the original floppies around somewhere!

Re:Microprose

[ender1598]

oooo... I remember doing that mission over and over. I thought it was dropping some supplies to some rebels at some secret airstrip in the mideast somewhere. On the way back you might get some fighters that show up but the gun took them out pretty easily. The copy protection on that game was pretty nice though. After flipping throught the book enough you memorized the outlines of all the planes. Copy protection that taught you something... those were the good ole days. :P

Re:Microprose

[Gerhardius]

I also found the "gliding bug" but not only in the Med. I used to plan missions in the North Cape area where I had to glide home most of the way after clearing enemy airspace. I am trying to remember the route for some unrealistic epic missions. I would fly over Finland, finding a nice seam in the radar coverage and hit an airfield near Kandalashka(IIRC) then move on to something between there and Polyarnyy then onto Severomorsk and Pechenga. There was an SA-5 (IIRC) battery that I liked to take out to make my egress easier.

I would climb as soon as I hit the outer mark of the ranges I had put on my map marking where I had encountered enemy activity. There was one airfield I really liked in Norway that was on an island and gave you a relatively easier dead stick approach.

I also enjoyed Gunship when it came out. In high school a friend and I stayed up all night playing Gunship before our history final. Lots of fun on 64k.

Re:Microprose

[fat_mike]

I posted this in a comment to a comment to a comment above.

When I moved into my first home two months ago, I finally opened some boxes I've been carrying from apartment to apartment for the 15.5 years (I'm 32) that I've never opened because they were labeled "Collectibles". I figured they were pictures and report cards and sports trophy's when I was a kid (back when the winning team got trophy's and the other kids had to stare and realize they'd have to work harder next year and nobody's parents were screaming about little Johnny's psyche being scarred for life but I digress).

Now I've always known I was a pack rat and for the first time I was happy about it. I found a 3.5" 200 disc holder of all my DOS games from 1985-1997. Every Sierra/Flight Simulator/SimCity/Civilization games made during that period.

My F19 still works in DOSBox. Damn its fun and like a comment above, my favorite aspect was that you didn't just go out and bomb stuff. You really had to pay attention to radar/SAM sites/altitude to succeed in the missions. I spent more time on autopilot watching my radar emissions and threat screen than piloting the craft.

Also, it was the 80's...it was cool to smoke the dirty Commies.

Re:Microprose

[Anonymous Coward]

That game was amazing. I remember clocking dozens of hours in front of my 386 playing it. I couldn't have been older than 6 or 7 at the time.

Re:Microprose

[Jonathan_S]

There was one particularly sweet mission profile that let you really rack up the points too; I think it was in the "warm war" state where you could pretty much take out any target you wanted but not get swarmed by hostiles or reprimanded upon return.

My favorite mission profile (at least for the 2nd game, I don't remember now if it also worked in the first one) was to get a cold war mission with a double photo recon. Load up the other payload bay with extra fuel, go snap your picts, then set autopilot waypoints to orbit around inside enemy territory until you hit bingo fuel.

Sure, in real life that kind of nonsense would get you court-martialed. But in the game you got points for every minute you flew in enemy territory, so it would net you a congressional medal on honor pretty much every time.

What are they working on now?

[QuantumRiff]

the SR-71 was designed in the 60's, the stealth fighter was designed in the 70's, the F-22 started in the mid 80's, kinda makes you wonder what the hell they're working on now!

I was pretty young, but I don't remember there being nearly as much "public" information about the stealth fighter until it was used in action. It seems there is alot more details about the F-22 before it was in service. Is that because there is more communication with the taxpayers nowadays, or because they don't want you to ask whats in the left hand?

Re:What are they working on now?

[TellarHK]

Knock your SR-71 design estimate back about a decade. The OXCART contract that created the SR-71 (evolving it from the A-12) was awarded in 1959, so all the real design work was done before 1960, it was just the construction that took a couple years. And the SR-71 served damn well until we put enough satellites in the sky to cover things almost as well with closer to realtime monitoring.

Sometimes it makes you wonder just how many eyes the military really has up there now, if they were willing to mothball the SR-71 with no (public) clear successor.

Re:What are they working on now?

[Anonymous Coward]

kinda makes you wonder what the hell they're working on now! Skynet. Unmanned aircraft. Seems the last caveat to eliminate is the pilot's physical limitations.

Re:What are they working on now?

[PortHaven]

Nah....

The F-22 is the real "stealth fighter". The F-117A was the stealth attack craft/tactical bomber.

Fighters usually aren't all that super secret. But reconnaissance, and strategic assault vehicles. Now those are secret.

The F-117A's mission is likely to be super-seded by unmanned stealth drones.

The SR-71 was retired a while back. The F-117A was NOT a replacement for the SR-71. Rather, both operated concurrently for some time.

The mostly likely replacement for the Blackbird is the Aurora project. Sometimes caught by seismologists and observers. Rumored to use a a pulsating scramjet and being the mach 5-8 range.

Then there is the B2 (flying wing) bomber and the B1-B The B1-B being famous for numerous crashes. Though very few in later years. What was the change? The government had been only doing 85% of the maintenance recommended for the bombers by it's manufacturers. They began doing the full maintenance recommended maintenance, fluid changes, etc. Things ceased failing...go figure.

Re:What are they working on now?

[Thelasko]

Sheriff of Rottingham: This is a stealth catapult, we've been working on it secretly for months. It can hurl one of these heavy boulders undetected, over a hundred yards, completely destroying anything in its path.

Prince John: Wow! How's it work?

Sheriff of Rottingham: It's rather simple. You get one of these heavy boulders, put it here where I'm sitting, and then pull on that lever.

Prince John: Like this?

[John pulls the lever and flings Mervin into the air]

Sheriff of Rottingham: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!

Re:What are they working on now?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is probably a more mundane reason behind it. Such as, the air force not wanting to get their funding cut, or maybe get their funding increased. They can show congress and their constituents all the cool new toys their tax dollars are producing and ask for more tax dollars to produce more new toys.

During the cold war getting funding was less of a problem due to the looming soviet threat and secrecy was more important.

Re:What are they working on now?

[sconeu]

The B1-B also is a supersonic bomber -- I don't know if the Russkies have a supersonic bomber or not (and I'm too lazy to go check Jane's or FAS).

I saw one at the Van Nuys air show. There was not a single straight line or flat surface on that plane.

Anyone remember when that B1-B coming into Texas had a landing gear failure, and they diverted to Edwards to land on the lake bed? It was on all the broadcast news stations at the time.

Re:What are they working on now?

[peragrin]

Actually the SR-71 served damn well until we put enough DIGITAL satellites into Orbit. The reason why the SR-71 was so useful was because the film canister could be brought back down quickly to develop the images. That didn't work so well for Satellites.

The SR-71 is one of my all time favorite planes. One has to remember it was built with 1960's tech, as such digital computers and camera's weren't available yet.

Re:What are they working on now?

[TheOldBear]

The Russian equivalent had the NATO code name 'Backfire'

Re:What are they working on now?

[noewun]

The B1-B also is a supersonic bomber -- I don't know if the Russkies have a supersonic bomber or not (and I'm too lazy to go check Jane's or FAS).

Say hello to the Tu-160. And, yes, it look an awful lot like the B-1.

Also note that the B-1B has a maximum speed of Mach 1.25 at altitude. The rapid advances in air-to-air missiles in the 1960s and 1970s changed USAF planing for bomber missions. Instead of flying high and fast (which just makes you a perfect target for SAMs unless you're an SR-71) the idea is fast and low, which is why the B-1s mission profile was changed to flying very fast at very low altitudes. Of course now the thing usually just hangs out on station waiting to be told where to drop its bombs.

Re:What are they working on now?

[cens0r]

Everyone I've ever heard talk about the F-22 seem to think it will probably be the last manned combat airplane. I tend to agree. With the improvements we've made with the unmanned craft, why build anything else? Your pilots get to stay safe out of harms way, you no longer have to degrade performance because of the limits of the human body, and you get to save money by not worrying about keeping the pilot alive.

Re:What are they working on now?

[sm62704]

kinda makes you wonder what the hell they're working on now!

Here ya go!

Re:What are they working on now?

[NMerriam]

It seems there is alot more details about the F-22 before it was in service. Is that because there is more communication with the taxpayers nowadays, or because they don't want you to ask whats in the left hand?

No, it's because building modern fighters involves multiple countries in order to keep costs down as much as possible. Nobody but us ever had the F-117 (or the B2), so they could be kept secret, but every *real* fighter plane we've built in the past 40 years has been fairly well publicized ahead of production because we involve the UK and other allies (and pseudo-allies like Saudi Arabia) in the spec and bidding process. Of course we make slightly different versions of the planes for our use and for export, and our versions do certainly have stuff that you won't hear about for another decade or two.

Re:What are they working on now?

[DerekLyons]

the SR-71 was designed in the 60's, the stealth fighter was designed in the 70's, the F-22 started in the mid 80's, kinda makes you wonder what the hell they're working on now!

The F-35 Lightning II (née JSF).

Re:What are they working on now?

[Solandri]

I was pretty young, but I don't remember there being nearly as much "public" information about the stealth fighter until it was used in action. It seems there is alot more details about the F-22 before it was in service. Is that because there is more communication with the taxpayers nowadays, or because they don't want you to ask whats in the left hand?

Back in the 1980s, the Air Force began a new procurement system where two competitors would not just bid on a contract, they'd design and build the actual planes and let the Air Force pick which one got the contract. So Lockheed built the YF-22, Northrop/MD built the YF-23. The YF-23 lost, and the YF-22 became the F-22.

I think this was a cost-cutting measure for the government - the competition creates a large incentive for the manufacturers to keep costs under control and to stick to the production schedule. Previous Pentagon contracts had come under criticism that Defense contractors were using cost overruns and schedule slips to milk money (the $600 toilet seats and $400 hammers). With so much money and so many jobs at stake in the competition, there was probably no way to keep development secret even if they had wanted to. Of course while it saved the government money, the losing companies ended up losing a lot of money, and it's part of the reason McDonnell Douglas eventually went bankrupt and was bought by Boeing.

The same selection process has been used with the JSF (X-32 vs. X-35).

Re:What are they working on now?

[pato101]

The SR-71 is one of my all time favorite planes. You are not alone. Seriously, SR-71 was an amazing plane in several aspects. If one has to chose only one plane to be the favourite, there is only one candidate...

Re:What are they working on now?

[sznupi]

This "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!" doesn't seem very stealth to me...still, only shows that the weakest link is the human.

Re:What are they working on now?

[Scrameustache]

the SR-71 was designed in the 60's, the stealth fighter was designed in the 70's, the F-22 started in the mid 80's, kinda makes you wonder what the hell they're working on now! Probably overbudgeting something confiscated from the Nazis, like the B-2 and the Ho IX.

Re:What are they working on now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction, the B-1B has a maximum speed of Mach 1 point "a little bit" at low altitude with a typical combat load. It's high altitude performance was similar to the B-1A (basically the same engines and airframe, so it makes sense), so probably somewhere around Mach 2.

Re:What are they working on now?

[Danse]

With the improvements we've made with the unmanned craft, why build anything else? Your pilots get to stay safe out of harms way, you no longer have to degrade performance because of the limits of the human body, and you get to save money by not worrying about keeping the pilot alive. I think you're right that these remotely piloted craft are the future of combat. Combat evolved, if you will. In fact, the AF could do a lot to increase its recruiting prospects by developing the capability for these drones to teabag their opponents after defeating them. Perhaps incorporate the ability to spray a graffiti tag or spew racially insensitive invective. I know I find such tactics to be highly demoralizing and I generally go find something else to do fairly quickly.

Re:What are they working on now?

[rikkards]

I don't remember where we wer as I was about 14 around that time but I saw one flying low across a desert in the distance and was in awe.

Re:What are they working on now?

[evilviper]

It seems there is alot more details about the F-22 before it was in service. Is that because there is more communication with the taxpayers nowadays, or because they don't want you to ask whats in the left hand?

Keeping a large project in the black is EXTREMELY expensive.

Keeping the Soviets in the dark about our shiny new project that had no other plausible purpose than to silently nuke them back to the stone age, seemed like a good idea at the time, so the money was spent.

Also, the technology was very new, and largely unknown. Having a working craft ready, decades before anyone knew such a thing was even possible, seemed like a good use of the money.

Today, everybody knows stealth exists. We aren't making anything that would antagonize other superpowers. And we aren't in an arms race with anyone. As long as you can keep the specifics secret, the rest doesn't make a hell of a big difference, and you don't need to waste huge amounts of money and effort keeping people from knowing approx. how much it costs.

Re:What are they working on now?

[rikkards]

You can't really compare the JSF to the F-22 based on when they were designed. Their roles are quite different e.g multi-functional vs air-superiority. The requirements for the JSF are definitely different as an example you will never see a carrier-based F-22.

That is like comparing the F-16 to the F-18.

Re:What are they working on now?

[N22YF]

Say hello to the Tu-160. And, yes, it look an awful lot like the B-1. And the Tu-22 and Tu-22M. Both the Tu-22M and the Tu-160 can exceed Mach 2.

Re:What are they working on now?

[noewun]

My info comes from here, which says the B-1B has a maximum speed of Mach 0.92 at sea level and Mach 1.25 at altitude. I also know the B-1B doesn't have the fairings around the wing/fuselage junction or the more streamlined tail of the B-1A, both of which were necessary for Mach 2 flight. If you have other info, please point me to it.

Re:What are they working on now?

[m50d]

Sometimes it makes you wonder just how many eyes the military really has up there now, if they were willing to mothball the SR-71 with no (public) clear successor.

They wouldn't need to have any more than they publicly admit to for mothballing the SR-71 to make sense. Sure it's glamorous, but the satellites do its job better than it does, and it's closer to being shoot-down-able (I read a story on here that a Viggen afterburning all the way was able to keep up with one and get a good enough missile lock to have shot it down). Mothballing it just makes sense.

Re:What are they working on now?

[smallfries]

Well if you want to know what they look like... I can't vouch for how accurate these images are. I can see that they are either the largest clerical fuckup of all time, or a great hoax.

Travelling through Madrid airport in the summer of 2003 there was a series of display cases with every Lockhead Martin aircraft every made. Gorgeous little wooden carvings. When I saw this beauty I nearly dropped from shock. Then I walked backwards on the travelator to snap the pic - hence the horrible blur. There is also a closeup.

Either somebody in the marketing department made a career ending mistake, or someone in the modelling department had some fun with the spanish public. There should be enough plane nuts on these here threads to decide...

Re:What are they working on now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely. Not only is the technology and performance of the SR-71 amazing, it still looks fresh and fantastic today. Kelly Johnson was both an engineer and a poet.

Re:What are they working on now?

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that the F-35 "Lightning II" is expected to be the real replacement for the F-117 for the manned ground attack role. But unlike the plane before it, it's also plenty capable of actual fighting. F-22 seems more optimized torwards high speed intercepting and accomplishing air superiority. Supposedly the F-35 can forgo some stealth and dirty up the airframe with external mounts once air superiority is achieved. From that aspect, it sounds like it'll have some good air to ground capability. I'm not sure if the F-22 does that trick.

My other guess is that the fighters we're seeing now will probably be the last generation of manned aircraft for that particular role. This is because the human element is the only thing seriously limiting the performance envelope. Fighters are pretty useless with a pilot that's been blacked out inside. Next step will probably employ virtualized operation from a ground based or forward air based command and control center. (Fighter jockeys will be flying by what is essentially a fancy R/C setup with VR helmets and sim cockpit modules.) If we start seeing stealthy planes for refueling and electronics intelligence, it shouldn't be long before drone squadrons operated by similar command and control aircraft are a reality. Drone fighters will have multiple advantages: in flight turnover to avoid fatigue, automating the boring parts of the mission, being expendable if necessary, and being able to manuver in ways that would kill pilots if you tried it in a manned aircraft.

Re:What are they working on now?

[DA_MAN_DA_MYTH]

Agreed, this brings me back to the 80s, with the GI JOE toy collection. Cobra always had the best stuff. I wish I still had my GI Joe Blackbird toy, The Cobra Night Raven. That and the A-10 clone, The Cobra Rattler, that planes amazing too, it's a flying tank. Truly the two were thunder and lightning. Joe's got annihilated in my backyard.

Especially with a ninja flying both.

Re:What are they working on now?

[ChrisMaple]

I'd think that the risk of jamming would make remote control unacceptable, and that the delay of radio links added to human response time would be much too slow. I'd go for redundant navigation (GPS/inertial) and on-board computer control. Is the computer technology required too advanced?

Re:What are they working on now?

[dbIII]

rumored to use a a pulsating scramjet and being the mach 5-8 range.

Even though I saw a scramjet that could work in a shock tunnel way back in 1987 or 1989 I very much doubt there is an aircraft with one. The whole project would have attracted far better funding over the years if there was an aim to build such an aircraft.

Re:What are they working on now?

[Talkischeap]

"The mostly likely replacement for the Blackbird is the Aurora project. Sometimes caught by seismologists and observers. Rumored to use a a pulsating scramjet and being the mach 5-8 range."

Well, whatever it's called, I've likely seen "it" three times, but it was back in the '80's.

I used to spend a week camping around Mono Lake in Nevada during the August Perseid's meteor shower.

I was with my girlfriend at the time who was an engineer for Lockheed, and we subscribed to Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine (pricey!) so we were pretty "up" on our aircraft identification.

So anyhow, the first time we saw it was late one afternoon, when an aircraft at very high altitude appeared on the scene moving at a rate of speed like I had never seen before.

It appeared to be directly over the summit ridges of the East side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, going south, and it went from horizon to horizon before I could get my camcorder started!

It was FAST!!!.

It had a solid contrail, and I checked to see if any space craft had reentered but found nothing.

The next year, we saw it twice, and this time it had a pulsed contrail, and it made a sound like no other aircraft I'd ever heard.

It was like a regular jet sound, but it sounded like it was ripping, or tearing, it was really weird sounding as it pulsed along at the same high rate of speed.

Same trajectory, right along the summits of the Sierras going South (toward Groom Lake?).

Re:What are they working on now?

[peragrin]

I have both in storage. they are well used, but i do have both in storage. it was a fun 20 minute distraction whle helping my mother move a couple of years ago.

'Fighter?'

[fiannaFailMan]

Wasn't it more of a bomber than a fighter?

Re:'Fighter?'

[smooth wombat]

Yes. So far as I am aware, it was never designed for air-to-air combat. Rather, it was to be used as it was in the first days of the 1990 Gulf conflict during Bush I's tenure: to hit high value, heavily defended targets.

More information on the role of the F-117 can be found at Frontline, AirToAirCombat.com, FAS as well as other sources on the intertubes. Last link has pictures of the aircraft as well as pictures and a non-Flash video of the aftermath of the only F-117 to ever be shot down. In this case, over Serbia.

Re:'Fighter?'

[NekSnappa]

Actually the first operational use was when George H. Bush went after Noriega in Panama in 1989.

Re:'Fighter?'

[smooth wombat]

True, though I never intimated that, but let's be honest, what did Panama have that could have possibly posed a threat to the F-117? I'm fairly certain a Chinook could have been used to drop bombs on targets in Panama.

The Gulf conflict was the first real test of the planes stealthiness.

Re:'Fighter?'

[cojsl]

Rather, it was to be used as it was in the first days of the 1990 Gulf conflict during Bush I's tenure

According to Ben Rich's excellent "Skunk Works" about his time there (starting as an engineer on the U2, through his first project as director of the Skunk Works, the F-117), the F-117 was ready to be used in the bombing of Tripoli in 1986, but to preserve the secrecy of it's existence for a more valuable target in the future, F-111s were substituted at the last minute. There are many great U-2, SR-71, and F-117 stories in that book, highly recommended!

Deprecated Warfighting

[TellarHK]

In a day and age where aircraft from the 1950's are still flying and in active service, to see something like the F-117 come and go so quickly has to be a sign of major design limitations from the first day of use.

Two bombs, no Air-to-Air capability other than playing "How not to be seen." really well, and subsonic speeds just seemed to make the F-117 come across as oddball in my eyes. Either the F-22 has better stealth than we realize, or there's something newer, more stealthier and more secretive coming around.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[zulater]

well we have the stealth bomber as well now that can carry more than the stealth fighter. Then yeah the F-22 to fulfill the air to air missions that can also do the air to ground at the same time. It was also, as you said, the limitations of the F-117. It was basically the first real/successful attempt at stealth (that I remember offhand) so I wouldn't be suprised if it was more of a good concept that the government jumped at instead of saying 'that's good, now make it carry more'.
Still very interesting and I agree that I can't wait to see the next iteration that we know nothing about yet.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[Gregb05]

The B-2 is what you're looking for. Longer operational range, bigger payload, better stealth, looks prettier and it's easier to fly.
B-2 is for stealth bombing and midnight strikes, F-22 is for air fighting, B-52 is used for heavy hitting when the radar is down or irrelevant. There's no niche for the F-117 any more.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[PortHaven]

That's my big question.

How does the radar signature of the F-22 compare to the F-117.

Another big issue, might have been China's development of tying the RADAR units together and analyzing the data so that they could track the F-117A. Defeating it's stealth capabilities.

Such a blow pretty much made the craft useless strategically and only of good in small tactical situations against poorly equipped foes.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[truthsearch]

or there's something newer, more stealthier and more secretive coming around Isn't there always? We, of course, just haven't heard about it yet. Maybe in about 20 years...

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[hcdejong]

Count on the F-22 having better radar stealth than the F-117. The F-117 fell victim to Moore's law: During its design, all the engineers were capable of simulating (for stealth characteristics) were flat panels, hence the faceted skin, which dictated the rest of the design.

The size was another compromise (smaller = easier to hide), and the engines didn't have afterburners to minimise the IR signature, which meant no supersonic flight. Radar technology wasn't advanced enough to build a low-observable (or Low Probability of Intercept, LPI) air search radar, and a 1970's radar would compromise the aircraft's stealthiness even when turned off.

Oddball maybe, but the F-117 was the best possible design with 1970s technology. To get it to work at all, everything else had to be sacrificed for the one mission that couldn't be done by any other platform: surprise attacks.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[N22YF]

Either the F-22 has better stealth than we realize, or there's something newer, more stealthier and more secretive coming around. Yeah, I believe the F-22 does have very effective stealth. The F-117 was first-generation stealth (unless you count the SR-71), and there's been so much development since then that I wouldn't be surprised if the F-22 were more stealthy than the F-117, and I believe its stealth-related maintenance is much lower than the F-117's as well. There were a lot of compromises in the F-117's design that we don't have to make anymore.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[Ironsides]

Either the F-22 has better stealth than we realize, or there's something newer, more stealthier and more secretive coming around.

Both. The F-22 is the first true stealth fighter, the B-2 is the first true stealth bomber. The F-117 was really a stealth hack. That said, given the long developement times on aircraft, there is always something newer in the works. Also, fighters (among other things) are made to be upgradeable over their lifespan. There have been 3 different generations of the F-18 for the military alone and the older ones are usually upgraded along the way instead of being replaced. That is in addition to 'minor' upgrades such as electronics. If you want to know what is cuttin edge today, you need a high level security clearance and to be in the need to know.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[maxume]

The stealth technology at the point the plane was designed required that the plane have flat surfaces. The plane was built, on purpose, in the face of a major design limitation. As much as anything, it was a proof of concept that got more funding than it should have(i.e., the military probably didn't need to actually buy a production run).

The F-22 might not have better stealth than we realize, but it is pretty clear that it is a whole new class of aircraft(beating expert F-15 pilots 3 to 1 is no joke) and it is stealthier than anything else that provides similar capabilities.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[Darth_brooks]

Your generalizations don't quite fit here.

True, the B-52 and C-130 are 1950's vintage *designs*, the actual airframes that are still in service are very late runs off the line. The current B-52's were built between 1960 and 1961, and the C-130's should all be post-1965 (or later). They also don't share any of the tactical missions that the F-117 performs. For example, the B-52 is a heavy bomber. It's going to drop a whole hell of a lot of metal on a target, or carry 1.5 imperial assloads of cruise missiles near a target, unload them, then head back home in time for "Lost". The C-130 has perfected the art of flying rubber dog poop out of Hong Kong.

Now, the F-117's job is to take the first steps towards making the C-130 or the B-52's job possible. Strike missions on heavily defended targets. Given the high tolerances the skin of the airframe must meet in order to stay stealthy, normal wear and tear on the airframe (say, a wing tip that is now an inch or two higher than before thanks to a high-G turn) could negate most of the aircraft's advantage. Comparing the F-117 to anything is is comparing oranges to briefcases.

The statement always comes up "what're they working on now? I bet they're using them thar captured UFO's and roswell alien stuff now!!!" Ummm, yeah, I doubt it. Instead of shrinking the airframe's radar signature in order to protect the pilot, they've just gone ahead and shrunk the airframe *and* the radar signature. Tomahawks, Predator drones, better satellites, and better communications between all three. That's what has retired the SR-71 and the F-117.

I think we're finally beginning to see the retirement of some of the meat in the seat for the really, really, really dangerous stuff. You can have a $120 million dollar fighter with $3-5 million dollars worth of pilot take out a target, or $3 million dollar drone hit the same target. Even the government can do that math.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[Richard_at_work]

The F-117 was literally the product of someone saying 'make an aircraft invisible to radar' at a time when computer modeling was at its youngest - the F-22 has a much smaller radar cross section than the F-117 but has more normal looks and capabilities because we can calculate surface characteristics better.

Oh, and the requirements were not meant to produce an all round well performer, it was originally intended to be a silver bullet style weapon, utterly deniable and operated by the CIA like both the U-2 and A-12 before it. Two weapons was all it needed for the missions intended, but it was eventually assigned to the USAF inventory for similar uses.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[khallow]

I think we're finally beginning to see the retirement of some of the meat in the seat for the really, really, really dangerous stuff. You can have a $120 million dollar fighter with $3-5 million dollars worth of pilot take out a target, or $3 million dollar drone hit the same target. Even the government can do that math.

Two things, first the marginal cost of the F-22 originally was around $25 million. What's happened is that the Pentagon is buying about a sixth as many planes as were originally planned. Second, the drones will need effective control infrastructure and as of yet, there's no standardized control infrastructure. That's going to add considerable cost. Finally, need I add that the cost of the F-22 is known while the drone cost is hypothetical. Frankly, I think there'll be considerable room for drones in a future US army, but it's not that straightforward a financial tradeoff.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[couchslug]

"In a day and age where aircraft from the 1950's are still flying and in active service, to see something like the F-117 come and go so quickly has to be a sign of major design limitations from the first day of use."

You are forgetting that fighter/attack aircraft lifecycles are much shorter than airlift/tanker lifecycles. There isn't a technology "race" with airlifters and tankers, or heavy strategic bombers like the B-52. Fighter/attack systems are obsoleted much more quickly.

Another factor in retiring the 117 is that the Air Force is _desperate_ for money to replace aging aircraft it should have replaced years ago. That means dumping lots of support people such as personnellists, retiring every system they can, and focusing on priority number one which is total air dominance. Offing the 117 frees up the many people supporting it to shift to the Raptor.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[Rakishi]

I think we're finally beginning to see the retirement of some of the meat in the seat for the really, really, really dangerous stuff. You can have a $120 million dollar fighter with $3-5 million dollars worth of pilot take out a target, or $3 million dollar drone hit the same target. Even the government can do that math. We have those already, they're called cruise missiles. They don't help much when the enemy is dropping bombs on your from their own planes. Problem with drones is that they'll likely be chewed to pieces by the enemy fighter planes.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[uopjohnson]

In a day and age where aircraft from the 1950's are still flying and in active service It isn't fair to say that the fighters built in the 50's are still the same plane they were then. What they are is a very usable shell which has been modified extensively over decades. There is no need to build a new F-16 when upgrades to the current platform are all that is needed to continue its life. A system like the F-117 however, was built right at the beginning of usable stealth tech and computer assisted flying. In order to upgrade it the shell and all the internals must be re-done, which makes a rebuild just as easy.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[rijrunner]

    Well, to be fair, 20 years active service is actually a long period of service.

    If you look at the F-16 and F-18, you'll find that the current flying models are many generations evolved from their predecessors. A 1970's era F-16 can not carry modern payload packages and we had to retire a lot of them for cracked wing spars from carrying combat loads.

    The vast - and I do mean vast - majority of military aircraft from the 1950's have long ago been retired. The B-52 is a very specialized aircraft that gets periodic refurbishment.

    Which is actually more likely the cause for retiring the F-117. While there were noticable weaknesses to the original design, the most likely cause for its retirement is that the airframe and it shape are really not that well designed for refurbishment and deployment of other avionics and payload packages.

    The other aspect of this is that operationally, they made a mistake when they changed the color from the Have Blue sky colored camo to black as that meant it was very visible during daylight hours. Also, at least one F-117 was shot down and its parts were captured. The plane was very vulnerable to long pulse duration radars of the sort used in the 1960's.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[Dunbal]

Two bombs, no Air-to-Air capability other than playing "How not to be seen." really well, and subsonic speeds just seemed to make the F-117 come across as oddball in my eyes.

      Remember this aircraft was designed during the cold war, for a very specific mission (ie taking out Russian ground based radar sites - before all the other air-to-mud pilots crossed FEBA). Sheesh, haven't you ever read a Clancy novel?

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[DerekLyons]

In a day and age where aircraft from the 1950's are still flying and in active service,

And those aircraft make up a fairly small proportion of the active fleet. The vast majority date from the 70's and 80's.
 
 

to see something like the F-117 come and go so quickly has to be a sign of major design limitations from the first day of use.

The F-117 has been in service twenty five years, a little below current averages but nothing surprising or remarkable. Given that it does have a variety of major limitations and was a 'niche market' (specialized function) aircraft, the real surprise is that it has lasted as long as it did.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[DerekLyons]

Well, the F-22 does have air-to-ground capability - so it replaces the F-117 very nicely. (Not to mention the F-35.) The B-52 and B-2 are pretty much useless when it comes to reactive tactical strikes.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[zonker]

The C-130 has perfected the art of flying rubber dog poop out of Hong Kong. Nice Top Gun quote there. ;p

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[fm6]

I'm no expert, but casual reading tells me that the F-22 is slightly less stealthy than the F-117, but also a lot less expensive to maintain. All those angular surfaces and matte finishes are too labor intensive. They do look cool though.

Besides, I think we're entering an era of "good enough" weapons systems. At least I hope we are. The U.S. spends more on defense than the rest of the planet combined. But is our military might proportionally higher? I really doubt it. And the main reason is that we spend way too much money on fancy toys. Time to get back to basics.

Somebody's about to chime in with $5K toilet seats. Beside the point. Every government procurement program in the world has corruption problems, and ours are probably much less severe than most.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[Darth_brooks]

We have those already, they're called cruise missiles. They don't help much when the enemy is dropping bombs on your from their own planes. Problem with drones is that they'll likely be chewed to pieces by the enemy fighter planes. And that's fine. The air superiority role is being filled by the F-22 and I don't really see that role falling to drones at any point, with the exception of the distant future. Meat in the seat can still make decisions that autonomous aircraft can't, and have a level of adaptation that remote aircraft don't have yet.

Sure, drones may get knocked out by SAM's, enemy fighters, etc. That's the point. You're throwing up 5 million dollar drones that have roughly the same strike power as an F-117 with longer loiter times (which is turning out to be the real benefit. Having a drone that can hang around waiting for things to get interesting must be an immeasurable asset.) and lower radar cross sections. Or, you're putting up a 25 million dollar drone that can loiter for 24-36 hours instead of putting a shift of U-2's out in enemy territory.

Either way, when a drone gets shot down, at most you get some ribbing from the guys in the cube next to you who offer you another quarter so you can play again. No crisply folded flags, no footage on CNN 120 million dollar F-117 in a smoking heap on the group. No Francis Gary Powers being denounced in a show trial.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[pato101]

(beating expert F-15 pilots 3 to 1 is no joke)

As far as I've read, those would be the numbers of an Eurofighter. I think that F-15 has no choices against F-22 (the actual words were unfair advantadge)

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[Firethorn]

From an unclassified paper I saw, it's basically 'all of the above'.

The F117 was designed back when stealth wasn't as well understood as today. Thus, design limitations are present left and right. It's not a very maneuverable craft, it's slow compared to most other military combat planes, doesn't have a huge range, very limited payload capacity, no effective AA capability.

It's also a maintenance hog, servicing it is difficult, requiring many hours of labor.

The F22, from what I read, is actually stealthier as well as more maneuverable, faster, and capable of carrying a much larger payload. It's too early to tell, but it's also at least projected to require much less in the way of maintenance.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[markitect]

The F22 is more of a good mix. It can destroy 4 MiGs before they even know the F22 is there. It can easily bomb any, even our SAM/radar site without ever being detected. What more does it need to do?

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[NullProg]

Either the F-22 has better stealth than we realize, or there's something newer, more stealthier and more secretive coming around.

The F-22 will be just as obsolete as the predator etc. UAV/drone technology progresses. Enders Game is already happening.

The F-117 was obsolete once the Tomahawk missile was perfected. Can't get more stealthier than a missile coming at you at MACH 3 4 meters above the ground.

Enjoy,

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[cens0r]

Why should a drone be chewed to pieces by an enemy fighter? If you have it remotely controlled by a human you could make the drone perform better than any plane actually piloted by a real human. I'm sure even now the f-22 can pull more g's than a human can take. We're no wear close to autonomous drone fighters, but the remote controlled ones are going to replace the meat in the seat pretty quickly.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[Anonymous Coward]

The statement always comes up "what're they working on now? I bet they're using them thar captured UFO's and roswell alien stuff now!!!" Ummm, yeah, I doubt it. Instead of shrinking the airframe's radar signature in order to protect the pilot, they've just gone ahead and shrunk the airframe *and* the radar signature. Tomahawks, Predator drones, better satellites, and better communications between all three. That's what has retired the SR-71 and the F-117. Actually, what's really retired the F-117 is the entry of the F-22 into service. Even though it's a much larger airplane, it's thought to be significantly stealthier than the F-117 - they learned quite a bit from operating the 117 and have also developed new design techniques and stealth materials. For example, the F-117's faceted design happened because the computational power and simulation software required to design a stealthy curved surface weren't available back then. The surface had to be simplified into flat planes to have any chance of modeling its radar cross section. Those limitations are gone now.

Besides being stealthier, the F-22 carries a much bigger weapon load, has dramatically higher basic airframe performance, has a larger combat radius, can defend itself in an air-to-air battle, etc. etc. With the F-22 operational, there's just not much reason to keep the F-117 operating.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[Firethorn]

Another factor in retiring the 117 is that the Air Force is _desperate_ for money to replace aging aircraft it should have replaced years ago. That means dumping lots of support people such as personnellists, retiring every system they can, and focusing on priority number one which is total air dominance. Offing the 117 frees up the many people supporting it to shift to the Raptor.

As a trivia point, the USAF was trying to retire the F117 years ago. It got held up in congress and essentially ordered to keep flying them. More or less a pork project as there's lots of money to be made in contracting and such for maintenance to keep them flying.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[ChrisA90278]

Either the F-22 has better stealth than we realize, or there's something newer, more stealthier and more secretive coming around.

Yes. un-manned aircraft.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[couchslug]

"More or less a pork project as there's lots of money to be made in contracting and such for maintenance to keep them flying."

Most maintenance is done by blue-suiters so that small number of aircraft isn't especially lucrative. A lot of F-117 parts originate from other aircraft (it was cheaper that way) and aren't special.

USAF leadership also tried to kill the A-10, but it survived despite them. Not all the calls they make are good or selfless...

If the AF had succeeded in killing the 117 program before having Raptors available, that would have helped leverage more Raptors. The AF = fighter pilots, and is fighter-centric. That's fine because air dominance is their job, but IMO it would make sense for the Army to tell the USAF to stuff the Key West agreement and run its own UAVs, COIN aircraft and tactical airlift. Note Secretary Gates expressing his frustrations on the news!

I'm a proud veteran AF maintainer, but I didn't drink the corporate Koolaid. :)

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[sr180]

Plus the F-117 is only really stealthy from below - not above. More countries getting airborne radars and over the horizon type radars - severely reduces the effectiveness of the F-117.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[Anonymous Coward]

Your generalizations don't quite fit here.

True, the B-52 and C-130 are 1950's vintage *designs*, the actual airframes that are still in service are very late runs off the line. The current B-52's were built between 1960 and 1961, and the C-130's should all be post-1965 (or later). They also don't share any of the tactical missions that the F-117 performs. For example, the B-52 is a heavy bomber. It's going to drop a whole hell of a lot of metal on a target, or carry 1.5 imperial assloads of cruise missiles near a target, unload them, then head back home in time for "Lost". The C-130 has perfected the art of flying rubber dog poop out of Hong Kong.

Now, the F-117's job is to take the first steps towards making the C-130 or the B-52's job possible. Strike missions on heavily defended targets. Given the high tolerances the skin of the airframe must meet in order to stay stealthy, normal wear and tear on the airframe (say, a wing tip that is now an inch or two higher than before thanks to a high-G turn) could negate most of the aircraft's advantage. Comparing the F-117 to anything is is comparing oranges to briefcases.

The statement always comes up "what're they working on now? I bet they're using them thar captured UFO's and roswell alien stuff now!!!" Ummm, yeah, I doubt it. Instead of shrinking the airframe's radar signature in order to protect the pilot, they've just gone ahead and shrunk the airframe *and* the radar signature. Tomahawks, Predator drones, better satellites, and better communications between all three. That's what has retired the SR-71 and the F-117.

I think we're finally beginning to see the retirement of some of the meat in the seat for the really, really, really dangerous stuff. You can have a $120 million dollar fighter with $3-5 million dollars worth of pilot take out a target, or $3 million dollar drone hit the same target. Even the government can do that math.

It's going to drop a whole hell of a lot of metal on a target, or carry 1.5 imperial assloads of cruise missiles near a target. Now what's that in LoC (library of congress) units ?

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[misanthrope101]

And you also have a lowered threshhold for when we use violence. The use of drones will increase the number of people we're willing to kill, because it will add one more layer of abstraction between us and the human beings whose lives we are ending.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[Anonymous Coward]

Count on the F-22 having better radar stealth than the F-117. True, but dont forget progress in radar technologie, US Air Force was quite surprised that F-22 was detected by Eurofighter Typhoon radar over a quite long distance.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[Scudsucker]

But they've been very abstract for a very long time, since military aviation evolved past throwing bombs out of prop planes by hand at the start of WWI. I doubt any of the bombers hitting Dresden could see people on the ground when they firebombed the city. Using drones instead of pilots is just a different point & click.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[a.ameri]

Well it's not like there is low demand for F22 worldwide...

Australians are literally begging the US to sell them some F22 and they are willing to pay handsomely for it (U$200 million) but US refuses to do so. The RAAF still operates some 19 F-111 because it can't get its hands on any better striker. The US DoD's reply? Wait for the vaporware F-35 which no one knows should be called a fighter or a bomber or a support aircraft... or perhaps none.

This at a time when we are surrounded by countries such as North Korea, China, Indonesia and Burma --note that none can be considered strictly democratic-- who are using MiG-29 and Sukhoi Su-34 and Su-35 aircraft with documented superior capabilities to our F-111 and F/A-18.

Australia has served alongside the US in every major warfare of the 20th and 21st century. Since its federation in 1900, Australians have served in the Great War, WWII, Korea, Vietnam... to Iraq and Afghanistan side by side America, being and ally at times when some of these wars have been less than popular at home. It has been in formal military alliance with the US since 1951 in the form of ANZUS. The Pine Gap base, the largest and most important US satellite ground station outside mainland USA is in Australia.

I sometimes wonder what it takes for US politicians to see an ally and recognise one...

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[khallow]

I think it's the same paranoia that spawned ITAR, the law that regulates what I, a US citizen can tell you, a non-US citizen about rocketry, explosives, and a number of other things.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[JediLow]

The F-22 is a much better overall package than you realize - in combat tests they've had a 108-0 kill ratio against superior forces of F-15's and F-16's, and I can't find a single reference of an F-22 being judged as shot down.

Things that I've read from pilots that flew against the F-22 in exercises say that the F-22 managed to kill them before they ever saw it.

For the new things coming - its the JSF (F-35), its not meant to be air superiority but its meant to be the mainstay of the American fleet.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[JediLow]

The F-22's stealth is supposed to be vastly superior to anything else we've ever had. Between the radar absorbent material, the shape of the plane, lowered infrared signature, and other things it's way better than the F-117.

The thing about the F-22 is that its able to take on the top of the line aircraft currently (F-15/F-16) in service (I'd love to see a test of the F-22 against a Eurofighter); exercises the US has done had 12 Raptors taking out 108 15/16's without a single loss.

Re:Deprecated Warfighting

[rtechie]

The B-2 is what you're looking for. The B-2 is too expensive to build and operate. Cruise missiles, offshore artillery, etc. are the way to go.

It's not like we need stealth to defeat "the terrorists".

Meanwhile...

[operagost]

... after 56 years, the B-52s keep flying. No, I don't mean the band, although I do like the idea of roaming if I so desire.

Re:Meanwhile...

[stoolpigeon]

which goes to show you how much longer an airframe can last when not put under the stresses of acm.

Re:Meanwhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and neither the F-117 or the B-52 has killed Osama Bin Laden yet.

Back to the drawing board...

Re:Meanwhile...

[Ironsides]

And they are expected to keep flying for another 30 years. It's going to be interesting to see what replaces them. To bad we only have about 80 left in use.

Re:Meanwhile...

[ari_j]

The B-52s are coming back, though, and I do mean the band. Funplex is the new album. o hai - im in ur lurv shakk, roman w/ all ur rock lobstahs

Re:Meanwhile...

[PortHaven]

acm ???

Re:Meanwhile...

[TheOldBear]

Air Combat Maneuvering - dogfighting or missile evasion.

Re:Meanwhile...

[peragrin]

Air Combat Maneuvering .

Re:Meanwhile...

[PortHaven]

much obliged...

being interested in so many topics, it gets hard to keep track of all the three letter acronyms. :)

Re:Meanwhile...

[Anpheus]

Yeah, but imagine how harrowing the stresses would be if you -needed- to perform ACM in a B-52?

I'm thinking that if worst came to worst, the B-52 pilot would have to get creative or there would be some -really- bad stresses.

Re:Meanwhile...

[Kankraka]

Slightly offtopic, although on topic too.. But the B-52s recently released an album.

Re:Meanwhile...

[ericspinder]

(B-52) And they are expected to keep flying for another 30 years. It's going to be interesting to see what replaces them. Likely something the same size and capabilities, but with a carbon fiber airframe, mostly to save on fuel. That is assuming of course that we continue 'own' the sky over any target we'd like to hit with it.

A good plane

[Protonk]

The F-117 has a great history and it will be interesting to see it go. I'm not normally the military tech-fetishist type, but this was a supremely odd creature that got to fly. Embodied in this plane are so many examples of ingenuity and hubris, it makes a good vessel for late 20th century american history.

We developed this plane in secret, with borrowed theories from the russians. The plane itself came out of a corporate Manhattan project, built by a combination of old salts who could wave their hands and make grumpy generalizations about engine configuration that hours of calculations would bear out and younger engineers employing technology that wasn't readily available outside the united states.

It was kept secret until we felt the need to unveil it as the epitome of american superiority in Panama and the gulf war. We spent a decade lauding the precision strike capability, ignoring reports that smart bombs were only so smart. Only in the past 5 years have we grudgingly come to accept that there were limitations to the strategy of aerial bombardment, limitations that hampered our ability to fight and killed civilians on the ground. But that doesn't make this plane or its pilots evil or murderous. We just became caught up in the technology, the gritty night vision cameras resulting in static filled screens where buildings used to be.

In a lot of ways, that is similar to our love affair with this plane. Ugly, but elegant. Unflyable without computer aided control but possessing strangely beautiful lines. Born of american ingenuity and sullied by hubris. It is a wonderful aircraft, and a great story. Thanks to the men (and women) who built it and flew it throughout the years.

Re:A good plane

[Anonymous Coward]

There's something oddly poetic about your post.

Re:A good plane

[Vampyre_Dark]

I'll never forget the first time I saw one of those things. I was ten years old, waiting at a bus stop with my father, when one of those flew overhead. It looked completely surreal. It was very creepy seeing this big, silent, killing machine, hovering over me. =0)

Re:A good plane

[auric_dude]

A few more words about the F-177A http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-117.htm and the F-22 http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-22.htm both good planes with differing jobs.

Re:A good plane

[SengirV]

Only in the past 5 years have we grudgingly come to accept that there were limitations to the strategy of aerial bombardment, limitations that hampered our ability to fight and killed civilians on the ground. But that doesn't make this plane or its pilots evil or murderous.

You are right. MUCH better to sent a couple thousand foot soldiers in, supported by artillery that DOES kill indiscriminately, shooting anything and everything in sight, just to knock out one building.

That does sound like it would cause much fewer civilian deaths.

*cough* sarcasm *cough*

Re:A good plane

[doomy]

We developed this plane in secret, with borrowed theories from the russians. Hold on.. the Russians are the ones called Greys and fly hovering crafts called UFO's? Have large black eyes and mostly go naked?

Re:A good plane

[Anonymous Coward]

> It was very creepy seeing this big, silent, killing machine, hovering over me

Silent? I've been to airshows -- The F-117 is LOUD AS HELL.

Re:A good plane

[Dunbal]

As far as I know they don't hover too well, either. GP must have taken some bad acid that day.

Re:A good plane

[sheepofblue]

limitations that hampered our ability to fight and killed civilians on the ground Guess what war does? It kills people and breaks things. The ability to fight is hampered by the assclowns that think war should be fought nicely, with more risk to our soldiers but none to them. As to the civilians it killed; try a MOAB, cluster bombs or fire bombing. Yep the alternatives suck but then so does war. Be thankful any day we can avoid both.

Re:A good plane

[street struttin']

Whatever.

Re:A good plane

[Vampyre_Dark]

Eh, I got distracted while typing that. I didn't mean hovering in place. It was flying slowly over my end of the city that day. I'm not sure what the purpose was. This was in Ottawa in the early spring of 92 or 93. It could have had something to do with the small airport / aviation museum that wasn't far away.

Re:A good plane

[e2d2]

Actually what he's referring to how the idea was originally contrived in a scientific paper released by a Russian scientist Pyotr Ufimtsev but overlooked by the Russian military. A western engineer found it and presented it to Ben Rich at the Skunk Works who said stealth "fell into his lap" basically.

I highly recommend the book "Skunk Works" by Ben Rich, if anyone has insight into stealth technology and aeronautics it would be him.

Re:A good plane

[Smauler]

To be honest, they're not all that big either.... apart from those 3 points, the GGP is spot on ;).

Re:A good plane

[Anonymous Coward]

We spent a decade lauding the precision strike capability, ignoring reports that smart bombs were only so smart. Only in the past 5 years have we grudgingly come to accept that there were limitations to the strategy of aerial bombardment, limitations that hampered our ability to fight and killed civilians on the ground. But that doesn't make this plane or its pilots evil or murderous. We just became caught up in the technology, the gritty night vision cameras resulting in static filled screens where buildings used to be. Uh, what? Are you on drugs or something? Your whole 'hubris' thing appears to be predicated on a lot of idiotic thinking. There are limitations to every human endeavour, but that doesn't mean precision strike bombing via guided weapons has been a failure in any way. It increased the military's bombing mission success rate to previously impossible levels while simultaneously reducing collateral damage and civilian casualties.

Before: you have to do area bombing to get a target because dumb bombs are inherently inaccurate. If the target is in a populated area, massive civilian casualties are guaranteed. Ever read anything about WWII bombing campaigns? Particularly about the ones which weren't focused on attacking enemy civilians; look up how hard it was for the Allies to disrupt Germany's war production with bombing, and contemplate how many of that vast sea of bombs fell on civilian structures whenever the target factory was located nearby or inside a city.

After: only if you screw up or your equipment fails do you bomb anything other than the thing you want bombed. It's more than possible to screw up when choosing what to bomb; welcome to reality, human error will always exist. Fortunately the consequences are now dramatically less severe since you're dropping far fewer bombs (and they're often smaller too, since you can have reasonable confidence of getting a direct hit).

Perhaps it is a failure in your mind because it falls short of a perfect military technology? If so, the fault is yours, for expecting perfection.

Re:A good plane

[Protonk]

Guess what war does? It kills people and breaks things. The ability to fight is hampered by the assclowns that think war should be fought nicely, with more risk to our soldiers but none to them. As to the civilians it killed; try a MOAB, cluster bombs or fire bombing. Yep the alternatives suck but then so does war. Be thankful any day we can avoid both. I am thankful any day we can avoid both. The issue isn't that war kills people, of course it does. they are dead if they are killed by bombs or bullets or knives. The issue is that in the 1990's and through 2000's we had a fantasy that war would be bloodless. We would use bombs that only killed the bad guys and they would be delivered by the touch of a button. We would not put any of our soldiers in harms way (a laudable goal) but presumably we would not hurt any of their civilians. We excise the bloodshed from war in an attempt to make people more willing to go to war over more trivial issues. It didn't result in less war, it resulted in more.

It turns out that aerial bombardment is not as bloodless as we lead ourself to believe and it actually isn't a substitute for a real army on the ground. So instead of putting an army on the ground first, you put an army on the ground after you have bombed a civilian populace.

My post wasn't anti-war or anti-air power. It was an acknowledgment that the war we envisioned in the 1990's in policy briefs and on CNN never materialized. It didn't exist. We had magicked into existence from faulty memories of WWII and a sense of our own superiority. Our military and the countries we targeted were worse off for the delusion. This is coming from someone helping to push the button on our end, not a freaky beatnik.

Re:A good plane

[Anonymous Coward]

But that doesn't make this plane or its pilots evil or murderous Of course not. Americans always go to war with a good heart. Then they make movies about how much they suffered, so that the rest of the world can see what nice people they really are.

Re:A good plane

[dbIII]

The turning point was when a smart bomb was used for a dumb mission. Releasing detailed information to the press about how a bomb managed to get down an air vent into a shelter full of civilians on mission to try to kill some of Saddam's relatives let everyone know the it's capabilities, alienated allies and gave enemies a very good example they could use as a recruiting tool to rally against an "evil empire." When it comes down to it the same idiots that set Nixon up for a fall and should have fallen with him made this mistake.

Not that great

[Thelasko]

The stealth fighter was really more of a proof of concept of what stealth technology could do. The plane sacrificed quite a bit in aerodynamics to be stealth capable. It was a subsonic vehicle and, despite what it's name suggests, it had no air-to-air combat abilities.

Although it was revolutionary at the time it first came out, keeping this aircraft in the skies would be a disservice to the taxpaying public.

Re:Not that great

[N22YF]

The stealth fighter was really more of a proof of concept of what stealth technology could do. The plane sacrificed quite a bit in aerodynamics to be stealth capable. It was a subsonic vehicle and, despite what it's name suggests, it had no air-to-air combat abilities. Although it was revolutionary at the time it first came out, keeping this aircraft in the skies would be a disservice to the taxpaying public. I think that's a little harsh... it was a very valuable aircraft for over a decade, and until the F-22 entered service recently it was the only aircraft that could perform that particular mission. But now that the F-22 is in service, I agree that there's no reason to keep the F-117 around.

Re:Not that great

[Thelasko]

It seems to me that the B-2 fills many of the rolls the F-117 did. The F-117 may be smaller and slightly more maneuverable but since the development of GPS guided bombs the F-117 seemed to be outdated. The B-2 also has the advantage of a longer range and larger payload.

Don't be confused by the name. The F-117 is a bomber not a fighter. As far as I'm concerned the F-22 is the first true "stealth fighter."

Re:Not that great

[N22YF]

It seems to me that the B-2 fills many of the rolls the F-117 did. The F-117 may be smaller and slightly more maneuverable but since the development of GPS guided bombs the F-117 seemed to be outdated. The B-2 also has the advantage of a longer range and larger payload. That's true; I think the F-117 must have significantly dropped in importance when the B-2 became operational. However, since we still kept the F-117s around even with the B-2, I assume they must have filled a certain niche well. Maybe it's an economics reason? I think I remember hearing the unit cost of the F-117 was only around $47 million or something (possibly that's in 1980s dollars), and I'm sure upkeep/support is much simpler and cheaper for the Nighthawk than the B-2. Also, there are surely times when a tactical strike aircraft is more what you need than a strategic bomber.

Re:Not that great

[Thelasko]

Also, there are surely times when a tactical strike aircraft is more what you need than a strategic bomber. My point is, JDAM gave the B-2 tactical strike capability. The F-117 has laser guided bombs, which, as far as I know, can hit a moving vehicle where the JDAMs would be less effective. But the JDAMs do have advantages. From the wikipedia article cited above:

Limited visibility of the ground caused by smoke, fog, dust and cloud cover limited the employment of precision guided munitions.

Research and development of an "adverse weather precision guided munition" began in 1992. The first JDAMs were delivered in 1997 with operational testing conducted in 1998 and 1999.

From what I can tell the F-117 can destroy whatever it can see, and the B-2 can destroy whatever a spotter on the ground can see.

Re:Not that great

[N22YF]

My point is, JDAM gave the B-2 tactical strike capability. The F-117 has laser guided bombs, which, as far as I know, can hit a moving vehicle where the JDAMs would be less effective. Does the F-117 not carry JDAMs too? I was under the impression it did, and the Wikipedia article confirms this, but I don't have a better source offhand.

Re:Not that great

[Thelasko]

Sorry, my point is that the F-117 can carry the JDAMs and the laser bombs where the B-2 can only carry the JDAMS (as I understand it, because the aircraft requires a laser emitter for the bomb to follow). The question is, how much does the military rely on the laser guided bombs?

Re:Not that great

[N22YF]

Sorry, my point is that the F-117 can carry the JDAMs and the laser bombs where the B-2 can only carry the JDAMS (as I understand it, because the aircraft requires a laser emitter for the bomb to follow). I don't know about what the B-2 can carry, but the laser designator does not have to be on the same aircraft as the one with the bombs. Lots of times one aircraft will designate targets for others with bombs, or even someone on the ground will designate the target for the aircraft. I think this was a common practice in Vietnam.

Re:Old technology

[somersault]

Link is a GNAA troll. Fuck you, anonymous coward. There were also way more fighter planes in WWII than F117As. And the tech in them is probably still classified? *shrug*

Re:Great...

[somersault]

Is for me, I used to have an F117A flight sim on me Amiga as a kid.

Plus, Microsoft seem to get a lot of press even though they murder application and OS design and implementation all the time.

USAF Deception

[tjstork]

Actually, just the F117 Night Hawk is a bomber as far as I know

The F- designation was actually deliberate. The USAF didn't want enemies to know that this was a bomber, not a fighter, so they named it differently.

Re:USAF Deception

[LWATCDR]

Also notice the number. All fighters after a certian date got renumbered. The F-117 was much newer than the F-4, the F-15, and F-16. The Air Forced used the nunbers above 112 (I think) for Soviet aircraft that we managed to acquire during the cold war. By putting calling the Nighthawk the F-117 it might have confused the soviets into thinking it was a Mig, SU, or Yak we happened to pickup. Of course we kept them under security so it was even more deceptive.

Re:USAF Deception

[Nimey]

Numbers restarted from 1 starting in 1962, when the Navy and Marines switched to the Air Force's style of aircraft designations.

Prior to that, a fighter might be designated F8U-3 -- that breaks down to Fighter, Design 8 from Vought (Vought's code was U), 3rd revision. Under the new designation system, that'd be the Vought F-8C Crusader. If it was the first design of a particular type from a company, it'd lack the middle number, e.g. the Douglas AD-2 Skyraider, which was later known as the A-1B Skyraider.

Re:USAF Deception

[Anonymous Coward]

There's another rumor around the F and the > 100 designation:

Convincing fighter jocks to fly the thing.

No one with thousands of hours in the (at the time) F-4 Phantom II would want to "step down" to a lowly aircraft with a "A" designation, especially with most units in the late 70s and early 80s converting from the F-4 to the new (at the time) F-15 or F-16.

So they gave it a F designation in the 100's range... a la the F-111 Aardvark (something I'd not want to be in during a A-A engagement).

After the "Century Series" line of fighters were decommissioned as the Vietnam War wound down, the 100's range became a weird placeholder for aircraft whose main role was ground attack but giving the aircraft a "A" designation would make it unpopular with Air Force pilots on a purely psychological level. This is why the Wobbly Goblin was put there as the F-117 and not called the A-19 or whatever would have been next under that designation.

Re:USAF Deception

[LWATCDR]

Which makes you wonder about the F-111 which never seemed to get a new number. While the F1J Fury became the F-1...
I really like the Navy's way since it almost had the entire history of the plane in the name.

Re:USAF Deception

[Nimey]

The Navy didn't use the F-111 -- IIRC they'd decided not to bother when it was still in the planning stages. Too big or somesuch. 'Twas just used by USAF here in the States.

& that was the FJ Fury. :-)

Re:USAF Deception

[LWATCDR]

Yes but the F-110 got a new number, F-4 to match the Navy number F-4. Since the F-4 was an older plane that always confused me. The Navy did build two F-111b but the problem was an Air Force long range strike air craft makes a pretty poor carrier based interceptor. Throw in the weight gain, landing gear problems, inlet problems, and cost over runs the Navy went for the F-14 instead.
So what your saying is that the USAF kept the old number with the exception of the F-110/F-4 while the Navy had to renumber everything. Okay that is a little logical.

Re:USAF Deception

[Nimey]

In the F-4's case, I think it was because the Naval designation was F4H & it was originally for the Navy, then the USAF decided to procure it as well. Thus, the Navy's designation took precedence.

Re:USAF Deception

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it was a show on History channel that had an alternate explanation for the Fighter vs. Bomber designation. The AirForce is said to have used the Fighter designation to appeal to top notch pilots who wouldn't be caught dead flying a bomber.

Fare thee well

[nastro]

It's off the the great Danger Zone in the Sky...

Wait. That's where it was.

It's off to ... Davis-Monthan on the ground. Not quite so good, metaphorically, but it'll have to do.

Re:Fare thee well

[jrmcc]

Don't you mean it's on the Highway to the Danger Zone?

Re:Fare thee well

[ravan_a]

For a change they're actually sending them to Tonopah Test Range Airfield.

Re:Fare thee well

[nastro]

Cool! Although that place has no where near as interesting a view from google maps.

Abandoned

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, now that it's retired, I guess that officially makes it abandonware.

Farewell Stinkbug!

[FurtiveGlancer]

The F-117 was an amazing aircraft. Mostly amazing because it actually worked and it was kept secret much longer than most things in our leak-filled government.

When the composite material burns, it gives off highly toxic fumes, hence the name "stinkbug."

Test pilots referred to it as the "wobblin goblin" due to early glitches in the computerized control system.

Check out the article "Fade to Black" http://www.afa.org/magazine/oct2006/1006black.asp

B-52 reverse-Stealth System

[PortHaven]

There was a proposition to modify the B-52's with reverse-stealth technology.

A similar idea had been proposed for the B-52's a few years ago. Since you can't really make such a craft stealth, how do you keep them viable.

Well B-52s are mainly used in one of two capacities. Single bomber support role, carpet bombing (albeit with more intelligent bombs these days) in prep for a land transaction. Or the more purposeful original intention of a strategic bomber. In which case a whole flight of bombers would be sent out to level much foe.

But with radar and missiles, how can such aircraft get to their targets.

I used to work on a 90ft schooner (sailboat for the landlubbers). Anyways, we had a radar reflector that would make us show up much larger on radar.

The idea was to go the opposite route. Instead of stealth, have all the B-52's light up those radars as bright as they can. So instead of seeing the large B-52 on the radar you'd see something akin to the size of the ships in Independence Day. Huge giant radar blob. In fact dozens of giant radar blobs.

So yes, you'd know something was coming. The radar makes that clear. But trying to pin point it's exact position and mobilize fighters becomes more challenging because well, it's showing up in almost a mile of air space or more. I don't think the Air Force ever went thru with the expense. But one never knows...it might have been done and listed as $200 toilet seats. ;-)

Re:B-52 reverse-Stealth System

[Tassach]

Before stealth came around, B-52s used to carry cruise-missile sized decoys that had the same radar cross-section as a B-52.

Re:B-52 reverse-Stealth System

[afabbro]

There was a proposition to modify the B-52's with reverse-stealth technology.

Dude, I played MegaFortress, too...

Re:B-52 reverse-Stealth System

[downix]

yes, they're called Quails.

In the novel Red Storm Rising the russians used just such a tactic to overwhelm the Aegis defense grid around the USS Nimitz, using decoy bombers, cruise missiles, all to mask the true attack wave.

Re:B-52 reverse-Stealth System

[Firethorn]

The idea was to go the opposite route. Instead of stealth, have all the B-52's light up those radars as bright as they can. So instead of seeing the large B-52 on the radar you'd see something akin to the size of the ships in Independence Day. Huge giant radar blob. In fact dozens of giant radar blobs.

Close, but a little more complicated. Radar is normally designed to work with weak reflections(you're looking for that stealth fighter, after all).

So you have a guy with a flashlight shining it around to see stuff via the reflections. What the B52 possesses are jamming systems that work like shining a flashlight into the guy's eyes. When put up against fighters, you're looking at equipment that probably weighs as much as the fighter's entire electronics package and is powered by those 8 engines. So it has a BIGGER flashlight.

Beyond that, it's usual response to ground systems is to use air launch cruise missiles from beyond the ground system's missile ranges.

Re:B-52 reverse-Stealth System

[styrotech]

Sounds a bit like the RAF bombers in WWII dropping chaff to create large confusing radar reflections:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(radar_countermeasure)

First the hard drive, now this..

[Anonymous Coward]

How many things called "raptor" do I have to read about today?

Re:First the hard drive, now this..

[Dunbal]

Don't forget about Raptor Jesus, he went extinct for your sins!

Ben Rich's Book Highly Recommended

[Nom du Keyboard]

If you enjoy this kind of thing, I can't recommend Ben Rich's book Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed highly enough.

Re:Ben Rich's Book Highly Recommended

[onion_joe]

Absolutely Ben Rich's book is phenomenal. I had to comment in this thread to mention (and karma whore ;) that the reason for the chunky, algular design of the F-117 was due to the limits of finite element and finite difference modelling (and basically computing power) at the time.

Angles are easier to model than curves, thus the blocky shape.

another tidbit is that the stealth equations used to simulate the F-117 were developed BY A RUSSIAN http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-117_Nighthawk#Development.

Re:Ben Rich's Book Highly Recommended

[quibbler]

I second this recommendation unconditionally. I read very few books (lots of magazines & news sites, but few real books), this is an exception. I true pleasure and insight into a world few of us have ever imagined existed. I searched this story for a comment about Ben Rich's book to make sure someone had mentioned it.

The books is Ben Rich's memoirs from working for Lockheed, up through working as director. This is punctuated by a string of fascinating anecdotes from pilots, enlisted men, and so forth, with memories of the aircraft. As a preview, one of the anecdotes that sticks with me describes the confidence gained in the F-117 by pilots leaving from bases in Saudi Arabia. Apparently the base's local bat population was unable to 'see' the airplane at all with echolocation and the hangers were littered with their tiny corpses... Amazing.

Re:Ben Rich's Book Highly Recommended

[gardyloo]

That bat story is cool, but highly implausible (sonar != electromagnetic). A search online finds that a few people have postulated that it was the toxic paint used on the plane that led to the bats dying.

Re:Ben Rich's Book Highly Recommended

[swimsaturn]

That book was a great read. I particularly enjoyed the story about testing the radar cross section of an early scale model of the Have Blue aircraft. Basically, they would stick the model on a pole on the other side of an airfield, point a radar beam at it, and measure the cross section.
When they fired up the test on the Have Blue model, there was *nothing* there - basically zero cross section. The radar operators were perplexed and wondering if their was something amiss with their equipment. Then one of the operators said, "Oh, we've got it now". What the operators didn't see was that a bird had just landed atop the model aircraft...

Re:Ben Rich's Book Highly Recommended

[quibbler]

Actually, the way a way any propagating wave moves and bounces off of a surface is similar with regards to angle of incidence equalling angle of reflection, be it electromagnetic or sound. While there are other techniques at work with stealth including materials technology, most of stealth is shape alone.

Years ago, I played with this when the F-117 was first declassified. I spray-painted a Testors model kit of the Nighthawk with chrome paint and shined a flashlight against it from across a darkened room... like magic it was all but impossible to see. Reflections peppered the room like a disco ball, but nothing came back to my eye and the flashlight. To quote the pilots "This stealth shit works..."

Imperial assloads

[sconeu]

How many VW's in an imperial assload?

Seriously, though, that's a fairly nice analysis.

Re:Imperial assloads

[ill stew dottied ewe]

A B-52 carries up to 70000lbs in bombs, so an imperial assload would be 46667lbs. A new beetle weights 2743lbs, so an imperial assload is almost exactly 17 (2005) VW beetles, not including any imperial asses (passengers).

Re:Imperial assloads

[domatic]

About 3.287 times more than a metric fuckton.

Across the water

[eneville]

The Su-37 is a pretty good plane too, I don't know why the USA doesn't outsource the development of the planes to Moscow since it's gotta be a cheaper work force. Really impressive, since USA and Rus are pretty much fighting terrorism rather than communism vs capitalism... Check out the vids on youtube, it's really impressive.

Re:Across the water

[Dunbal]

The Su-37 is a pretty good plane too

      Very few Americans will admit that. It's all USA USA USA F-22 Fuck Yeah! Of course vectored thrust is pretty neat, but now that they've started putting it on the missiles - "dogfighting" has become obsolete. You just have to watch the vids of the new missiles and see them leap off the rail, do a complete 180 and nail the drone that's flying BEHIND the shooting plane... gotcha. No more "best turn rate wins". Now it's who's got the better fire control radar and the better missiles.

Re:Across the water

[lgw]

Damn straight it's USA fuck yeah! But anyhow, the F-22s do have a gun, but IIRC it only has enough ammo for 5 seconds of firing. The design counts on the better missiles. Of course, the F-22 is such a ridiculously good plane that the pilots have scored kills with that gun in excercises vs F-15s with skilled pilots. We don't just want the best plane in the sky, we want one so good that no one is willing to fly against it. Best sort of victory.

Re:Across the water

[Tassach]

They said the same thing back in the 60s. The F-4 was designed around the "dogfighting is dead" theory of air combat. Less than spectacular real world results over Vietnam lead to the F-14 and F-15, which are both excellent dogfighters.

Re:Across the water

[quibbler]

You Russian parrots are hilarious. Do you think Americans are so dumb that we don't notice the mass spew of pro-Russian comments (we used to call it propaganda back in the day) that follows any story about America's military? The days that Russia could build anything to challenge our forces died long before your country's economy. Get over it.

To make a substantive argument; the SU-37 is a prototype effectively bolting some advanced systems to a cold-war-style airframe. The F-22 is a completely stealthy post-stall maneuvering air-dominance fighter sporting the most advanced electronic warfare and radar systems ever built into a fighter. It's been developed for the last 20 years while Russia has been working out how to get enough electricity to light its streets.

I know Russians are a proud people, but don't be ignorant. I'm glad the country is getting on its feet, but you're not suddenly-a-superpower again. We've been busy while you put your country back together. You're not a threat anymore.

Re:Across the water

[Ihlosi]

No more "best turn rate wins".

That was never the case. Better acceleration, top speed and climb rate beats better turn rate any day, since the former allow you to pick your fights as long as you're not the victim of a surprise attack (of course, if you deliberately enter a turning duel against a plane that's better at that than yours, you're a moron).

But then again, the ages-old (WWI I think) number one rule for aerial combat beats almost everything else: "See the enemy first." (which also translates to "Don't get seen first.").

Re:Across the water

[Guysmiley777]

When you're firing 100 rounds per second, 5 seconds is actually a fair amount of ammo.

Re:Across the water

[JediLow]

I wouldn't be so quick to say that dogfighting is obsolete - every few years or so they keep on claiming that, but its yet to happen; you can't forget that each time someone creates a new missile someone comes up with a new countermeasure.

Re:Great...

[MightyYar]

Get a grip!

Ben Rich's Account of the F-117

[glhturbo]

Go out and get Ben Rich's "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed"... A fabulous read of the F-117 development, but also some other great stuff on the SR-71, etc...

My favorite story is Mr. Rich and a young sergeant standing outside a missle command trailer watching the F-117 go over. Rich goes into the van, and the Marines have no clue. They do pick up a bogie, but it's the T-38 chase plane that was several MILES behind the F-117....

So Secretive It Had a Video Game

[geoffrobinson]

I have fond memories about playing both games as well. First one on Commodore. The second one on a PC clone. It was pretty darn realistic. My best friend and I acted as co-pilots. One of us would fly and shoot. The other would deal with evasive flares, etc.

Re:Fare thee well-NOT DM

[Nom du Keyboard]

It's off to ... Davis-Monthan on the ground. Not quite so good, metaphorically, but it'll have to do.

Not to D-M, which is in Tucson, AZ. RTFM and see that it's headed to Tonopah Test Range Airfield in Nevada

Farewell, Wobblin Goblin

[CompMD]

I remember first seeing an F-117 as a child right around when it was declassified. I vividly remember my world slowing down as I stared at it flying in awe, and my technophobe mother ran screaming to find somewhere to hide. Fast forward to today, and here I am, staff engineer and resident computer guy for an aerospace R&D company. Over the years I've had the privilege and honor of meeting and working with some incredible folks: designers, engineers, and pilots for aircraft such as the Beech Starship, Piaggio P-180 Avanti, A-12, SR-71, U-2, F-22, F-35, XB-70, X-29, F-104, and of course the F-117.

Today I'll think of the stories and jokes from old and retired Lockheed friends. I've already seen one today and you could see the pained look on his face as he fondly reminisced about his days working on the 117 program. Its a lovely day here in town, and I think at the end of the day I'll head to the local brewery and have a toast to the engineers who dared to dream up such a contraption, and to an aircraft that inspired many.

Cobra's Night Raven

[Timothy Chu]

What, nobody remembers Night Raven? Cobra's coolest looking plane. In fact, two planes in one.

http://crimsonguard.tripod.com/raven.html

Go Joe!

Re:Cobra's Night Raven

[Dachannien]

I was always far more impressed with their Clairvoyant Ejection Seat System. Guaranteed that no Cobra pilot ever went down with his plane.

F22 ain't no Arrow

[DynaSoar]

The Avro Arrow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_arrow flight test models of 50 years ago had pretty much the same specs as the F22, and that was while being underpowered with Pratt & Whitney J75 (same motor as the SR-71 test models). Had the Mk II with Orenda Iriquois engines been built, the F22 still couldn't touch it. The later production SR-71 could marginally beat the production Arrow's expected specs (the SR-71 peak specs were higher, but getting up to them was problematic), but didn't carry weaponry while doing so. Of course there was no stealth technology 50 years ago, but neither were there many weapons that could touch the thing at speed and altitude.

Re:F22 ain't no Arrow

[Lije Baley]

Yes, the ever-growing legend of the Avro Arrow. At this rate it's soon to be indistinguishable from Chuck Norris. Oh, and you left out the conspiracy theories.

Re:F22 ain't no Arrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course there was no stealth technology 50 years ago, but neither were there many weapons that could touch the thing at speed and altitude.

The large right angles on just about every surface of the Arrow would have resulted in a huge RCS. The delta wing would have made for a similarly colossal turning radius.

The conformal weapons bay was a pretty cool idea, though. (Was it designed such that air-to-air missiles could have been fired from it at supersonic speeds, or would it have had to slow down?)

The Arrow would have been a lousy spy plane, and a poor dogfighter, but it would have made one hell of an interceptor - which was what it was designed for: intercepting inbound Soviet bombers while they were still over unpopulated regions of Canuckistan. As an interceptor, it was probably comparable to the MiG-25 -- which is pretty good, considering that the Foxbat didn't exist until more than 15 years after the Arrow's demise.

Canadian aviation "Chuck Norris" jokes aside, it was a hell of a plane for its day, and you need only look at the Concorde and XB-70 to see where the designers wound up working.

Re:F22 ain't no Arrow

[DynaSoar]

Yes, the ever-growing legend of the Avro Arrow. At this rate it's soon to be indistinguishable from Chuck Norris. Oh, and you left out the conspiracy theories. The operational details of the Arrow are not questioned. It is legend because of these, not in spite of them.

The conspiracy theory that RL206 escaped (as shown in the movie "The Arrow") from being cut up is easily countered by the photographs showing the cockpit and nose being cut away from the rest of the airframe. RL201 through 205 were also photographed in various stages of dismantlement. No other models ever left the construction line.

Re:F22 ain't no Arrow

[John Bayko]

It had to be subsonic to deploy the weapons. And arrows don't generally turn, so that was probably a good name for something that really only flies well straight.

There were maintenance issues as well, it wasn't designed with maintenance in mind. Some panels wouldn't fit right, and had to be re-riveted with new holes after being removed to get at the interior. Probably there would have been a workaround eventually, but its optimised performance certainly came at an operational cost, which was the secondary reason for canceling it (the development cost was the main reason, procurement cost third, all versus missile-based alternatives).

I agree with the MiG-25 comparison.

F-22 Not a skunk works project

[DigitalPenguinDude]

The F-22 was not a Skunk Works project. The F-22 program was acquired when Lockheed bought the General Dynamics Ft. Worth division which is now The Lockheed Tactical Aircraft division.

Re:F-22 Not a skunk works project

[goofballs]

super late response, so you'll probably never see this, but...
Lockheed didn't inherit the F-22 from GD- they were part of a Lockheed / GD / Boeing team, with it being agreed that the leader of the team would be the one whose design won the dem/val contest. from that team, Lockheed won. Northrop won the other award, and led the Northrop / MD team.

Built in 1984

[zeno53]

War = Peace and all that. The F-117 is not and was not a "fighter". The designation was intentionally misleading. It is an attack aircraft and a weapon of war but it is not a fighter. I saw it some years ago in Trenton, Ontario, Canada. An American military sort stood outside the single strand of rope protecting this marvelous killing machine, M-16 at the ready should some devious three-year old attempt to... something.

Re:Have you heard about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: Quantum tunneling.

Re:Have you heard about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily. Rob Malda's urine might in fact consist entirely of electrons.

The Danger Zone

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember, and have a photo of, the first time I ever saw the stealth fighter. It was at an air show at George Air Force Base, when there was a GAFB, and it was cordoned off behind a tape barrior. In front of the barrier was a placard that said, basically, STOP, Proceed No Further, Deadly Force IS Authorized to enforce this command. And in front of that placard was a soldier in fatigues with his M-16 at the ready. It was fricken cool!

Re:The Danger Zone

[Nimey]

Same deal when I first saw a B-1. Had an armed guard or two with M3 submachineguns. This would have been in the late '80s at Richards-Gebaur AFB near Kansas City.

ooooh

[kris.montpetit]

I'm counting the minutes until I can buy one :D Those things were so cool when I was a kid. I'll put it next to my transformer action figures and other novelty killing machines!XD

The F-22 is impressive to see

[The Second Horseman]

Saw one at the air show in Rhode Island last year. The first thing you notice is how damn loud the thing is. Compared to an F-15, F-16 or F/A-18's I've seen at shows, it was just painful, not uncomfortable. Even good earplugs didn't really help - you really need substantial ear protection, and even then you're likely to feel it in your skull. Aside from that, the big thing I noticed was how rapidly it could change speed and its maneuverability. Compared to the older aircraft it's like watching a superball bounce around. If you had no idea that the plane existed and you saw it at night in the sky at a distance, you'd never believe it was an aircraft. The thrust vectoring looked really effective. You don't have to know a lot about aircraft to see the difference, either - you can watch an F-22 after seeing another demonstration and the difference is obvious.

Re:The F-22 is impressive to see

[Anonymous Coward]

The first thing you notice is how damn loud the thing is. No kidding, I hated when they were flying the damn things all the time. Loud as shit, waking me up at all hours.

The F-22 is pretty loud too, a lot louder than the F-15 it replaced. They also wake me up at all hours.

Ugh, I need to move.

Re:The F-22 is impressive to see

[gad_zuki!]

>If you had no idea that the plane existed and you saw it at night in the sky at a distance, you'd never believe it was an aircraft.

Oh man, dont say that to an x-files fan. If its weird and in the sky its an alien!

The tech is just obsolete...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the '70s they were only capable of calculating and apply Dr. Pyotr Ufrintsev's diffraction theories on flat objects, hence the "Hopeless Diamond" or faceted design of the F-117. As computing power and understanding of additional factors affecting stealth increased, the faceted design evolved in to the more effective and aerodynamically sound "continuous curvature" design of the B-2 bomber and F-22 fighter.

The only question now is...

[Anonymous Coward]

how long before I can buy one on ebay?

Actually,

[WindBourne]

it had more to do with being designed and built in the 50's. Keep in mind that the b-52 had roughly the same set of gauges and buttons until late 90's upgrades, and by then the bird had been taken out of the inventory. In fact, I remember looking at my fathers b-47 and later b-52 cockpit and thinking how similar it had been to the sr-71; antiquated.

Re:Actually,

[UncleTogie]

in mind that the b-52 had roughly the same set of gauges and buttons until late 90's upgrades, and by then the bird had been taken out of the inventory.

Actually, the bird is still in the air...

Re:Actually,

[snuf23]

The bird he was referring to was the SR-71. As he notes the B-52 had it's avionics upgraded in the 90s. The SR-71 was retired and never received upgrades.

Re:Actually,

[WindBourne]

Sorry, the bird referred to the "blackbird", not the buff.

Re:Actually,

[UncleTogie]

I stand corrected!

....and yes, I miss the SR-71 too....

Re:Actually,

[Frosty Piss]

Amazing to watch take off, specially in the late afternoon.

"replace" is incorrect

[dltaylor]

The F-117 and the F-22 have two completely different missions, therefore the F-22 cannot "replace" the F-117. The F-117 is a first-strike night attack bomber, deploying, mostly, precision-guided munitions. It took on roles that would have required much larger formations had they been done with the F-111 (replacement for the F-105) which had much higher visibility, so needed escorts and AA suppression. The F-22 is supposed to replace the aging, but still very potent, F-15 as an air superiority fighter, while the F-15 is shuffled off to the strike fighter role as the F-15E.

F-22s are much more expensive than F-15s. In theory, they are able to provide more kills-per-sortie than the F-15, so we would need fewer of them. The problem with that is that, despite supersonic cruise, there is only so much airspace that an F-22 can control, so, if the missions are geographically dispersed, a larger number of F-15s can provide more coverage.

There is no longer an opposing air force in Iraq, and the Iranians were stupid enough to buy planes from us, so they don't really have one, either. Other than the US, there is almost no long-range bomber capability, so the only remaining function for the F-22 is as an escort for B-2s on first-strike missions into nations with active fighter forces, such as Russia, China, and Western Europe (if they don't stop picking on Microsoft).

Re:"replace" is incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the reason the F-22 works out so much more expensive than the F-15 is the low number being built compared to the high development costs. The marginal cost of building additional F-22's is only around $75 million, rather than the $200 million you get if you include the entire program cost. New F-15's cost around $50 million (and the program cost dates back to the 60's and 70's, so you can't carry it forward equivalently).

The thing about airspace is mostly true, and part of why the Air Force is pushing hard for more money to buy additional F-22's (since they only about 1/3 as much as a 747 each). However, because of the advanced sensors and information integration of the F-22, and it's supercruise ability, it takes multiple F-15's to equal the coverage of a single F-22. By detecting an opponent earlier and getting into an intercept position more quickly, you cover more airspace with a single flight. By having a more capable fighter, you can spread the same number around to more locations, having say, a pair of F-22's providing the same combat capability as four or even eight F-15's, while at the same time covering a moderately larger airspace.

The F-22 is not intended to escort B-2's, except perhaps to perform precursor strikes on air defense systems. The B-2 would continue to operate on it's own. The F-22's primary mission would be to achieve air superiority by engaging fighter and air defense forces. Even small nations like Venezuala have reasonably competent aircraft (the crews are a separate question) like the MiG-29 and Su-35. The former is an air superiority fighter comparable to the F-18, and the latter is a ground attack fighter/bomber probably on par with the F-15E. In a conflict, the F-22's first job would be to eliminate those as a threat as quickly as possible (or more likely, make them decide not to fly them, as happened in Iraq in 2003 simply due to our AWACS + F-15's).

After establishing air superiority, the F-22 would provide combat air patrol and probably some air-to-ground, although most of that would be reserved for F-15E, F-18, and F-35 JSF.

Re:"replace" is incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

You're correct that the primary missions of each aircraft are radically different. But the F-22 is so capable that it can perform the missions that once went to the F-117 almost as an afterthought. It's more stealthy and can carry bombs just as well, so it can sneak in, bomb stuff, and also carry out its primary air superiority mission. The F-117 is a tactical stealth bomber, and the F-22 is a tactical stealth fighter which can also bomb things, so yes, the F-22 is the replacement even though it can also do so much more.

Re:"replace" is incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to MOD this 5: Funny for the last phrase:

"so the only remaining function for the F-22 is as an escort for B-2s on first-strike missions into nations with active fighter forces, such as Russia, China, and Western Europe (if they don't stop picking on Microsoft)."

Re:"replace" is incorrect

[dltaylor]

'22 internal bays cannot hold as much as the '117, and if you hang stuff from the pylons, the stealth is lost, so you might as well use a '15E or F/A-18 E/F. The F-22 is NOT a replacement for the F-117, since it cannot carry 2 x 2000lbs bombs stealthily, as the F-117 can. That is not to say it isn't useful, just that the official line coming from the Air Force, repeated in the press, is a lie, designed to pump up the "demand" for cool toys by claiming they are a replacement for essentially every other single-seater in the current inventory. They should have given the A-10s, or new, upgraded ones to the US Army, since the Air Force doesn't really want to commit expensive, relatively fragile, planes to a job that the A-10s did so well and that still needs doing (and the JSF is a long hike from production).

You can't build planes in a weekend, so when a threat surfaces, you need to have some inventory to work with, but no one out there that doesn't already have planes is going to build them in a weekend, either, so we don't need to crank out F-22s just to stroke Air Force egos.

Re:"replace" is incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the F-22 does not perfectly match the F-117's capabilities. This does not mean that it's not a replacement. The replacement does not need to do everything the original could do in exactly the same way. That's why they are different aircraft. The F-22 is still a pretty good ground attack platform, it's at least as stealthy as the F-117 and quite possibly more so, and it can defend itself to a degree that the F-117 simply couldn't.

And as to why the Stealth was angular looking...

[Anonymous Coward]

...it's because the computing power at the time could only handle flat faces. The current 'stealth' fighter has more smoother lines, due to more precessing power.

No...

[Maury Markowitz]

> Today is the last for the Stealth Fighter which is being
> replaced by the F-22 Raptor

No it's not. The F-22 is an air-superiority fighter that is replacing the F-15 in that role. The F-117 is being replaced by nothing.

This retirement leaves the USAF with no dedicated long-range tactical interdictors at all. While this gives them an excuse to fly the otherwise ridiculously overpriced B-1 and B-2 on these missions, it also means that in a hot-war they have a very real capability shortfall past the range of the F-16 or F-35.

Maury

Re:No...

[Anonymous Coward]

What ever happened to the JSF (F-35 I believe)? Basically the stealth replacement for every other fighter but the F-15.

Re:No...

[meringuoid]

What ever happened to the JSF (F-35 I believe)? Basically the stealth replacement for every other fighter but the F-15.

In production. Supersonic stealth jump jet = belongs in Macross :-)

Re:No...

[dbIII]

The F-117 is being replaced by nothing.

The ultimate in stealth!

Re:No...

[Guysmiley777]

The F-22 can carry both GBU-32 JDAMs and GBU-39 SDBs for "first day" air defense suppression in a future hot war.

Additionally, weapons such as the AGM-154 JSOW and AGM-158 JASSM will be used to kick down the door, so to speak.

SR-71

[Anonymous Coward]

The SR-71 had a second designed mission. There was supposed to be an interceptor version equipped with the PHOENIX missile (though it was not called that yet I believe). This version never went into production.

I did read somewhere that a similar design will be used in an upcoming UAV.

Re:SR-71

[jandrese]

When I was a kid my brother got a model kit of a "YF-21", which was apparently some sort of concept for a SR-71 with a drone attached to the back and missile bays on the bottom. The model had room for 4 missiles. I have no idea how close that was to any plane that never made it into production, but it seemed pretty cool to me at the time.

Re:SR-71

[KoshClassic]

Yes, there was an interceptor version of the SR-71 - it was built as a prototype (the YF-12) and would have been the F-12 had it gone to production. It was designed to carry I believe four AIM-47 Falcon missles. The Pheonix missle shared roughly the same shape as the Falcon but they were otherwise unrelated.

Re:SR-71

[Matt_R]

When I was a kid my brother got a model kit of a "YF-21" That'd be the YF-12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_YF-12

Re:Old technology

[Deadstick]

And he seems to think a WW2 airplane restoration is some sort of Really Big Story...

rj

RE: Ad hominem attacks

[Anonymous Coward]

One good ad hominem attack deserves another, so here's yours:

I really, REALLY wish you people would learn to use an apostrophe, damn it! And more importantly, when NOT to use one. All fine and good, I agree with that; maybe not with the level of vehemence you display, but I see your point.

Semilierates wouldn't have a problem... WTF is a "Semilierate"? Sorry to piss on your picnic, but I absolutely hate it when Grammar Nazis can't spell. If you don't have the sense to use a spell checker, especially when griping about someone else's written language skills, you don't deserve to breathe the same air I do. To add insult to injury, you apparently don't know the proper usage of colons, semicolons, or quotes. To sum it up, don't bitch about someone else's language skills when your own are highly dubious. Oh, and "you people" sounds racist.

...some of us see images and smell smells as well as hearing sounds when we read... ...I have NO FUCKING CLUE... Obviously. Those of us who can read, have spent the past 20 years with our eyes glued to a screen, and understand texting/leetspeak, on the other hand, had no hallucination-induced reading comprehension issues (much less an apparent apoplectic fit) over a misplaced apostrophe. Minor annoyance, at worst. If you want a truly horrifying experience, try watching a teen chatting with other teens on myspaceIM. Only one word in ten is recognizable as American English, spelling and capitalization are apparently random, punctuation is occasional (at best)... Unfortunately, this is the new generation of Americans, and these are the people who will be running for office in ten years or so (and if you thought Dubya was bad)... Idiocracy is not a joke, it's a preview.

Call it sub-literate, call it semi-literate, call it the dumbing-down of our youth, call it whatever you would like. It's a trend that is only increasing as the technology curve grows. With this in mind, remember that William Shakespeare couldn't spell his own name, and Albert Einstein flunked out of school.

Either keep up, or get out of the way.

SR71 took JP7

[Firethorn]

Jet fuel is a mixture of gasoline and kerosine.

Not really. Depending upon the grade, it's its own distillate from the stack.

There's different grades of jet fuel. For the SR71, it was a very special blend, closer to diesel then kerosine, but still designed to be liquid in both far colder and far hotter temperatures.

The match trick works fine with it, for example.

Stealthiness comparison: F-117 vs. F-22

[KH2002]

How does the radar signature of the F-22 compare to the F-117. Very favorably, from what I've seen....

"Aircraft designers generally describe an airplane's radar cross section in terms of "decibel square meters," or dBsm. This is an analogy that compares the plane's radar reflectivity to the radar reflectivity of an aluminum sphere of a certain size. The B-2 reportedly has a radar signature of an aluminum marble. The F-22 Raptor interceptor is roughly the same, and the F-117 is only slightly less stealthy. The newer Joint Strike Fighter has the signature of an aluminum golf ball. The older B-1 bomber, designed during the 1970s and 1980s, is about the size of a three-foot (one-meter)-diameter sphere, whereas the 1950s-era B-52 Stratofortress, a monstrously non-stealthy airplane, has an enormous radar cross section of a 170-foot (52-meter)-diameter sphere. The size of an aircraft has little relationship to its radar cross section, but its shape certainly does."

Re:Stealthiness comparison: F-117 vs. F-22

[sr180]

What you do not mention is that the radar cross section changes remarkably depending on the position of the radar. The F-117 is significantly more stealthy from below then it is from above.

Can't outrun SAMs

[Anonymous Coward]

It can't outrun modern missiles, hence it's grounding. OK, money was an issue too.

Re:Can't outrun SAMs

[tha_mink]

It can't outrun modern missiles, hence it's grounding. OK, money was an issue too. Actually, that's false. It COULD outrun modern missiles, unless the missiles had a real good head start. 2200 Knots at 85000 feet. The reason it got grounded is that we've got satellites to do its business now. There's no need to have it up there when we can just direct a satellite to take the pictures.

Risks and rewards.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The irony on the political side is it works better when you keep your own guys willing to die for their country while convincing the other guys not to.

I don't see that as particularly ironic. Just another example of the way things tend to get inverted when dealing with the use or threat of force - the "economy of negative value".

To deter or defeat aggressors - whether schoolyard bullies, criminals, or political aggressors - you need to be willing to RISK lives. But the goal is to attain some purpose, not to die. (When you must die, you try to sell your life as dearly as possible. But it's still better to accomplish the objective AND be alive to accomplish another.)

Making "dying in battle" a goal (rather than an unfortunate mishap) leads to poor strategy. While it does make it harder to turn the fighter away from his attack, it makes him prone to trade his life away cheaply. He'll go after low-value high-risk targets rather than picking off a low-risk target and getting away or attacking something of high value with a high risk of interception and incarceration. (You see a lot of this in the Middle East.)

Re:Old technology

[Tibor the Hun]

And god help you if you use Safari 3.1 (5525.7) on OS X.
Nicely done. even started up my Skype, amogngst other things.

Bombers are slow, I wanna go fast!

[Scrameustache]

why are they called "stealth fighters"? They're actually a tactical bomber, and so far as I know, they don't have any method of attacking another air craft. I suspect they called it that to make advisories confused about the aircraft's capabilities. You believe they act according to Sun Tzu.
I'm a cynic: I firmly believe hot shots want to be fighter pilots, and I know marketing is important to the "defense" industry.

Re:Bombers are slow, I wanna go fast!

[aadvancedGIR]

Well, it's obvious that if they chosed a more appropriate surname like "flying anvil", it wouldn't have been the same.

Re: Ad hominem attacks

[sm62704]

There's a difference between a typo (dropping a ltter when one is TYPING) and not knowing how a word is spelled. Semiliterate. Like when "I road on the rode"".

A misplaced apostrophe may or may not change the meaning of a word. "The engine has leak's" would flag itself as an error and cause no confusion, but when "leak's" is at the beginning of a sentence you would think that the rest of the sentence is about something the leak has caused.

If you want a truly horrifying experience, try watching a teen chatting with other teens on myspaceIM.

No thanks. I'd rather try and decipher Russian using babelfish. Why aren't those kids' teachers flunking them? It isn't the kids' fault, it's their teachers'.

Call it sub-literate, call it semi-literate, call it the dumbing-down of our youth, call it whatever you would like. It's a trend that is only increasing as the technology curve grows.

I don't think that's accurate. I don't think people are dumber these days, I think it's just that you never saw semiliterates' writing very much before the internet.

William Shakespeare couldn't spell his own name

I always said he was a talentless hack!

and Albert Einstein flunked out of school

His teachers were the morons, not him. I once failed a paper in high school because the teacher thought I made up the word hierarchy.

Pimp my corporate priviledges.

[Scrameustache]

I'm sure it will retire to a nice well-paid job in the defense industry. The revolving door of the military industrial congress complex: It is retiring from military service to civilian service.

3 words: Stealth jet limo.
The next person to make fun of Scientology gets a surprise visit from Travolta and his payload.

It's not a very useful plane

[wicka]

We built the F-117 and the B-2 because during the Cold War we actually needed planes that could go in and bomb targets without being seen. Today there are very few occasions where we will have to send in bombers without having air superiority (usually only the very very beginning of campaigns like the first few days of Gulf War Dos). That's why our primary bomber is a 50 year old airframe (B-52). The F-117 and B-2 are now just massively expensive to operate, hold far fewer bombs (the B1-B suffers from the same problem but is not nearly as expensive), and really don't serve any useful purpose 90% of the time.

Other Project They Are Working On

[Anonymous Coward]

They will soon be releasing the "W55-1040 Tax Payer Crushing Defense Budget"

Re:Other Project They Are Working On

[ChrisMaple]

If you actually bothered to look at a 1040 instruction booklet, you'd see a pie chart showing where federal money goes. 2/3 goes to transfer payments like social security and medicare. All of that 2/3 is unconstitutional, which is to say ILLEGAL. The portion which goes to defense is much smaller and is legal. If only legal expenditures were made by the federal government, it could not reasonably be called "Tax Payer Crushing".

If you really want to see crushing, think about what would happen with no defense budget.

Re: Ad hominem attacks

[Gilmoure]

I thought dumb meant unable to speak, not stupid.

Conspiracy theort

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know they retired it? Maybe its just stealthed instead

Drone = Cruise Missile

[Firethorn]

while the drone cost is hypothetical.

Personally, I was figuring more on a cruise missile than a drone* for such a high risk target. Still, it's not like we can't make an educated guess.
~$500k for a tomahawk.
$40 million for a set of 4 predators, including ground systems.

Figure half the cost is the ground station and sat link, and that's $5 million each for the preds. $3 million for a more disposable drone isn't out of sight. Or for a much more capable cruise missile, for that matter.

*The difference being that you at least hope to get the drone back.

Re:Drone = Cruise Missile

[khallow]

By my count that's $10 million per predator. Sure future ground systems should be able to handle more drones, but it'll cost more too. And if we're going for almost disposable drones, $3 million is a bit steep even for the US military. I guess it'd depend on how capable these drones are.

Re:Drone = Cruise Missile

[Firethorn]

By my count that's $10 million per predator. Sure future ground systems should be able to handle more drones, but it'll cost more too.

That's $10 million per predator and all of it's ground systems and support equipment. You break one(or the enemy does it for you), you go out and buy another predator, you don't need to replace all the ground systems.

I figure we have about a $5-10 million range for the cost of the predator drone itself.

And if we're going for almost disposable drones, $3 million is a bit steep even for the US military. I guess it'd depend on how capable these drones are.

The 'almost' is a pretty big one, I'll agree. Still, in degrees of danger, you'd much rather sent a $3M drone into the most dangerous areas rather than a $100M plane with a live pilot. Of course, I'd only send a drone when I'm pretty sure I'm going to lose it if I didn't have targeting data sufficient to send a cruise missile.

It's not that the drone is cheap; it's that it's the least expensive option. Think of it as a pawn sacrifice move.

Also

[StarKruzr]

there's an A-12, which is basically the same plane, at Udvar Hazy in Maryland. It's an annex of the Smithsonian Air and Space museum.

This also happens to be Enterprise's current perch. I had no idea she was there the first time I went. So I'm walking along and turn a corner, and HOLY SHIT SPACE SHUTTLE@!>!@$!#E#KRK

It was kind of a surreal experience.

Re:Also

[Anonymous Coward]

there's an A-12, which is basically the same plane, at Udvar Hazy in Maryland. You misspelled Virginia, which is where the NASM Udvar-Hazy center is located, next to Dulles International Airport.

Re:Also

[AikonMGB]

IIRC, the Archangel-12 was a smaller and lighter single-seater version? But yes, same basic body structure and construction methods.

Another one in Kalamazoo Michigan

[witherstaff]

There's also one at the Kalamazoo Michigan Airzoo. You can't sit in a cockpit of one like in Seattle but otherwise it's right at eye level.

Very nice place, including one of the worlds largest murals (All aircraft themed), planes from all periods and some very fun flight simulators.

Re: Ad hominem attacks

[tha_mink]

His teachers were the morons, not him. I once failed a paper in high school because the teacher thought I made up the word hierarchy Wait now. I'm confused. Did your teacher think you made up the "word hierarchy" or the word hierarchy?

Where do old military planes go?

[trawg]

I've seen the old airplane graveyard things in the desert but iirc they only have civilian planes. Do they just mothball all these things and put them in storage somewhere in case they're ever needed again? Or are they just scrapped for parts (or sold to 3rd world countries at a discount)?

Re:Where do old military planes go?

[Doctor Faustus]

I've seen the old airplane graveyard things in the desert but iirc they only have civilian planes.
The sections I saw in Arizona were rows upon rows of F-4's and A-10's and a few others I don't remember.

Re:Where do old military planes go?

[azadrozny]

I have seen TV documentaries on this process, but I do not remember the name of the program. Similar to the Navy's process, the aircraft is has most of its fluids drained, and are often wrapped with a protective membrane to keep it out of the elements. They are taken out to large boneyards where they just sit until they are either re-commissioned, or scrapped. In some cases, they are cannibalized for parts, but since the entire F117 fleet is being retired, I doubt this will happen. I suppose they could be sold at some future point, but I don't believe we export any stealth technology right now.

Re:Where do old military planes go?

[phillymjs]

There's a documentary that airs on the History Channel from time to time called "The Boneyard" that covers this.

There are a few levels for mothballed planes... some are prepped for long term storage, some are kept in a condition that they can be recalled to flight status in about a month or so IIRC, and others are kept as just a spare part repository.

It was actually an interesting show, besides the planes it covered ships and missiles being decommissioned and . If you've got a TiVo or other DVR with the feature, put "boneyard" in your wish list so it'll catch it the next time it airs. There's a site for it, but the TV schedule page is empty:

http://www.history.com/minisites/boneyard

~Philly

Re:Where do old military planes go?

[Anonymous Coward]

To the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) located at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson Arizona.

http://www.dm.af.mil/units/amarc.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerospace_Maintenance_and_Regeneration_Center

And why do we need the F22, again?

[DrVomact]

It continues to amaze me how the military procurement machine goes on designing and buying immensely complex weapons that have no conceivable use and do not improve the security of this country (the U.S.A.) one whit...and nobody thinks this is strange. Sure, it's a helluva pretty plane...take up a collection and build your own if you like, but I'm so damn sick of my tax money going to these things.

We do not need an air superiority fighter/bomber/sigint/ewar platform like this. (Notice how it does everything...baaaad sign.) We do not have an enemy that makes its employment worthwhile, nor are we remotely likely to become involved in any war with a technologically sophisticated enemy for the simple reason that such an enemy will have nukes, and people with nukes do not fight other people with nukes.

What we really need to spend some money on is people: we need to attract and keep competent officers and soldiers in the Army (or the USMC, if you've given up on the Army), we need to pay these people what they're worth, give them decent benefits, and raise personnel standards throughout. That would take a lot less money than our current high-tech fixation, and would buy us a lot more security. But it's not about security, is it?

Re:And why do we need the F22, again?

[turing_m]

"What we really need to spend some money on is people: we need to attract and keep competent officers and soldiers in the Army (or the USMC, if you've given up on the Army), we need to pay these people what they're worth, give them decent benefits, and raise personnel standards throughout. That would take a lot less money than our current high-tech fixation, and would buy us a lot more security. But it's not about security, is it?"

The military industrial complex works because it channels massive amounts of public money towards ostensible military projects at a considerable margin. This margin lines the pockets of politicians, generals and defense contractors. Until the military industrial complex perceives an existential threat, they are not going to keep funneling themselves pork and not act in the interests of their own country. Meanwhile the military will continue to be "just good enough".

Re:And why do we need the F22, again?

[ALB1]

the military procurement machine goes on designing and buying immensely complex weapons

today's key word in the military is "short sensor to shooter loop", which is achieved by networking detectors and binding them to communication systems with high range + bandwith + cryptographic capabilities.
These systems are inherently expensive: it is hard and time consuming to make two items communicate with each other when they were not conceived from the start to do it.

that have no conceivable use and do not improve the security of this country (the U.S.A.)

This is arguable...

We do not need an air superiority fighter/bomber/sigint/ewar platform like this. (Notice how it does everything...baaaad sign.)

The fact that it can assume all those kind of missions does not mean that it cannot do any single one of them particularly well : with its supercruise and weight/lift ratio it can be a great interceptor, with its stealth and low flying capabilities it can be a good attack aircraft, it is also designed as an excellent ewar aircraft with its remote sensors fusion and electronically scanned array radar (or is it the F-35 ?)

The fact that an aircraft design is a compromise between contradictory factors is not so true nowadays with fly-by-wire, advanced materials and very powerful engines. It was true in the 70s when the F-117 was designed for a single mission profile because the compromises made prevented it to be used for anything else (even flying the same route at low altitude over Bosnia)

On the bottom line, conceiving a weapons system today (you do not simply "build a plane", but also a whole lot around it to make the most out of it) takes quite a lot of years nowadays, so having the F-22 and F-35 already built and being "debugged" and logging experience with such systems is NOT money thrown down the drain.
Of course, this is only useful if the military can keep people with experience in their ranks, which is why I agree with you on the latter part of your post:

What we really need to spend some money on is people: we need to attract and keep competent officers and soldiers in the Army (or the USMC, if you've given up on the Army), we need to pay these people what they're worth, give them decent benefits, and raise personnel standards throughout.

Non-widescreen option?

[darkpurpleblob]

Does the F-22 come with a non-widescreen monitor option?

Gimme a Tomcat...

[Anonymous Coward]

... a Sidewinder and a capable RIO and I'll blast the fuck outta an F-22 any day.

Re:Gimme a Tomcat...

[GodfatherofSoul]

Assuming the Tomcat is parked in front of a museum aiming at an air base for aircraft still good enough to be in service. Friggin' Navy boys... ;)

Re:Gimme a Tomcat...

[Doctor Faustus]

Assuming the Tomcat is parked in front of a museum aiming at an air base for aircraft still good enough to be in service.
The Tomcats weren't obsolete, just worn out. The air force's F-15 fleet is rapidly reaching that point, too, with the overuse in Iraq.

Yeah...

[Vr6dub]

what he said.

I loved that plane,.. thanks to Microprose..

[AbRASiON]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-19_Stealth_Fighter

(Admitedly they change the name / details somewhat) but god damn that was a brilliant simulation for the C64, really great gameplay - well thought out levels and sadly it even taught me some geography (I still know where those SAMS are located in the Libyan campaigns)

gado184

[gado184]

Why was the F-117 retired so early? Someone with access to AF intelligence tells me that through out its brief history, the F-117 was not documented once putting its bombs on target. No wonder it was retired so early. I am sure it scared the enemy and more than a few congressmen and senators got some fat contracts in their districts. But as a weapon system all we have is the DoDs word that is was effective. Ya, sure.

Re:gado184

[goofballs]

that's retarded. the f-117 flew 1% of sorties in gulf war 1, but took out 40% of the targets, so they obviously put some bombs on target, eh? and don't you remember the videos from gulf war 1, of smart bombs being delivered by the f-117 going in windows and such?

O/T - Will make my wife SAD...

[Talkischeap]

My Father, Mother, Aunt & Uncle all worked for Kelly Johnson at the Skunk Works many years ago, and I remember my dad taking the red flight regularly out of Edwards, so I grew up with plenty of exposure to exotic aircraft in the late 50's, early 60's.

And when I met her, I was surprised to discover that my (now) wife used to build F-117's in Burbank (in the same hanger that my dad worked in 10 years before), so she'll be sad about this news, because she never got the chance to see one fly (she went to one air show, but the F-117 flyby was canceled).

She has several interesting/funny/scary (not classified) stories about her 7 years working on "the article".

And man... can she ever use a rivet set, Damn... I'm gonna get her to build me a nice stealth aluminum camp trailer.

Re:Old technology

[somersault]

Yeah when my browser window started jiggling around I freaked out a bit, it was like someone had VNCed in and started shaking the window (I had just opened up a bunch of tabs and one of them was this one, I wasn't expecting a troll). Almost switched off me Mac right there until I saw the GNAA title and realised it was just some malicious window positioning javascript. An Apple-Q later and everything was happy again..

Re: F-117A Stealth Fighter Retired

[Ihlosi]

"Look what I just found on eBay ..."

An SR-71 50 miles up? Not possible.

[Viol8]

At that alititude you're for all intents and purposes in a hard vacuum. There would be no oxygen for the engines and even more worrying , no air for the wings or tail to work with. Even if it could get up that high using a rocket booster it would just tumble out of control.

Re:An SR-71 50 miles up? Not possible.

[bill_mcgonigle]

There would be no oxygen for the engines

he was talking about an extra LOX tank to feed the engines

and even more worrying , no air for the wings or tail to work with. Even if it could get up that high using a rocket booster it would just tumble out of control.

What would you need, some maneuvering thrusters?

F 22

[gsgiles]

The F22 did not come from the skunk works. It was designed and built in Marietta Georgia. I should know I worked on it.

[ot] of gratitude

[wild_berry]

Sir,

For your post, I thank you greatly. You got a big laugh out of me. Were it appropriate, I'd call this post of the day.

I'm sorry to see the 117 go

[wwphx]

I used to live near Holliman and always enjoyed seeing the 117s doing touch & go practice. I took some photos once from the highway didn't have nearly long enough of a lens.

I hate seeing it retired. Yes, it's 30 years old, but still no one that we're going to get into a fight with has the technology to detect it. They've kept the B-52 flying for 50 years, they could have kept the 117 in the air. But it wasn't fast or sexy enough and therefore had to die.

Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

No other models ever left the construction line.

Right. And the ones that did get built didn't work correctly, yet there you are jizzing all over yourself because of a plane that never made it to real production and didn't even get its flight controls correctly sorted.

In case you didn't realize it, you sound like an idiot touting the fake ass vaporware claims of the people who conned you.

Probably because you're wrong from the start

[hassanchop]

It continues to amaze me how the military procurement machine goes on designing and buying immensely complex weapons that have no conceivable use and do not improve the security of this country (the U.S.A.) one whit...and nobody thinks this is strange.

I think that may be because your initial assumptions are flawed from the start.

First, the "no conceivable use" argument is demonstrably false. It is so wrong, in fact, that it makes me question your ability to discuss this subject in an intelligent and informed manner. As another poster said "This retirement leaves the USAF with no dedicated long-range tactical interdictors at all".

Sure, it's a helluva pretty plane...take up a collection and build your own if you like, but I'm so damn sick of my tax money going to these things.

We did, that's what those taxes are. The fact that "nobody thinks this is strange" should indicate to you that the flaw here may be in those that DO think it's strange, not vice versa.

Quite informative...thanks!

[PortHaven]

/=

*thumb's up*