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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)."
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?
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
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.
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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.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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....
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.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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.
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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.
> 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
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.
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.
I don't read AC A human right
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.)
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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.
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...
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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.
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)