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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?
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'm sure it will retire to a nice well-paid job in the defense industry.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
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
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?
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
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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... 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.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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.
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.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
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*
which is totally what she said
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.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
This is my sig.
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.
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
How many VW's in an imperial assload?
Seriously, though, that's a fairly nice analysis.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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....
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.
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.
Don't forget about Raptor Jesus, he went extinct for your sins!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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.
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.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
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 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).
> 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
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
"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."
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.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
3 words: Stealth jet limo.
The next person to make fun of Scientology gets a surprise visit from Travolta and his payload.
You can't take the sky from me...
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.
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.
+++ATH0
You'll have that sometimes...
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?
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
what he said.
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)
"Look what I just found on eBay ..."
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.