Battle Stations III
F-117
Nighthawk Stealth
Dimensions Wing
span 13.8m (45ft), length 20.06m
(66ft), height 3.78m (12ft)
Weight Empty weight 13,495kg
(29,750lb), maximum weight 42,040kg (92,680lb)
Engines 2 x General Electric J404-GE-F1D2 turbofans,
each with 4,898kg (10,800lb) thrust
Bomb load 2 x 907kg (2,000lb) GBU-27 Paveway guided
bombs
Maximum speed Mach 0.9
Crew 1
Stealth technology
Stealth is not a single technology but rather a quality and design goal affecting all the major components of an aircraft's configuration. It sprang in large part from the lessons absorbed in the Middle East conflict of the early 1970s, which demonstrated the need to design combat aircraft capable of penetrating densely layered modern air defence systems.
Critical to Stealth is the reduction of the aircraft's radar cross-section (RCS) – the measure of its apparent size as a target on radar. It was a problem that US designers had been addressing since the early 1950s, an era that saw the introduction of a number of specialised US covert reconnaissance aircraft.
Development
Stealth was pioneered at the celebrated 'Skunk Works' – the Advanced Projects Division of Lockheed-California. The key to it was the realisation that, if an aircraft's surfaces were flat, like the facets of a diamond, reflections could be dictated by the designer and directed away from hostile receivers.
Ben Rich, a veteran of the U2 and SR-71 spy plane programmes, was the design leader of the Stealth project. He moulded the F-117 prototypes into the aircraft's distinctive shape, with its jagged, sawtooth edges, sharply raked wings and twin fins canted to avoid bouncing reflected signals back to enemy receivers. The aircraft's natural instability was controlled by computerised fly-by-wire controls.
In 1978, two prototypes were tested within the 'Have Blue' programme at the top-secret facility at the Nellis Air Base range in Nevada. One crashed while coming in to land, but the other demonstrated almost complete invisibility to radar. Subsequently, the aircraft went into production, incorporating many design modifications prompted by 'Have Blue'. These included increased engine power, baffling and soundproofing of the inlets and exhausts and the outward canting of the tail fins to further minimise radar signature.
The aircraft carried no radar, as inactive radar serves as a reflector. Even its radio antennae were designed to retract beneath the aircraft's surface when not in use. All fuel and munitions were also carried internally, necessitating airborne refuelling. The small size of the internal bomb bays was offset by the accuracy of the two 907-kilogram (2,000lb) laser-guided 'smart' bombs they carried.
Although the aircraft was 33% bigger than its prototypes, its RCS was equivalent to that of a small bird. This gave it an almost 100% advantage over F-4 Phantom 'Wild Weasel' anti-radar aircraft when approaching either ground-based or airborne radar.
The unit cost of each aircraft – approximately $45million – was kept low by using engines, landing gear, flight control systems and other parts from existing warplanes.
Operations
Deceptively designated F-117A (F for 'fighter'), the first production Nighthawk Stealth 'fighters' were tested in the summer of 1981 before being adopted by 4450th Tactical Group, later activated as the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing (TFW) and, after the first Gulf War, redesignated the 49th TFW.
The very existence of the F-117 was kept secret by the Pentagon until November 1988. The aircraft did not see action until more than a year later, during the invasion of Panama in 'Operation Just Cause', in December 1989.
At 3am local time on 17 January 1991, eight F-117As delivered the initial blows in the first Gulf War, including the disabling of the Iraqi Air Force's headquarters in Baghdad with a one-ton GBU-27 guided bomb. In the first 24 hours of the conflict, the 42 F-117s flying from King Khalid Air Base on the Red Sea – just 2.5% of the Coalition aircraft deployed to the Gulf – accounted for 31% of the targets attacked. By war's end, the F-117As stationed in Saudi Arabia had attacked over 40% of the Coalition's strategic targets, relegating strategic bombers such as the B-52 to a tactical role.
The first combat loss of an F-117 occurred on the night of 27/28 March 1999 during the Nato air campaign against the former Yugoslavia, when a Nighthawk was downed by an S-125 (SA-3 'Goa') missile. However, the F-117 flew during the war in Afghanistan and in the second Gulf conflict, when 12 of them were deployed. There is currently an active force of 55 F-117s.
The F-117A is now in the middle of a rolling programme that will update all the Nighthawks delivered between 1983 and 1990 to a common standard. This will involve equipping them with new radar-absorbent coatings and improved electronics and avionics, reducing their maintenance requirements and enabling real-time targeting information to be transmitted to and from the F-117 during flight.
