Why we retired the F-117As is beyond me. They were still very good airplanes. No doubt maintaining them was difficult. We should have put them in the Air National Guard in western states the place of a couple of F-16 squadrons.
Why?? For the same reason we retired the F-14s and A6-E’s, to make room for new procurement. Procurement officers don’t make rank and find post military jobs, and contractors don’t get fat new contracts when we keep planes to the end of their service life.
F-14s are still unequalled in the Navy. The Super Hornet is far less capable. It’s almost helpless against a Sukhoi. The F-35 is even worse.
The A6-E carried a tremendous bomb load, equal to almost a third of a B52. It could fly out 2800 miles with a good load. The Super Hornet struggles to go 400. And we built brand new A6-Es right up until the day they retired. Several others were like new after being rewinged. BUt the Navy wanted to get rid of them fast to make way for the planned A-12.
Took almost new ones and sunk them off Florida to make a diving reef.
The F-15 is undefeated, and we are dumping them for a tiny force of F-22s and a few more moonpig F-35s
Maybe they got mothballed because they were so easy to track over Bosnia.. Cellphone triangulation or something like that.