Posted on 10/08/2021 8:21:25 PM PDT by blam
For the last year, we’ve noted a series of reports (read: here & here) of (supposedly retired) Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft conducting combat training missions over the skies of California.
The latest sighting of the world’s first stealth aircraft, which first debuted in the early 1980s and retired in 2008, after the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor stealth fighter aircraft was first fielded, was in mid-September at the Fresno Air National Guard Base, California.
The US Air Force released a statement at the time stating “two F-117 Nighthawk aircraft” would be conducting “air combat training missions.”
This is the first time that F-117s have landed in Fresno. Their presence immediately received attention from aviation geeks who captured the planes operating in Fresno in never before seen 4k resolution video, according to The Aviationist.
The Pentagon appears to be bringing some of these legacy stealth aircraft back to active duty as tensions between the US and China continue to soar with Taiwan in focus.
Four decommissioned F-117s were secretly deployed to the Middle East in 2017 to launch surgical strikes. The reason for the deployment was simple; Russia and Syria had shut down Syrian airspace by mid-2016. The U.S.-led coalition was unwilling to lose a fifth-generation aircraft to Russia’s S-400 missile systems in Syria.
As of January 2021, there were 48 F-117s in Type 1000 storage, meaning the planes could swiftly return to active service.
JimRob does not allow ZeroHedge to be posted on FR.
Zubu Brothers is okay.
That's news to me. I was still active duty then, and I don't remember that being so. The older the radar system, the stealthier it was. The Iraqis had plenty of old Soviet radar and didn't see it unless they went outside and looked with their own eyes.
Do you have a source?
Gotcha...thanks for the ZH/FR update.
Radar might not be able to lock on for targeting, but even an intermittent return would be enough to vector fighters close enough to get a lock on.
“The second prototype, however, was a success, proving for all practical purposes its invisibility to radar. It showed at most a low-intensity, nebulous radar sparkle that was nearly indistinguishable on a radar scope from background noise until the aircraft was well within a ground missile’s minimum launch range. Only the massive airborne antenna of the Boeing E-3 Sentry AWACS (airborne warning and control system) and some ground-based low-frequency and very-high-frequency radars had success detecting it, but because of their large antennas the latter two are unsuitable for battlefield use.”
Thanks.
I don’t think that is the equivalent of “showing up like a sore thumb.”
Maybe more like a nebulous back ache.
That’s right. They will be loitering high above school board meeting all around the country.
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