Yup. Unbelievable as it sounds, they were ORDERED by the commander in chief himself to take exactly the same path every night.
Positioning radar had very little to do with it. They simple filled the flight path with massive amounts of lead. I'm pretty sure the Russians reimbursed them for the ammo in exchange for access to the crash remains.
Sorta reminds one of LBJ with a map selecting targets every morning. That worked well.
The same administration that said “armored vehicles” would look too offensive in Somalia. How many paid with their lives for that debacle?
Optics over safety and a few thousand Somali’s died for it as well as our spec ops guys.
Clinton was awful on military matters. Same story different chapter now.
Just off of memory, it was a Soviet made SAM, maybe a -6. Those, and others, had dual capable tracking - radar and IR. Radar would give them a rough launch target, especially when the bomb bay was open in the attack, and the SAM had a fair chance of acquiring the ‘faint’ heat signature of the F-117.
Changing the routing and timing made them safer, again. Including changing course after weapons release.