Stealth jet quietly slips into history

Toronto Star ^ | Thu. Nov. 2, 2006 | Bill Taylor

[NucSubs]

Stealth jet quietly slips into history F-117A fighter retired after 25 years Cutting-edge design cloaked in mystery Nov. 2, 2006. 12:54 PM BILL TAYLOR FEATURE WRITER

Almost as furtively as it flew above war zones from Bosnia to Baghdad, America's F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter has retired from active duty.

The years had snuck up on it. Though it remained cutting-edge contemporary in many people's minds, the Nighthawk had hit the quarter-century mark. At a discreet "Silver Stealth" ceremony at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico this week, some of the people who built, serviced and flew the plane marked the end of its 25-year career.

Much of the F-117A's innermost workings remain top-secret but it was outstripped by newer, even more space-age technology. All that remained was its public image. Its successor, the F-22 Raptor, appeared on the last day of the Canadian International Air Show in Toronto in September, its first foray outside the United States. The Raptor looks more like a conventional jet than the F-117A and didn't cause much excitement, other than among hard-core aviation buffs. When the Nighthawk made its Toronto debut in 1993, as it whispered over Ontario Place the crowd went crazy, pointing and yelling, "Stealth! Stealth!"

[A.A. Cunningham]

By chance. The AA missile battery commander admitted he just fired his missiles into the flight path that NATO aircraft had been using.

That's not what he said and not what we've known since 1999. Air Force arrogance, poor tactics and the inherent susceptibility to detection by low band radar is what brought down that F-117. Simply detuning the radar was usually all that was necessary.

Serb discusses 1999 downing of stealth

'"We used a little innovation to update our 1960s-vintage SAMs to detect the Nighthawk," Dani said. He declined to discuss specifics, saying the exact nature of the modification to the warhead's guidance system remains a military secret.

It involved "electromagnetic waves," was all that Dani - who now owns a small bakery in this sleepy village just north of Belgrade - would divulge.'

[Old Professer]

They're probably edited by the same guys who decided pigeon poop was not harmful to people but ought to be kept off statues.

[FYREDEUS]

So was I...it was so ODD looking with it's angularity but I didn't think it was sinister exactly...though it did occur to me that it looked like something Darth Vader might fly, or maybe Batman.