F-117 Stealth Fighter to Be Retired

AP ^ | March 11, 2008 | JAMES HANNAH

[Joiseydude]

DAYTON, Ohio (AP) - The world's first attack aircraft to employ stealth technology is slipping quietly into history.

The inky black, angular, radar-evading F-117, which spent 27 years in the Air Force arsenal secretly patrolling hostile skies from Serbia to Iraq, will be put in mothballs next month in Nevada.

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, which manages the F-117 program, will have an informal, private retirement ceremony Tuesday with military leaders, base employees and representatives from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

[SampleMan]

yep. Aspect matters. Its not accidental that radar dishes store to the side when not in use. There’s nothing quite like a big reflector with the same dipole pointing right back at you to scream “here I am”

[Tallguy]

Radars filter by Doppler not size. That eliminates birds and such.

Makes sense... thanks!

[roamer_1]

Not much bang for that buck.

[monkapotamus]

lol

[RFEngineer]

“I’ve worked with tactical radars for 20 years and taught courses on them, so I know a bit myself about how they process returns.”

Indeed you would. I just love this stuff, and get a bit carried away sometimes talking about it.

Radar returns only carry back so much information- direction, timing, signal-strength, doppler shift is basically it. The real wizardry is in the signal processing. I can speak on many aspects, but I definitely respect your experience on this.

[RFEngineer]

“There’s nothing quite like a big reflector with the same dipole pointing right back at you to scream “here I am””

......followed shortly after by *boom*

[SampleMan]

The real wizardry is in the signal processing.

Indeed. With enough computer power its amazing what can be gleaned from a returned pulse. I'm especially intrigued when I think of what could be possible with today's capabilities in timing and positioning. e.g. One illuminator and an unlimited number of receivers. This type of computational wizardry is where I think the real dark projects are centered these days.

[Ronaldus Magnus]

I hope that they will all find their way to Israel where I am sure that they would be put to good use.

[ASOC]

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/01/stealth.html
Has, inpart, this:

The most fundamental problem, however, is that stealth planes are hardly undetectable to enemy defenses. The B-2 is nearly as visible as a 747 to a ground observer, one reason that it — like the F-117 — flies only at night. Furthermore, the Pentagon’s supposedly invisible stealth aircraft fly into action with the same radar-jamming escort planes that accompany conventional warplanes. Demand for jammers was so high during the Kosovo conflict that the Pentagon had to redeploy electronic warfare planes from Turkey, where they are being used in the ongoing air campaign against Iraq. “For stealth planes, jammers are just like American Express,” says a military analyst who works with Congress. “Don’t leave home without them.”

and this -

It’s impossible to know just how stealthy stealth planes really are since the Pentagon has made the entire program highly classified, which means that it operates virtually without oversight from Congress or watchdog groups. There are, however, disturbing signs that stealth planes are far from invulnerable.

During the Gulf War, the British Royal Navy infuriated the Pentagon by announcing that it had detected F-117 stealth fighters from 40 miles away with 1960s-era radar.

The Iraqis used antiquated French radar during that conflict, and they, too, claimed to have detected F-117s. The General Accounting Office, Congress’ watchdog agency, tried to verify the Iraqi claim, but the Pentagon refused to turn over relevant data to GAO investigators. Likewise, the Pentagon has revealed no specific details about the F-117 shot down over Kosovo, but Yugoslav sources and news accounts say the Serbs brought the plane down with a Russian SA-3 missile, a 35-year-old model. General McPeak calls the incident a “lucky shot.”

And a good discussion if you haven’t spent some time her
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_aircraft (L band detection is mentioned)

[Quix]

Of course with long time British MOD UFO ‘keeper of the files’ Nick Pope now retired and speaking up quite freely about the massive amount of British UFO files being released . . .

uninformed exclamations will increasingly look as clueless as they are.

[Quix]

My sense of such things is that . . .

when the perceptiveness becomes smaller than standard sub-atomic particles . . . one’s understanding of such necessarily has to conform to the smaller dimensions.

But I’m not really an expert in such realms.

As some folks are far from experts about UFO’s . . . though it doesn’t seem to keep them from making outrageous hostile comments about the topic.

[tang-soo]

Once he was retired from the USAF, I worked with the first 117 wing commander, Bob Jackson. It was my first engineering job out of college. However, I didn’t know it until years when I saw him being interviewed on the History Channel’s special on stealth technology. My jaw dropped. I knew he had been a thunderbird pilot when I worked with him, but had no knowledge at the time about the 117. This was around 83 or 84.

[tang-soo]

that they had to develop a “stealth pole”

You mean like this one ...


More found here.

This pole was actually called a "stinger". It was also built by Lockhead as a very low radar crossection pylon to hold targets in in the air while they were being measured.

The James Bond - styled facility in this picture allowed the huge stinger to be lowered underground while technicians and engineers worked on the test target or for coverage when Soviet spy satellites were in the neighborhood. This was part if the RAMS upgrade to the older RATSCAT site located out near Trinity (White Sands). It was under construction in the early 80s when I spent 3 weeks on a test program at RATSCAT.

[A.A. Cunningham]

Oh really?

Yes, really.

But really it’s not relevant -

It certainly is relevant when refuting bad gouge posted by people who don't know what they're talking about.

but don’t put too much weight on that event.

I put weight on a number of events not just the British revelation that many of us in EW knew was no revelation at all. I also put weight in a cornucopia of ATOs requiring SEAD support for F-117s which predate Desert Storm.

[RFEngineer]

“It certainly is relevant when refuting bad gouge posted by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. “

That wasn’t bad gouge.

“I also put weight in a cornucopia of ATOs requiring SEAD support for F-117s which predate Desert Storm.”

We’ve talked about this before. You continue to insist that SEAD was claimed to be unnecessary for stealth platforms.

Stealth is not invisibility, never was. it degrades detection distance that’s all it’s ever intended to do. SEAD degrades detection distance as well.

In combination they make certain mission survivability go up. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.

Again - EVERY stealth aircraft is ultimately trackable - it’s just at what range and under what conditions. Mission planning controls, as much as possible, those conditions and makes certain missions possible where they would not be with other platforms.

[CougarGA7]

Pretty cool isn’t it. Nice find.