Remember when we lost the F117 in Somalia? It was brought down largely intact, and SOP for our forces was to bomb the crash site. But by the time we got “permission” from the UN to launch the bombing sortie, the site had been picked clean by the enemy.
I was active duty AF at the time, Travis AFB, and they had a transient F117 in one of the hangers, cordoned off, under armed guard. Even as a mechanic working the flight line I wasn’t allowed within 100 feet of it.
Wasn’t that in Serbia?