F-117 Stealth Fighter Aircraft


 

The F-117A Stealth fighter was another example (and probably one of, if not THE last such project) of an aircraft designed and built in Lockheed's Advanced Design Projects group (Skunk Works), first established by Lockheed President Kelly Johnson to design the U-2 and the SR-71.Much about the aircraft is secret, but it is known that its wings can be folded so it can be transported by C-5A, it is air refuelable, and can carry 2,000 lb laser guided weapons. It uses a high precision Inertial Guidance System, GPS, and other advanced avionics. It has FLIR and a steerable laser designator to assure precision when attacking ground targets. It is a single seat, twin engine sharply angled, faceted skin aircraft, made up of speical composite materials, with engine inlet and outlet on the top side of the wings. All this blends into a superior low observable aircraft. The wings are swept back at a sharp 67.5 degrees. Control is multi- redundant fly-by-wire and a state of the art digital avionics suite.

The F-117 first flew in June of 1981, and became operational in 1983. It is based at the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing (TFW) at Tonopah Test Range Airfield.

Six F-117As were deployed to Panama for Operation Just Cause, traveling by air and by air-to-air refueling. Some number of F-117s were also purported to be flown in C-5s to Saudi Arabia when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

This was later confirmed, as it became public that the majority of the "downtown" raids into Baghdad were made by F-117s. It is interesting to note that the pictures of anti-aircraft fire in the sky over Baghdad shown on television network low light setups, occurred after the F-117s had come and gone. The only targets that could have been hit by the AA fire, would have been later Tomahawk cruise missiles, but these were usually sailing down "main street" below the tops of the buildings (jokingly called "street level flying" by the defense contractors involved in the manufacturer of Tomahawks).

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