F-117 retirement

USAF has started their F-117 Stealth Fighter retirement. There's currently 8 of the Nighthawks retired.

http://www.holloman.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123044456

 

after 30 years (first flight was in 1977 or so) it's time to go i guess (altough it still looks incredible futuristic and of world!!!).

Yes i know there are aircraft older and still in service but this is a "special" type!

 

Random fact about a couple older aircrfat that still look futureistic (notably the SR-71 and the F-117)

A friend of mine, an older gentleman who owns an auto shop got a toy of one of his realitives before the Blackbird was made public. It was a yellow plastic plane about a foot long that looked really neat- extended engine pods, smoooth lines that kinda thing......found out later that apparently it was an exact scale duplicate of the Blackbird. He thought it was Matel that made it but either way somebody goofed!

As for the F-117, technically it was misnamed (according to the way the Americans designate thier aircraft). The 'F' prefix is used to denotate a fighter (replaced 'P' for pursuit after WW2). However, the "Wobbly Goblin" is not a 'dogfighter' (as the fighter designation implies) but an ground attack aircraft. Nighthawk pilots were supposedly trained to use anti-air missiles (IIRC it was AIM-9's) but there are no record of AA weapons ever being loaded on a Nighthawk. Besides, it only has 2 internal weapons pylons and no external ones so adding defensive missiles (Ie air-to-air) would halve the already small bomb load.

 

AFAIK F-117 were grounded on mid 1990's becouse of aileron faliure (there was one realy spectacular crash on one airshow). They were allowed to fly when praparation were being made for bombing of Federal republic of Yugoslavia.

 

There was no mistake. The F designation was merely to confuse. It was always intended to be a ground attack bomber. The term wobbly goblin was a derogatory name used by the early test pilots (most of whom had not flown it yet) by the time all the normal test program bugs were worked out it had lost that name and was considered a fine flying aircraft. It is subsonic and was not designed for ACM but was purpose built to maximize stealth

 

It's not unusual after a crash to ground all aircraft of a type until the problem is solved. The grounding was temporary.

 

Grieg i know that, but what is unusual is to ground them for extended period of time. Normaly users get AD note explaining the defect and compulsory actions to correct it from appropriate aviation authority of producers country. Planes on which AD note is not implemented are not airworthy i.e. grounded. In repetative faliurs the fleet is grounded until defect is found and corrective mesures implemented. DC-10 fleet was grounded once becouse few planes lost an engine. Planes were grounded until corrective mesures were implemented. Anther example are problems with Boeing 737's rudder hard deflection which are well known ( i belive 3 crashes until now) but fleet was not grounded, but AD notes and ammendments to MM (mentenance manual) and PM (pilot manual) were made.

That F-117 lost aileron during low pass after a manouver and crashed. Hardly a normal operating accident.
What can you conclude from normal procedures is that either it was design flaw (built in screw up) or repetative problem which would indicate that it was not the only case of aileron faliure. Problems in such cases are ussualy built in screw ups (wrong material used by designers, badly designed part...).

You can trust me on this, i am aviation menteinance engeneer ( i do have a colidge degree to prove it) and i did work on helicopter mentenance ( SA-341 and AS-350BA).

 

What, exactly, is your point? AFAIK the plane performed pretty well in Desert Storm, bombing Bagdad repeatedly. Not bad for an aircraft that might have a "built in screw up".

 

Just that it was not as good plane as you think.

 

They put the F in it because fighter pilots wouldnt fly anything they thought was a bomber

 

Hard to make a case for that. Which stealth ground attack bomber of it's era is better? The fact that it was temporarily grounded means nada insofar as how effective an aircraft it is.

There is no such thing as a normal accident.

The design is unique and groundbreaking. Some problems are to be expected.
Many of the things learned by building and operating the F-117 led to the B-2, the F-22 and the F-35.

 

They haven't had any problems finding guys wanting to fly the F/A 18.

 

After F-111 and F-105 wouldn't that be a tad transparent?

The rumour that I've heard goes, that back in the seventies, all black projects were given unofficially the name F-117. The operational manuals were printed before the jet had an official "public" designation and name, thus it was cheaper for the AF just to adapt the designation to the jet rather than reprint the manuals.

F was justified for the designation, as the jet was planned to have AAMs, although they were deleted from the plane rather early in the developement. That leads to the question, that what would have been the mission, where the jet would have needed to have AAMs on it?

 

Shooting down russian awacs? :lol:

 

Do you have a source for this? All the early reports I've seen (from about 2 years before the first one was flown) was that from the start it was called CSIRS (for Covert In-weather Survivable Reconnaissance/ Strike). I've come across nothing to indicate that it was ever intended to have an air-air role.
As for whacking AWACS surely it would be easier to go the Soviet/ Russian route and use a very large long-range ARM = KS-172 (400km range!). A SAAB rep at Farnborough one year told me that the S-225X (joint BAe/ SAAB stealth AAM) could "fairly easily" have been a 400km range non-stealthy AAM if that had been the requirement...

 

I was thinking about that when I wrote my post. I think none of the planes in the supporting packages would have survived the "AWACS killing trip" and an unescorted Nighthawk would propably have no chance of surviving.

Oli, I seem to remember seeing an article looong time ago in an aerospace publication about Nighthawk and AAMs. It was a proposition on early in the developement cycle for Nighthawk to carry IR-AAMs, but it was scrubbed away pretty early on. No Nighthawks (prototypes, developement aircraft and production aircraft) to my knowledge has ever carried or ever have had provision to carry any AAMs. On pure speculative manner, a sidewinder that could be flung out the weapons bay like in the new stealth planes, could have been possible. Slaving the seeker to a FLIR (If I'm not mistaken, Nighthawk has a pretty efficient FLIR) shouldn't be a problem either, or just ungace the seeker and lob the 'winder off if that isn't possible.

Of course, I have no _real_ info on that, other than what I remember reading from the article that I read nearly 20 years ago

 

TISO:
The Lockheed "Skunk-works" didn't become famous by designing "stinkers."
The F-117 served with great distinction, and was an invaluable asset in it's day. I believe it's place in history was assured as they went "downtown over Bagdad" and placed their smart-bombs on target... whilst the Iraqi air-defenses were punching holes in the air.
It will be remembered as yet another of a long line of Lockheed-designed "All-Stars."

Tim

 

Well, most of 'em anyways. A couple landed in the next country (a few hundred miles off I believe). Probably pilot error, or malfunction of the JDAM.

 

Not saying it can't happen. No weapons system is perfect. But do you have a source for that?

 

Toronto Star article a couple years ago. while they were still in Afganistan (before States started focussing on Sadam's 'WMDs' and Iraqi oil :lol: )