[Infowarrior] - F-117 Stealth Fighter to Be Retired

[Richard Forno]

F-117 Stealth Fighter to Be Retired
Tuesday March 11, 9:17 am ET
By James Hannah, Associated Press Writer

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080311/stealth_fighter.html?.v=1


US to Bid Farewell to Radar-Evading F-117 Stealth Fighter After 27 Years in
Air Force Arsenal

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.

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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.

The last of Lockheed Martin's F-117s scheduled to fly will leave Holloman on
April 21, stop in Palmdale, Calif., for another retirement ceremony, then
arrive on April 22 at their final destination: Tonopah Test Range Airfield
in Nevada, where the jet made its first flight in 1981.

The government has no plans to bring the fighter out of retirement, but
could do so if necessary.

"I'm happy to hear they are putting it in a place where they could bring it
back if they ever needed it," said Brig. Gen. Gregory Feest, the first
person to fly an F-117 in combat, during the 1989 invasion of Panama that
led to the capture of dictator Manuel Noriega.

The Air Force decided to accelerate the retirement of the F-117s to free up
funding to modernize the rest of the fleet. The F-117 is being replaced by
the F-22 Raptor, which also has stealth technology. The F-22s are being
built by Lockheed Martin, Boeing and United Technologies Corp.'s Pratt &
Whitney unit.

Fifty-nine F-117s were made; 10 were retired in December 2006 and 27 since
then, the Air Force said. Seven of the planes have crashed, one in Serbia in
1999.

Stealth technology used on the F-117 was developed in the 1970s to help
evade enemy radar. While not invisible to radar, the F-117's shape and
coating greatly reduced its detection.

The F-117, a single-seat aircraft, was designed to fly into heavily defended
areas undetected and drop its payloads with surgical precision.

A total of 558 pilots have flown the F-117 since it went operational. They
dub themselves "bandits," with each given a "bandit number" after their
first flight.

Feest, who is Bandit 261, also led the first stealth fighter mission into
Iraq during Desert Storm in 1991. He said the fire from surface-to-air
missiles and anti-aircraft guns was so intense that he stopped looking at it
to try to ease his fears.

"We knew stealth worked and it would take a lucky shot to hit us, but we
knew a lucky shot could hit us at any time," he said.

Incredibly, not one stealth was hit during those missions, he said.