If you don’t see the irony in a ‘stealth’ aircraft that is preceded by F-16s to wipe out the air defenses, there is no hope for you.
Ah, so in your vast experience you thought that ‘stealth’ equated to ‘magic invisible air craft’? Well, all is clear now. Obviously you don’t get that in the operations that the F-117 participated in, especially during the first Gulf War, many non-stealth attack air craft (that had the exact same or in most cases even more support) were downed while, you know, we lost one F-117 due to a lucky confluence of factors (nearly 10 years later when the air craft and it’s first generation stealth was starting to become dated). Nor do you seem to grasp the implications of this, so I’ll spell it out for you since you seem to be having trouble grasping them. Stealth makes air craft more survivable. It doesn’t equate to magic unicorn protection. It means that it lowers the chances of detection and thus the probability of interception and Bad Things™ happening to the pilot and air craft. See, most folks could put two and two together from the data that during many thousands of sorties with the F-117 we lost one, while during many thousands of sorties with other attack air craft we lost…many more than one. The two plus two answer btw was four, in case you didn’t catch that either. Just trying to be helpful old boy.
And thanks for your valuable input on this subject, since obviously you have a vast amount of knowledge about stealth in general and the F-117 in particular. It’s been…amusing.
Ground control to Major Tom … here is the spec sheet on the F-117 from the worldwide-military.com web site … don’t know the date … it shows the original mission of the F-117 … before they actually had to fly it …
Specifications
Prime contractor Lockheed Aeronautical Systems
Primary task Deep strike air-to-surface
More on the ‘deep strike’ F-117
Uh. Ok. Did you have a point?
Sure, the F-117 was supposed to sneak in right past the air defenses, way in, deliver one big bomb, and then sneak out. Perfectly absurd of course, but what else can you do with a non-maneuverable subsonic airplane that can’t carry multiple weapons.
shakes head sadly Uh…you do realize that the thing was actually used extensively in combat, right? Given that (I assume that, having pointed this out to you multiple times in multiple ways that you DO understand that), how do you figure it managed to fly thousands of sorties, dropping thousands of tons of bombs with something over 80% hit probabilities when it was so weak, according to you? I mean, reality and your view point seem to not often be intersecting in this thread, but I’m curious (in a horrified ‘is that a bus load of puppies going off a cliff??’ sort of way) as to how you reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable things.
I was aware of plane in the 90s when it was advertised as a ‘deep strike’ airplane that could penetrate Soviet airspace and deliver a big bomb. Absurd for at least 3 reasons, but millions were made on that fantasy.
So, when they had bought a bunch of these useless airplanes at 50 mill. a pop they wanted to somehow justify the expense.
Answer: fly them against countries that couldn’t defend themselves. Any country that could get one mig in the air would shoot F-117 like fish in a barrel. This is obvious. So, fly one over Panama right … when no one laughed at that, they were off to the races. All that was needed was more 3rd world countries to attack.
I hadn’t thought about the F-117 in along time, and was surprised to be challenged on what to me is obvious. I have always assumed that the missions flown were carefully chosen so as not to put the plane in harms way.
So, I googled a bit and through indirection discovered that F-117s are flown with SEAD support, which of course had to be the case but I’d never seen it mentioned, for obvious reasons. You can’t very well sneak in with F-16s buzzing around you.
So, here is what I assume, they cherry pick the missions, they fly SEAD missions to neutralize the air defenses, and then they fly the F-117 on an uncontested bombing run. It cannot be otherwise.
Something went wrong in Kosovo, and if you would read and acknowledge the clip I posted is states that the SEAD support failed, and what do you know, down when the F-117.
They couldn’t press it any further, and wisely retired the thing before the scam was obvious to everyone.
Here is the point … none of us know any of the parameters of the supposed stealthiness … the Kosovo report I posted notes that the F-117 was tracked by a radar with the ‘wrong’ wavelength, but we know none of the particulars, so we’re in the dark … the big aerospace firms are making kazillions on this scam.
Bounced around? So if a new office or program was created, you would be “volunteered” to go over to the new place in order to disencumber your home office?
I’m familiar with such, uh, “vanguard” employees that managers are willing to put forward so that the employee can, mmm, “take on new challenges.” Somehow it is always “for the benefit of the company” not to have them settle in any one place for too long. 
I’m a big fan of reading about conspiracy theories, I can’t say I’ve ever encountered ‘stealth technology doesn’t work and is a scam’ before. It’s got a similar flavor to moon hoaxer mixed with a dollup of flat earther. Odd…
I bounced mostly from company to company, sometimes on my initiative, sometimes theirs :). Never could ascend the hierarchy, worked on many projects, usually got the difficult assignments ( because I’m good) which were interesting, I am intimately familiar with govt. scams, trust me, also worked on some real projects, didn’t appreciate how great it was at the time.
It’s on a par with the star wars scam. Again, a complete scam. You should have read about that one?
Do you think the B-2, F-22, and F-35 are also scams?
It’s rare that a poster can unite the boards conservative and liberal posters the way you do, Gack.
Is there a reason you’re citing what we already told you? Because it’s not making you look particularly good.
The plane is exactly as advertized. It’s a deep strike low observable airplane that was 30 years ahead of anything else. It flew in what was probably the 2nd most heavily defended cities on the planet without taking a hit. it’s got the same mission profile as the B-2 bomber.
[QUOTE=Gack]
I was aware of plane in the 90s when it was advertised as a ‘deep strike’ airplane that could penetrate Soviet airspace and deliver a big bomb. Absurd for at least 3 reasons, but millions were made on that fantasy.
[/QUOTE]
sigh It was advertised as exactly what your cite said it was…a stealth attack air craft. It did exactly what it was advertised to do. It DID penetrate Soviet air defense systems…namely, the unbelievably built up Soviet air defenses that the Soviet Union sold to Iraq during the first Gulf War.
I don’t know how to fight this bone deep level of ignorance. I really don’t. Everything in this sentence just says that you are militantly unwilling to even try and grasp the information that’s been presented to you, and that you will stubbornly cling to that ignorance come hell or high water.
Did you even read the cite I linked too? The one that said that Baghdad was the second most well defended city on the planet during the first Gulf War? Nope, of course you didn’t because you simply want to cling to your ignorance no matter what.
One thing here however I’ll point out, not that I believe anyone but you in this thread DOESN’T get this…the F-117, like pretty much all attack air craft, wasn’t ever meant to dog fight. It was meant to be an attack air craft, like the A6, that was meant to be part of a strike package. It wasn’t every meant, billed as or intended to mix it up with 'one mig in the air '. Again, I don’t know why this is so hard for you to grasp, but obviously it is. The thing is, the Iraqis DID have ‘one mig in the air’…but they never saw it coming in. That’s the reason why it was so effective. We lost ONE in it’s entire operational history, and that was to a fluke hit and when the tech was starting to become dated.
No…your assumption was wrong and your surprise is because you don’t know what you are talking about and also you refuse to understand what folks are trying to tell you.
Again, no. You are just wrong and your assumption is the assumption of someone speaking from vast ignorance on the subject. ALL attack air craft are part of a strike package…they ALL get SEAD missions. The F-117 was no different, though actually it did fly some fairly hairy missions without a lot of prep or softening up of defenses because it was stealthy and it could, while no other strike air craft could.
Oh, you googled it and have found out it’s deep, dark secret. Right? Good grief. It’s to laugh.
No. I quoted from your own fucking cite. Did you bother to read the parts (from YOUR cite) that I quoted? No? Why am I unsurprised.
Because, you know, when we make an air craft it HAS to be invulnerable and state of the art for evah, right? And we lost one, after literally thousands of sorties, so obviously the jig was up and the scam became obvious.
If you had bothered to read your own cite, or even the parts of your cite that I helpfully quoted for you, you’d know how stupid much of your post is and how bone ignorant on this subject you really are.
I read the fluff you cited, twice, but then I read the operational details too, which I quoted and you somehow ignore.
To adapt your style, only a complete fool, incapable of independent thought, could believe a subsonic non-maneuverable airplane that can carry all of 2 bombs and that had to be accompanied by F-16s was a state of the art attack weapon.
B-2, no question. Here is the beauty of it, we have no way of knowing what stealth means, the information is all classified.
These planes are all perfectly fine for attacking 3rd world countries that cannot retaliate or even fight back. Even better when they’ve been softened up by cruise missiles first.
As for fighting a formidable opponent, they are irrelevant, huge boondoggles. But then, we’re all toast anyhow.
[QUOTE=Gack]
I read the fluff you cited, twice, but then I read the operational details too, which I quoted and you somehow ignore.
[/QUOTE]
You mean the fluff I quoted from your own cite? If you say you read it then that’s even worse, since you clearly didn’t understand what you read. I didn’t ignore what you quoted, I pointed out the parts you obviously weren’t able to grasp.
Same story. You are like a broken record, tenaciously clinging to your ignorance. Ah well. Some ignorance obviously can’t be fought. C’est la vie.
[QUOTE=XT;16643628. I didn’t ignore what you quoted, I pointed out the parts you obviously weren’t able to grasp. .[/QUOTE]
I cited the report after reading the fluff you quoted and then proceeding to read the operational details which were quite informative, and which you can’t grasp ! So we end up doing what you do best I suspect, and that is trading insults. I’m no match for you in that department, no practice !
Who are the liberals ? 