F-35: top gun or 'dog'

The F-117 made 1300 sorties in operation Desert Storm. All came back. Here is a list of the aircraft shot down:

January 17 - An F/A-18C Hornet (Bureau Number : 163484) was shot down by an Iraqi Mig 25 in an air-to-air engagement. The pilot (Lieutenant Commander Michael Scott Speicher) of VFA-81 was killed but his body was not found until July 2009.

January 17 - An A-6E Intruder (Bureau Number : 161668) was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. The pilot (Lieutenant Robert Wetzel) and navigator/bombardier (Lieutenant Jeffrey Norton Zaun) were captured. They were released on March 3.

January 17 - An F-15E Strike Eagle (Serial Number : 88-1689) was shot down by anti-aircraft artillery (AAA). The pilot (Major Thomas F. Koritz) and WSO (Lieutenant Colonel Donnie R. Holland) were killed. Their bodies were recovered.

January 18 - An A-6E Intruder (Bureau Number : 152928) is shot down by anti-aircraft artillery two miles from the Iraqi shore after dropping mines on a waterway linking the Iraqi naval base of Umm Qasr with the Persian Gulf. The pilot (Lieutenant William Thomas Costen) and navigator/bombardier (Lieutenant Charlie Turner) are killed. Their bodies were recovered.[2]

January 18 - An OV-10 Bronco (Bureau Number : 155435) was shot down by surface-to-air missile. The pilot (Lieutenant Colonel Clifford M. Acree) and observer (Chief Warrant Officer Guy L. Hunter, Jr.) were captured. They were released on March 6.

January 18 - An F-4G Wild Weasel (Serial Number : 69-7571) crashes in the Saudi Arabian desert after attacking Iraqi air defenses. An investigation finds that a single enemy 23mm anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) round had punctured the fuel tank, causing fuel starvation. Both pilots eject over friendly territory and are rescued.[3]

January 19 - An F-15E Strike Eagle (Serial Number : 88-1692) was shot down by an SA-2E surface-to-air missile. The pilot (Colonel David W. Eberly) and WSO (Major Thomas E. Griffith) were captured. They were released on March 6 and March 3 respectively.

January 19 - An F-16C Fighting Falcon (Serial Number : 87-0228) was shot down by a SA-6 surface-to-air missile. The pilot (Captain Harry 'Mike' Roberts) was captured. He was released on March 6.

January 19 - An F-16C Fighting Falcon (Serial Number : 87-0257) is shot down by a SA-3 surface-to-air missile. The pilot (Major Jeffrey Scott Tice) is captured. He was released on March 6.

January 21 - An F-14A+ Tomcat (Bureau Number : 161430) was shot down by an SA-2 surface-to-air missile while on an escort mission near Al Asad airbase in Iraq. The pilot (Lieutenant Devon Jones) was rescued by USAF Special Operations Forces but the RIO (Lieutenant Larry Slade) was captured. He remained a POW until his release on March 3.

January 28 - An AV-8B Harrier II (Bureau Number : 163518) was shot down by anti-aircraft artillery (AAA). The pilot (Captain Michael C. Berryman) was captured. He was released on March 6.

January 31 - An AC-130H Spectre (Serial Number : 69-6567) was shot down by a surface-to-air missile during the battle of Khafji. The entire crew of fourteen were killed. Their bodies were recovered.

February 2 - An A-6E Intruder (Bureau Number : 155632) was shot down by anti-aircraft artillery (AAA). The pilot (Lieutenant Commander Barry T. Cooke) and navigator/bombardier (Lieutenant Junior Grade Patrick K. Connor) were killed. Only LTJG Connor's body is recovered as LCDR Cooke's body was never found (officially listed as KIA-BNR).

February 2 - An A-10A Thunderbolt II (Serial Number : 80-0248) was shot down by a SA-16 surface-to-air missile. The pilot

(Captain Richard Dale Storr) was captured. He was released on March 6.

February 5 - An F/A-18C Hornet (Bureau Number : 163096) was shot down. The pilot (Lieutenant Robert Dwyer) was lost over the North Persian Gulf after a successful mission to Iraq. Lieutenant Robert Dwyer served in Carrier Air Wing 8 (CVW-8). His body was never recovered (officially listed as KIA-BNR).

February 9 - An AV-8B Harrier II (Bureau Number : 162081) was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. The pilot (Captain Russell A.C. Sanborn) was captured. He was released on March 6

February 15 - An A-10A Thunderbolt II (Serial Number : 78-0722) was shot down by a SA-13 surface-to-air missile. The pilot (Lt. James Sweet) was captured. He was released on March 6.

February 15 - An A-10A Thunderbolt II (Serial Number : 79-0130) was shot down by a SA-13 surface-to-air missile. The pilot (Captain Steven Phillis) was killed and his body was later recovered.

February 19 - An OA-10A Thunderbolt II (Serial Number : 76-0543) was shot down by a SA-9 surface-to-air missile. The pilot (Lieutenant Colonel Jeffery Fox ) was captured. He was later released on March 6.

February 23 - An AV-8B Harrier II (Bureau Number : 161573) was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. The pilot (Captain James N. Wilbourn) was killed and his body was later recovered.

February 25 - An OV-10 Bronco (Bureau Number : 155424) was shot down by surface-to-air missile. The pilot (Major Joseph Small III) was captured and observer (Captain David Spellacy) was killed. Major Small was released on March 6 and Captain Spellacy's body was recovered.

February 27 - An AV-8B Harrier II (Bureau Number : 162740) was shot down by anti-aircraft artillery (AAA). The pilot (Captain Reginald Underwood) was killed and his body was later recovered.

February 27 - An F-16C Fighting Falcon (Serial Number : 84-1390) was shot down by anti-aircraft artillery (AAA). The pilot (Captain William Andrews) was captured. He was released on March 6.

Or if you like the short version:
4-A-10A’s
3-A-6E’s
1-AC-130H
4-AV-8B’s
2-F/A-18C’s
1-F-14A
2-F-15E’s
3-F-16C’s
1-F-4G’s
2-OV-10’s

Is it your view that stealth is impossible technology, and that all aircraft are visible on radar? Are you saying that stealth is possible, but those aircraft aren’t stealthy? Why aren’t they stealthy? Are the designs poor? Does RAM not work?

How do you explain that two dozen US strike aircraft were shot down in the Gulf War by Iraqis, but none of them were the F-117?

There are tons of anecdotes of F-22s “shooting down” adversaries during training before the F-22s were detected. Are those stories all lies?

The way I explain it is that the F-117 missions were cherry picked so that the plane would not come into harms way. Do I know that for a fact? Of course not, but that is what I suspect. They were heavily defended.

How many B-52s were lost? Just calling the F-117 an ‘attack’ aircraft doesn’t make it one.

I did just google up some support ! … LET"S SEE IT …


It’s easily doable, a lone F-117 is a sitting duck, it’s slow, turns like a shopping cart and is strictly an A2G aircraft.

People seem to confuse Stealth with Invulnerability these days…

With powerful enough radars you can lock onto anything; the Serbs blew an F-117 out of the sky with a 1960’s SA-3 Goa in Kosovo, 1999.
They managed to get a lock by pumping up the wattage to their long-range tracking radar and operating on longer wavelengths.
A second was also damaged.

The F-117 was a seriously outdated relic in the US arsenal, remember it’s 1970’s Stealth/Aviation technology… (it doesn’t even have a radar warning receiver, which contributed to it’s bad performance in Kosovo).

Sure it’s got a small cross section but that’s outweighed by the fact that if an IR missile manages to lucky rear-aspect shot at it or a very powerful radar picks it up, it’s guaranteed scrap metal.

Not to mention it’s useless payload, high unit cost, high upkeep and subsonic speeds.

Hence why it was retired in April; it was a flying White Elephant to put it simply.
Looked nice and powerful on paper, useless in modern conflict and superseded by a dozen or so planes; the Strike Eagle, the F-22, F-35, B-2, F-111, F-18, etc…


that’s what we call making shit up.

Actually yes it does. that’s it’s designation and that’s its function. I cite 1,300 sorties in Desert Storm.

yes it’s strictly an air to ground aircraft. There are many such designated aircraft. If it was a sitting duck then why did all of them come back from Desert Storm while the best fighters did not? They flew into the heart of Bagdad.

It’s so outdated that they’re still sitting in their original hangars instead of being dumped in the desert:
Cite: Although officially retired, the F-117 fleet remains intact, and photos show the aircraft carefully mothballed.[44] F-117s have been spotted flying in the Nellis Bombing Range as recently as 2010.[62]

so is any airplane. The difference is that 23 planes were shot down in Desert Storm and none of them were F-117’s.

Whats useless about 4 thousand lbs of laser guided bombs? Here are the types of weapons they can carry:

GBU-10 Paveway II laser-guided bomb with 2000lb Mk84 blast/fragmentation or BLU-109 or BLU-116 Penetrator warhead
GBU-12 Paveway II laser-guided bomb with 500lb Mk82 blast/fragmentation warhead
GBU-27 Paveway III laser-guided bomb with 2000lb Mk84 blast-fragmentation or BLU-109 or BLU-116 Penetrator warhead
GBU-31 JDAM INS/GPS guided munition with 2000lb Mk84 blast-frag or BLU-109 Penetrator warhead
B61 nuclear bomb[78]

In Desert Storm they were delivering bunker-buster weapons used to get at hardened targets.

That was the whole point of the plane, its missions were always going to be cherry picked. Poke out the radar eyeballs, decapitate leadership, cause confusion, while tip toeing around known defenses.

Flying with impunity over a tier one air defense enviroment on day one, was never going to happen, replacing 60 planes in a vietnam era strike package, with 10 to 12 over Iraq was the objective of the 117, it worked.

Declan

Flying into the most densely guarded airspace is not the definition of cherry picking. Look at the timeline I posted of aircraft shot down. The first one shot down was an F-18 and it was shot down by a mig-25.

If interested in the F-117 I’ve followed the discussion I got the last clip from, and these are knowledgeable guys, one guy, the skeptic, references a report by the fellow named Dani who shot down the Kosovo plane …

The thread …

http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/286191-killing-an-F117/page2?

“Part of the reason why Dani managed to take down the F-117 is he actually hid his radars and SAMs and kept moving them and making a DETERMINED effort to keep them secret from Allied patrols because he knew the minute he was spotted it, about a dozen planes would take off from Aviano to pound his SA-3 into the mud.”

That’s ‘stealth’ for ya !

This statement, more than any other you’ve made, illustrates that you really don’t know what you’re talking about.

… and, no, I’m not going to explain it to you.

Oh I dunno. He just cited opinion from a gaming board discussion group. I think that bumps it up a notch.

Well, who would know best about the capabilities of a stealth air craft if not a bunch of gamer geeks? :wink: The funny thing is that if you actually read through the thread I don’t see anyone agreeing with Gack about, well, anything as far as I can tell. The guy Gack quotes seems to be the only one even close to his view point, and he seems very dismissive of the environment around Baghdad during the first Gulf War, leading me to believe he’s talking out his ass and doesn’t know much about what he’s saying. They are throwing around a lot of buzzword bingo about types of radar and different wavelengths used, and I suppose to someone who doesn’t know anything about it it SOUNDS very knowledgeable, but frankly I’d hardly hang my hat on anything they are saying there. Regardless, it doesn’t support Gack’s assertions that the F-117 flew ‘cherry picked’ missions (designed to let it bomb targets that were totally unprotected, thus enhancing it’s rep without risk…or whatever the fuck his point is), or that the 117 was useless or the stealth just a costly gimmick that didn’t work, or anything else he’s asserted out of his ass in this thread.

At any rate it’s moot now anyway, unless one thinks that all stealth is impossible or just a gimmick and none of it works, since the 117 was a first generation stealth attack air craft, really a proof of concept and test bed, used mainly for seeing what stealth could do in an actual combat environment, what it’s strengths and weaknesses were, and how far the envelope could be pushed with the tech. That’s why we only built and deployed a few of the things, and why they went out of service so relatively quickly…we learned what we could learn from the platform and then we moved on to better designs with more flexibility in what they could do and the missions they could perform.

Frankly, I think we’ve wasted enough of the hamsters valuable energy even discussing this with someone who is both ignorant on the subject AND who refuses, in the face of near unanimous opposition, to learn a gods damned thing on the subject.

LOL. That’s the spirit ! Insult and run. Seems to be pretty common around here. I’m gonna duck out, as I don’t want to needlessly antagonize tptb.

Obviously we either duped the Japanese and South Koreans or they are in on the vast stealth scam.

The governments of the US, Japan, and Korea are duping the tax paying citizens out of trillions to buy weapons that can’t be used any time before doomsday, or to attack 3rd world countries. It is a scam of epic proportions. Obviously.

Sure man, whatever you say. :stuck_out_tongue:

Stealth fighters can’t attack Third World countries? I’m not sure what the problem is in your sentence, but it’s either the syntax or the thought process.

I thought you promised to leave after having your arse handed to you.

The 117 was a specialized and limited tool for a limited purpose that the USAF now considers obsolete. It did its job and when other planes in GWI were shot down, it was not, despite flying the highest risk missions.

Yes, one was shot down, probably due to being used beyond its intended parameters, but we really don’t know for sure. But one being shot down does not prove it was worthless when used correctly. If that were the case, making only one would have been more than sufficient. That is why there were at least one whole squadron of them.

If you want to talk about really absurd weapons systems, how about the conversion of Trident sub launched ICBMs to conventional warheads? Instead of the nuke, use a 1 billion missile (launched from a SSBN submarine), to deliver a 2 ton warhead! We can destroy a Taliban village for only 1 billion! This is the age ob absurd war-spend a fortune to attack a 15th century enemy,

Lord have mercy ! Things have calmed down, and, er, I clearly demonstrated, for anyone who read and understood the Dani post, that the F-117 is a complete joke. I’m saying no more on that subject.