The Su-27 is a highly maneuverable air superiority aircraft. About 600 vehicles of all modifications were built.
The F-16 "Fighting Falcon" is a lightweight multipurpose fighter. 4500 vehicles were built.
The F-117A "Nighthawk" is a stealth subsonic tactical attack aircraft. 59 combat vehicles and 5 prototypes of YF-117 were built.
The question is: how did an aircraft built in such an insignificant number become one of the brightest symbols of aviation at the end of the twentieth century? Stealth sounds like a sentence. 59 tactical bombers have become an eerie scarecrow, the most terrible threat that overshadowed all other military assets of NATO countries.
What is it? The result of the unusual appearance of the aircraft, coupled with aggressive PR? Or, indeed, the revolutionary technical solutions used in the Lockheed F-117, allowed to create an aircraft with unique combat qualities?
Stealth technology
This is the name of a set of methods for reducing the signature of combat vehicles in radar, infrared and other areas of the detection spectrum by means of specially developed geometric shapes, radio-absorbing materials and coatings, which significantly reduces the detection range and thereby increases the survival rate of a combat vehicle.
Everything new is well forgotten old. Even 70 years ago, the Germans were very upset by the British high-speed bomber DeHavilland Mosquito. High speed was only half the problem. During the interception attempts, it suddenly turned out that the all-wood Mosquito is practically invisible on radar - the tree is transparent to radio waves.
The German "wunderwaffe" Go.229, a jet fighter-bomber created under the 1000/1000/1000 program, had a similar property even more. A solid wood miracle without vertical keels, similar to a stingray fish, was logically invisible to the British radars of those years. The appearance of Go.229 is very similar to the modern American "stealth" bomber B-2 "Spirit", which gives some reason to believe that American designers kindly took advantage of the ideas of their colleagues from the Third Reich.
On the other hand, the Horten brothers, creating their Go.229, hardly gave the design any sacred meaning, they only thought it was a promising "flying wing" scheme. Under the terms of the military order, Go.229 was supposed to deliver one ton of bombs to a range of 1000 km at a speed of 1000 km / h. And stealth was the tenth thing.
In addition, attention was paid to reducing radar signature when creating the Avro Vulkan strategic bomber (Great Britain, 1952) and the SR-71 "Black Bird" supersonic strategic reconnaissance aircraft (USA, 1964).
The first studies in this area showed that flat shapes with tapering sides have a lower ESR ("effective scattering area" is the key parameter of aircraft visibility). In order to reduce radar signature, the vertical tail was tilted relative to the plane of the aircraft so as not to create a right angle with the fuselage, which is an ideal reflector. Multilayer ferromagnetic coatings that absorb radar radiation have been specially developed for the Blackbird.
In a word, by the time work began on the secret project "Senior Trend" - the creation of an unobtrusive strike aircraft - the engineers already had good practices in the field of reducing the RCS of aircraft.
Night Hawk
When developing "invisible" for the first time in history, the goal was to reduce all unmasking factors of an aircraft: the ability to reflect radar radiation, emit electromagnetic waves itself, emit sound, leave smoky and contrails, and be noticeable in the infrared range.
Of course, the F-11A7 did not have a radar station - it was impossible to use such a device in stealth conditions. During the flight in stealth mode, all onboard radio communication systems, the friend or foe transponder and the radio altimeter must be turned off, and the sighting and navigation system must operate in a passive mode. The only exception is the target's laser illumination, it turns on after dropping a corrected aerial bomb. The lack of modern avionics, combined with problematic aerodynamics, as well as longitudinal static and track instability, meant a great risk when piloting the "invisible".
To reduce design time and eliminate many technical problems, the designers used a number of proven elements of existing aircraft on the F-117A. So, engines for "stealth" were taken from the carrier-based fighter-bomber F / A-18, some elements of the control system - from the F-16. The aircraft also used a number of components from the epic SR-71 and the T-33 trainer. As a result, such an innovative machine was constructed faster and cheaper than a conventional strike aircraft. Lockheed is proud of this fact, hinting at the use of CAD (computer-aided design) systems, the most advanced at the time. Although there is a different opinion - just due to secrecy, the program of creating "invisible" has escaped the stage of a long and often meaningless discussion in Congress and other bastions of American democracy.
Now it is worth making a few remarks about the Stealth technology itself, implemented precisely on the Nighthawk aircraft (after all, it is no secret that the aircraft's radar signature can be reduced in different ways; the same PAK FA implements completely different principles - the parallelism of the edges and the "flattened" shape fuselage). In the case of the F-117A, this was the apotheosis of stealth technology - everything was subordinated to extremely stealth, regardless of the aerobatic qualities of the machine. Thirty years after the aircraft was created, many interesting details have become known.
In theory, stealth technology works as follows: numerous facets implemented in the aircraft architecture scatter radar radiation in the direction opposite to the radar antenna. Whichever side you try to make a radar contact with the aircraft - this “distorted mirror” will reflect the radio beams in the other direction. In addition, the outer surfaces of the F-117 are tilted more than 30 ° from the vertical as Typically, ground-based radar irradiation of an aircraft occurs at shallow angles.
If you irradiate the F-117 from different angles and then look at the reflection pattern, it turns out that the strongest "flare" is given by the sharp edges of the F-117 hull and the places where the skin is not continuous. The designers have ensured that their reflections are concentrated in several narrow sectors, and not distributed relatively evenly, as in the case of conventional aircraft. As a result, when exposed to the F-117 radar, the reflected radiation is difficult to distinguish from the background noise, and the "dangerous sectors" are so narrow that the radar cannot extract sufficient information from them.
All contours of the cockpit canopy and fuselage articulation, landing gear and armament compartment flaps have sawtooth edges, with the sides of the teeth oriented in the direction of the desired sector.
An electrically conductive coating is applied to the glazing of the cockpit canopy, designed to prevent irradiation of the in-cockpit equipment and equipment of the pilot - a microphone, helmet, night vision goggles. For example, the reflection from the pilot's helmet can be much greater than from the entire aircraft.
The air intakes of the F-117 are covered with special grids with cell sizes close to half the wavelength of radars operating in the centimeter range. The resistivity of the gratings is optimized to absorb radio waves, and it increases with the depth of the grating to prevent a resistivity jump (which increases reflection) at the air interface.
All external surfaces and internal metal elements of the aircraft are painted with ferromagnetic paint. Its black color not only masks the F-117 in the night sky, but also helps dissipate heat. As a result, the RCS of the "stealth" when irradiated from the frontal and tail angles is reduced to 0.1-0.01 m2, which is approximately 100-200 times less than that of a conventional aircraft of similar dimensions.
If we consider that the most massive air defense systems of the Warsaw Pact countries (S-75, S-125, S-200, "Circle", "Cube"), which were in service at that time, could fire at targets with an EPR of at least 1 m2, then the chances of "Nighthawk" to penetrate into enemy airspace with impunity looked very impressive. Hence the first production plans: to release, in addition to the 5 pre-production aircraft, another 100 production aircraft.
Lockheed designers have taken a number of measures to reduce the thermal radiation of their brainchild. The area of the air intakes was made larger than required for normal operation of the engines, and the excess cold air was sent to mix with the hot exhaust gases in order to reduce their temperature. The very narrow nozzles form an almost flat exhaust jet for quick cooling.
Wobblin 'Goblin
"Lame dwarf" and not otherwise. This is what the pilots themselves jokingly call the F-117A. Optimization of the airframe shape according to the criterion of reduced visibility deteriorated the aerodynamics of the machine so much that there could be no talk of any "aerobatics" or supersonic performance.
When the company's leading aerodynamicist, Dick Cantrell, was first shown the desired configuration of the future F-117A, he had a nervous breakdown. Having come to his senses and realizing that he was dealing with an unusual plane, in the creation of which the first violin was played not by experts of his profile, but by some electricians, he set before his subordinates the only possible task - to make this "piano" in able to fly somehow.
An angular fuselage, sharp leading edges of surfaces, a wing profile formed by straight line segments - all this is poorly suited for subsonic flight. Despite the rather high thrust-to-weight ratio, the Night Hawk is a limitedly maneuverable vehicle with a low speed, relatively short range and poor takeoff and landing characteristics. Its aerodynamic quality during the landing approach was only about 4, which corresponds to the level of the Space Shuttle. On the other hand, at high speed, the F-117A is capable of confidently maneuvering with a six-fold overload. Aerodynamicist Dick Kentrell got his way.
On October 26, 1983, the first stealth unit - Tactical Group 4450 (4450th TG) at Tonopah airbase - reached operational readiness. According to the recollections of the pilots, this meant the following - in the dark, the strike aircraft somehow reached the target area, detected a point target and had to "put" a high-precision laser-guided bomb into it. No other combat use for the F-117A was envisaged.
Due to the increase in the number of F-117A on October 5, 1989, the group was reorganized into the 37th tactical fighter wing (37th TFW), consisting of two combat and one training squadron + reserve vehicles. As part of each squadron, according to the order, there were 18 "Nighthawks", but in only 5-6 of them could begin to carry out a combat mission at any time, the rest were in heavy forms of maintenance.
Almost all this time, the strict regime of secrecy around the "stealth" did not weaken. Although the Tonopah Awabase was one of the most heavily guarded Air Force bases, additional draconian measures were taken to cover up the truth about the F-117A. At the same time, American regime officials often practiced very ingenious decisions. So, in order to scare away idle "aviation enthusiasts" from among the base personnel, special stencils of the "radiation" type were applied to the F-117A and service equipment, "be careful! high voltage”and other“horror stories”. On an airplane with this appearance, they did not look meaningless at all.
Only in 1988, the Pentagon decided to publish an official press release about the "stealth plane", providing the public with a retouched photograph of the F-117A. In April 1990, the first public demonstration of the aircraft took place. Of course, the appearance of the F-117A amazed the global aviation community. It has become one of the most audacious challenges to traditional aerodynamic concepts in the history of human flight. The Americans assigned the "one hundred and seventeenth" a responsible role as a convincing example of the US technological superiority over the rest of the world, and they did not spare money to prove this assertion. "Nighthawk" received a permanent residence on the covers of magazines, became a cool hero in Hollywood and the star of world air shows.
Combat use
As for the first real combat use of the F-117A, it happened during the overthrow of the regime of General Noriega in Panama. There is still a debate over whether or not the F-117A hit a Panamanian military base with a guided bomb. Panamanian guards, awakened by a nearby explosion, scattered through the jungle in only underpants. Naturally, there was no resistance to the "stealth" and the plane returned without loss.
Much more serious was the massive use of Stealths in the Gulf War in the winter of 1991. The Gulf War was the largest military clash since World War II, involving 35 states to varying degrees (Iraq and 34 anti-Iraqi coalition countries - multinational forces, MNF). On both sides, more than 1.5 million people took part in the conflict, there were more than 10, 5 thousand tanks, 12, 5 thousand guns and mortars, more than 3 thousand combat aircraft and about 200 warships.
The Iraqi air defense system had the following types of air defense systems:
S-75 "Dvina" (SA-2 Guideline) 20-30 batteries (100-130 launchers);
S-125 Neva (SA-3 Goa) - 140 launchers;
"Square" (SA-6 Gainful) - 25 batteries (100 launchers);
Wasp (SA-8 Gecko) - about 50 complexes;
Strela-1 (SA-9 Gaskin) - about 400 complexes;
Strela-10 (SA-13 Gopher) - about 200 complexes;
Roland-2 - 13 self-propelled and 100 stationary complexes;
HAWK - Several complexes were captured in Kuwait, but were not used.
Early warning radars made it possible to detect targets at an altitude of 150 meters in most cases outside the airspace of Iraq (and Kuwait), and targets at altitudes over 6 km are detected far in the depths of Saudi Arabia (on average, 150-300 km).
A developed network of observation posts, connected by permanent communication lines with information collection centers, made it possible to quite effectively detect low-altitude targets, such as cruise missiles.
Midnight January 16-17, 1991 was the high point of the F-117A, when the first group of 10 Nighthawks from No. 415 Squadron, each carrying two 907 kg GBU-27 bombs, took off to launch the first strikes. in a new war. At 3.00 local time, "invisibles" not detected by the air defense system attacked two command posts of the air defense sectors, the Air Force headquarters in Baghdad, the joint command and control center in Al Taji, the government residence and the 112-meter Baghdad radio tower.
F-117A always worked autonomously, without engaging electronic warfare aircraft, since jamming could attract the attention of the enemy. In general, stealth operations were planned so that the nearest Allied aircraft was at a distance of at least 100 miles from them.
A serious threat to the "stealth" was posed by anti-aircraft artillery and short-range air defense systems with optical detection and aiming systems, of which Iraq had quite a few (Strela-2 (SA-7 Grail), Strela-3 (SA-14 Gremlin) MANPADS, "Igla-1" (SA-16 Gimlet), as well as anti-aircraft guns (ZU-23-2, ZSU-23-4 "Shilka", S-60, ZSU-57-2). The pilots were forbidden to descend below 6300 m in order to avoid entering the affected areas of these means.
In total, during the war, the F-117A flew 1271 sorties lasting 7000 hours and dropped 2087 laser-guided bombs GBU-10 and GBU-27 with a total mass of about 2000 tons. Subtle strike aircraft hit 40% of priority ground targets, while, according to the Pentagon, none of the 42 stealths were lost. This is especially strange, considering that we are dealing with a subsonic low-maneuverable machine without any constructive protection.
In particular, the commander of the Air Force of the multinational forces in the Persian Gulf, Lieutenant General Ch. Gorner cites two raids against heavily defended Iraqi nuclear installations in Al-Tuwaita, south of Baghdad. The first raid was carried out on the afternoon of January 18, involving 32 F-16C aircraft armed with conventional unguided bombs, accompanied by 16 F-15C fighters, four EF-111 jammers, eight anti-radar F-4G and 15 KC-135 tankers. This large aviation group was unable to complete the task. The second raid was carried out at night by eight F-117A, accompanied by two tankers. This time, the Americans destroyed three of the four Iraqi nuclear reactors.
In Dalgeish, F-117A occasionally appeared in the airspace of Iraq, during Operation Desert Fox (1998) and the invasion of Iraq (2003).
Stealth hunt
I remember that day well, March 27, 1999. ORT channel, evening program "Time". Live report from Yugoslavia, people dance on the wreckage of an American plane. The old woman recalls that it was in this place that the Messerschmitt once crashed. The next shot, a NATO representative mumbles something, then again there were shots with the wreckage of a black plane …
The Yugoslav air defense did the impossible - a stealth was shot down near the village of Budanovtsi (a suburb of Belgrade). The stealth plane was destroyed by the S-125 air defense system of the 3rd battery of the 250th air defense brigade, commanded by the Hungarian Zoltan Dani. There is also a version that the F-117A was shot down from a cannon by a MiG-29 fighter, which established direct visual contact with it. According to the American version, the "one hundred and seventeenth" changed the flight mode, at that moment a pressure surge appeared in front of the air intake grilles, which unmasked the aircraft. The invulnerable plane was shot down in front of the whole world. The battery commander, Zoltan Dani, on the other hand, claims to have guided the missile using a French thermal imager.
As for the stealth pilot, Lt. Col. Dale Zelko managed to eject and hid all night on the outskirts of Belgrade until his beacon spotted the EC-130. A few hours later, HH-53 Pave Low search and rescue helicopters arrived and evacuated the pilot.
In total, during the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia, "stealth" flew 850 sorties.
The wreckage of the downed F-117A "Night hawk" (serial number 82-0806) is carefully preserved in the Aviation Museum in Belgrade, along with the wreckage of the F-16 aircraft. These losses were officially recognized by the United States.
Also on display is the engine from the A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft, which was torn off by a shot from MANPADS, the plane itself made an emergency landing at Skopje airport (the incident was officially recognized by the NATO command). Local residents found a strange detail and gave it to the military.
Other interests include the wreckage of a Tomahawk missile and a lightweight RQ-1 Predator drone (the Serbs claim they shot down, the Americans claim that they landed on their own due to engine failure).
Actually, all the wreckage that is in the museum was officially recognized by the United States, including the loss of two combat aircraft - the "invisible" F-117A and the F-16 fighter. The NATO command denies other numerous aerial victories claimed by Serbia.
As for the "invisibles", the Serbs say that they knocked out at least three F-117A, but two were able to reach NATO air bases, where they were decommissioned upon arrival. Therefore, they have no debris. The statement raises some doubts - the damaged F-117A could not fly far. Even a serviceable "one hundred and seventeenth" flew very badly - the pilot was unable to control this "flying iron" without the help of electronic stability enhancement systems. The aircraft does not even have a backup mechanical control system - anyway, if the electronics fail, a person is unable to cope with the F-117A. Therefore, any malfunction for the "stealth" is fatal, the plane cannot fly on one engine or with damaged planes.
By the way, in addition to the downed F-117A, according to official data, over 30 years of operation, six “invisibles” were lost over US territory during training flights. Most often, the "stealth" fought because of the loss of orientation of the pilots. For example, on the night of June 11, 1986, an F-117A (tail number 792) crashed into a mountain, the pilot was killed. Another tragicomic incident occurred on September 14, 1997, when an F-117A crashed into the air during an air show in Maryland.
On April 22, 2008, the F-117A "Nighthawk" took off for the last time. As time has shown, the very idea of a highly specialized aircraft in the design of which one quality "stands out" (in this case, low EPR) to the detriment of others, turned out to be unpromising. After the disappearance of the USSR, in new conditions, the requirements of economy, ease of operation and multifunctionality of aviation complexes began to come out on top. And in all these parameters, the F-117A "Nighthawk" was significantly inferior to the strike aircraft F-15E "Strike Eagle". Now it is on the basis of the F-15E that the F-15SE Silent Eagle is being created.
