The Lockheed F-117 aircraft became the winner of the 1975-76 "black" experimental stealth technology (XST - Experimental Stealth Technology) competition. Powered by General Electric CJ610 turbojets, the first XST took off in December 1977 from Groom Lake, Nevada. Two smaller prototypes of the aircraft were created to test various options for experimental technology. Although both aircraft in 1978 and 1980. disasters, promising test results led to the development of two experimental full-scale YF-117A-LO aircraft, followed by 57 production F-117A aircraft. The F-117A was declared operational in 1983, but to maintain the secrecy of the program, the plane took off only at night from a secret base in Tonopah. Only at the end of 1989, when the program was finally finally declassified, the plane began its flights in the daytime. The F-117A, eloquently nicknamed the "Wobblin Goblin", was more in line with its pilots' nickname "Black Jet" and was officially called the Night Hawk. The first of these vehicles was used in December 1989 in one of the phases of Operation Just Goat, carried out by the United States to transport Panamanian General Manuel Noriega. The next action was participation in the conflict in the Persian Gulf, when one of these aircraft launched the first bombing strike in Operation Desert Storm on January 17, 1991.
The F-117 is a specialized tactical attack aircraft designed primarily for high-precision nighttime attacks on mission-critical targets during autonomous single missions. It can also be used for tactical electronic reconnaissance of areas covered by enemy air defense systems. The F-117 is a radical departure from previous generations. First, conventional missile and bomb weapons have given way to precision-guided weapons. Secondly, survival in the air defense zone is ensured not so much by armor as by flight stealth.
The F-117, which first took off in 1981, was kept secret for a long time, since it was the first to use a new low-reflective shape and its main secret - the outer contours. And only on April 21, 1990, his first public demonstration took place.
The low visibility of the F-117 allows the aircraft to fly over territory covered by enemy air defenses at an elevated altitude. This improves the pilot's awareness of the tactical situation, facilitates the search for ground targets at long range and provides a more steep trajectory of bombs, and this increases the accuracy of bombing and increases the penetrating power of the ammunition. The ability to fly not at an extremely low altitude also increases the effectiveness of laser target illumination for its own guided bombs. According to the testimony of those who saw flights in 1990, the F-117A usually cruises at an altitude of 6100-7600 m, then descends to an altitude of 600-1525 m to improve bombing accuracy. It is made from level flight, and its accuracy is about 1 m.
F-117 is an aircraft with a low wing, V-shaped plumage and wing-mounted engine air intakes. Facet forms are widely used, which provide the main share (90%) of ESR reduction. First of all, this applies to the fuselage, which has an unusual pyramidal configuration. The upward-opening cockpit canopy is made in the form of a one-piece structure, five glazing panels have a multilayer electrically conductive gold-containing coating to prevent radar irradiation of the in-cabin equipment and pilot's equipment. The wing has a large sweep, trapezoidal, with beveled facet tips, has a two-spar design.
Single cab with forward view only. Behind it, on top of the fuselage, there is an in-flight refueling receiver, which is illuminated at night by a headlamp located in a ledge on top of the cockpit. The aircraft is unstable in pitch and yaw, and therefore a sophisticated artificial stability system is used. Since 1991; under the OSPR program, an autothrottle is installed. The air signal system has four PVDs on faceted rods in the nose of the machine. Retractable angle of attack sensors. The autopilot provides flight along the programmed route. The autothrottle allows the aircraft to reach the line of use of weapons with an accuracy of a few seconds. An optoelectronic system for navigation, target detection and tracking was also used.
The first large-scale operations using the F-117 were deployed during the 1991 war with Iraq. The aircraft flew 1271 sorties and dropped 2000 tons of laser-guided bombs. Lieutenant General Ch. Horner, commander of the Air Force of the multinational forces in the Persian Gulf, said that stealth aircraft such as F-117A and B-2 will be indispensable in local emergency conflicts in the future.
Since the Second World War, radar has become the main means of detecting aircraft, until now it has no equal in range and all-weather application. Almost simultaneously with the first radars, electronic countermeasures (REB) appeared, interfering with their work. The first attempts to reduce the own radar signature of military equipment belong to the same period. So, in 1944, the Germans began to cover snorkels (devices for operating diesel engines under water) and the periscopes of their submarines with radio-absorbing materials (RPM). According to some reports, in 1945 in Germany, was created one of the first aircraft on which it was supposed to use RPM - jet fighter "Horten" No. IX ("Gotha" Go.229). On serial samples of this "flying wing" it was planned to use plywood sheathing impregnated with a special adhesive containing charcoal and sawdust. The emergency defense program of Nazi Germany included the production of 20 such machines, but the disaster of the only prototype and the collapse of the Third Reich interrupted this work.
"Kelly" Johnson (Clarencel "Kelly" Jonson)
In the first post-war years, aviation developed at such a rapid pace that radar technology could not keep up with them, and the task of reducing the radar-visibility of aircraft became not so urgent. However, certain work in this direction was nevertheless carried out. Thus, when designing the Lockheed U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, its creator, the outstanding American aircraft designer Clarencel "Kelly" Jonson, sought to minimize the vehicle's dimensions, making it less visible to enemy radars. In the USSR, studies were carried out to reduce the radar signature due to the use of special radio-absorbing structures and materials. In particular, the design bureau of V. M. Myasishchev considered ways to reduce the effective dispersion surface (EPR) of the ZM strategic bomber.
By the end of the 1950s. with the appearance in the USSR and the USA of anti-aircraft missile systems equipped with powerful radars and high-altitude missiles, the issue of reducing the radar signature of aircraft has regained relevance. After all, the main means of avoiding detection by enemy radars was then considered a departure to low and extremely low altitudes, and this led to excessive fuel consumption, increased crew fatigue and a decrease in combat capabilities in general. Hence, the key idea of a low-visibility strike aircraft is understandable: it must fly over the territory covered by air defense systems at medium and high altitudes. This improves the awareness of the crew about the tactical situation, facilitates the search for ground targets at long range and provides a more steep trajectory of the fall of bombs.which increases the accuracy of bombing and increases the penetration of ammunition. The ability to fly at medium altitude also increases the effectiveness of laser illumination of the target with its own guided weapons (when bombing from low altitudes, the rapid angular movement of the aircraft relative to the target, as well as its shading by terrain folds, make laser illumination difficult).
The first major attempt to lower the RCS was the Lockheed SR-71 high-altitude supersonic reconnaissance program, developed under the leadership of the same Johnson. The layout of this aircraft was mainly determined by aerodynamic requirements, but its features (the shape of the cross-section of the fuselage and engine nacelles, their smooth conjugation with the wing, small inwardly deflected keels) also contributed to a decrease in the RCS of the machine. The firm also developed a radio-absorbing spike-like internal structure with a plastic honeycomb core and applied it to the side sills, wing tips and elevons of the original version of this aircraft, designated the A-12. On the basis of the latter, the SR-71 was created, which first flew into the air on December 22, 1964. Its radio-absorbing material was preserved in the structure of the wing toes and elevons. The SR-71 was coated with a special paint with a high heat-emitting ability, which reduced the temperature of the skin during cruising high-altitude flight. Made on a ferrite base, it also reduced the radar signature of the aircraft due to a more uniform reflection of electromagnetic waves. The RCS of the A-12 and SR-71 aircraft was significantly less than that of the U-2, and the D-21 RPV developed later (launched from the SR-71 and the B-52 bomber) was even less noticeable. Later versions of the U-2 (U-2R and TR-1) were also coated with ferrite paint.
SR-71B Blackbird in training flight
Lockheed u-2
The SR-71 and U-2 are usually referred to as the first generation of stealth aircraft, the second being the F-117A. Its creation was preceded by lengthy research and development work (R&D), which had been carried out in the United States since 1965. The stimulus for them was the appearance in the Soviet Union of the S-75 and S-125 air defense systems, which demonstrated unexpectedly high efficiency. The hopes of the Americans for the onboard means of the electronic warfare system did not come true - the air defense missile systems were rapidly improving and, in addition, the containers with the equipment "ate" part of the combat load of the aircraft. In 1972-73. In the USA, they tested a four-seater civilian piston aircraft "Eagle", built by "Windecker", made mainly of plastic, and its further development - an experienced YE-5A, which had a fiberglass skin and an internal structure in which RPMs were used. Tests were successful, and in 1973, the US Air Force, in conjunction with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), embarked on secret, in-depth design research aimed at creating a stealthy jet combat aircraft. A special assignment was sent to the leading aviation concerns, to which Boeing, Grumman, LTV, McDonnell-Douglas and Northrop responded.
Lockheed was not included in the list of companies that received the assignment, since it had not been involved in fighters for the previous 10 years. But she nevertheless submitted her own initiative proposal to DARPA, which, along with the Northrop project in November 1975, was selected for further
work on the XST aircraft (experimental Stealth Technology - experimental technique of low visibility). All further stealth work at Lockheed was assigned to the Advanced Development Division located in Palmdale, PA. California and semi-officially called "Skunk Works". It was there that the SR-71 and U-2 were previously created.
The technical assignment for the XST aircraft made strict requirements, first of all, to the value of its RCS. The analysis showed that the use of only RPMs and separate "unobtrusive" structural elements can no longer be dispensed with, fundamentally new solutions are required. The real solution was the widespread use of low-reflective forms. If earlier the contours of the aircraft were determined mainly by aerodynamics, now it should have receded into the background, and the dominant position in the development of the airframe configuration should have been given to reducing its reflectivity. By that time, the most powerful reflectors of electromagnetic energy were already known. These are the so-called specular (shiny) points, reflecting energy exactly in the direction from which the wave came, the joints of the surfaces, which act as corner reflectors, and the sharp edges of the bearing surfaces of the aircraft. Thus, the low-reflective configuration of the airframe had to be distinguished by an integral layout with a minimum number of edges and the absence of protruding elements. To do this, it was necessary to ensure a smooth interface between the wing and the fuselage, inside which to place the engines and the target load, exclude vertical flat surfaces or reduce their size as much as possible (these are the strongest onboard reflectors, since the irradiation of the aircraft by ground-based radars occurs, as a rule, at a gentle angle), and the keels, if preserved, should be deflected from the vertical, to prevent direct radar exposure of the engine compressors by using curved air intake channels, etc.
Generally speaking, the “flying wing” scheme with traditionally smooth contours, which, in addition to the low-reflective configuration, has large internal volumes for accommodating engines and loads, meets these requirements to the greatest extent. In the United States, the confirmation of the small EPR of such an arrangement was first received back in the late 1940s, when the Northrop YB-49 bomber was irradiated with a coastal air defense radar located south of San Francisco. Later, during NATO maneuvers, the Americans noted the difficulty of radar tracking of another "flying wing" - the British Vulcan bomber, which was not inferior in size to the B-47, but had several times less powerful reflected impulse.
Strategic bomber Avro Vulcan (UK)
It could be assumed that the XST aircraft designers would choose a scheme similar to the Vulcan, especially since the traditional drawback of such an arrangement - insufficient longitudinal stability - was eliminated by the fly-by-wire control systems that had appeared by that time. However, the RCS value of the aircraft, in addition to the geometric shape and electromagnetic properties of its surface, is influenced by the ratio of the aircraft dimensions and the wavelength of the irradiating radar, as well as the irradiation angle. This makes it much more difficult to determine the optimal shape of a complex curvature surface for a "flying wing". The limited capabilities of computers of the seventies and the complexity of mathematical modeling of EPR did not allow solving such a problem at that time. It turned out to be much easier than for surfaces of complex curvature to determine the dependence of the EPR on the angle of irradiation for a combination of flat surfaces. As a result, "Lockheed" and "Northrop" in their XST aircraft projects decided to use a scheme close to the "tailless" with the so-called faceted (multifaceted) hull shape. This configuration does not get rid of shiny points, but with a certain orientation of flat surfaces and edges, it allows you to combine foreshortenings of intense reflection from several structural elements, thus reducing their number and removing the most probable directions of irradiation from the sectors. This means that in these directions the facet shape provides a significant decrease in the level of the reflected signal, and in the entire wavelength range of the irradiating radar. That is, the plane becomes practically invisible for air defense radar calculations.
First pancake
The XST projects of both firms turned out to be close. In addition to the faceted hull, both aircraft had a large sweep wing and a two-fin tail with inwardly inclined keels to shield the engine outlet nozzles. The main difference was in the location of the air intakes: Northrop offered one dorsal one, located immediately behind the cockpit, Lockheed - two side ones. In the first phase of the XST competition program, firms created special 1/3 scale models for ESR estimation. Their tests in anechoic chambers began in 1976, and in the middle of the same year, Lockheed emerged victorious from the competition, having received a contract to build two experimental aircraft under the Have Blue program. an object ). According to Lockheedian engineer A. Brown, the success of his company was largely facilitated by the use of Soviet technical literature and, first of all, the theoretical works of P. Ufimtsev, an employee of the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. An article by this physicist on the calculation methods for determining the EPR, published in 1962 in a small-circulation, narrow-ministerial journal, was translated into English in 1971 and used by Lockheed when developing the Echo program intended for calculating the EPR of bodies of various configurations. As the Americans themselves write, this made it possible to reduce the development costs of the XST aircraft by 30-40%, and later the F-117. Tests in chambers made it possible to refine the configuration of the aircraft, developed on the basis of only calculations using the Echo program. Then blows took place in low and high-speed wind tunnels with a volume of 1920 hours. Then Lockheed produced a full-scale radar model of the aircraft, which allowed finalizing the design details and building two flying prototypes in a short time.
DOD DARPA Have Blue
The experimental Hev Blue was a small (14.4 m long with bow boom) subsonic single-seat aircraft powered by two General Electric J85-GE-4A engines, taken virtually unchanged from the North American T-2B carrier-based trainer. The sweep angle of the leading edge of its almost delta-shaped wing was equal to 72.3 °. The plane had neither flaps nor air brakes, because they inevitably increased the ESR. The only control surfaces were simple elevons and two all-turning keels piled inward. The airframe is mainly made of aluminum, with the use of steel and titanium in the most heat-stressed nodes. The pilot piloted the plane using a side handle and conventional pedals, the signals from which were received by the fly-by-wire control system, which, by the way, had no mechanical duplication. The mass of the vehicle during the tests varied in the range of 4200-5680 kg, of which up to 1600 kg was fuel.
The first start of the Have Blue engine took place on November 4, 1977 at the Skunk Works site adjacent to the Barebank airport. To protect the secret product from prying eyes, it was placed between two trailers, pulling a camouflage net from above, and engine races were performed at night when the airport was closed. Then the plane was disassembled and on November 16 on board the C-5A it was delivered to the place of flight tests - to the secret Groom Lake base in Nevada. On December 1, 1977, test pilot Bill Park flew into the skies the first "Have Blue", designed to study stability and control characteristics. There were 36 successful flights, but on May 4, 1978, during landing at high vertical speed, the aircraft hit the runway surface hard, as a result, the right landing gear stuck in a semi-retracted position. The pilot tried to shake it out three times, applying the left wheel to the runway, but to no avail. Then the Park gained an altitude of 3000 m, ran out of fuel and ejected. The second copy of the aircraft, intended directly for studies of the characteristics of visibility, took off on July 20 and over the next 12 months performed 52 flights, fully completing the test program. Their final phase included a "game" with real air defense, when they tried to detect the plane with all available means. "Have Blue" demonstrated a really low visibility in the radar, infrared and acoustic ranges, proving the practical possibility of creating an unobtrusive combat aircraft.
"Invisible" in battle
The F-117A was created to solve "special" tasks, primarily at the initial stages of an armed conflict. The Americans carefully studied the experience of the Israelis, who managed to paralyze the Egyptian air defense system in the 1967 war with powerful, well-calculated strikes and clear the sky for their aviation. They also took into account the Soviet experience of 1968, when the massive use of REP aircraft, especially the Tu-16 jammers, practically deprived the combat capability of a very powerful air defense system of Czechoslovakia, which made it possible to freely land a large airborne assault in Prague. It was concluded that it was necessary to have a special air defense breakthrough aircraft in the armed forces, capable of paralyzing the enemy in a short time, striking his "nerve nodes" (of course, covered by the most powerful means of defense). Aircraft of this purpose were called "silver bullet" in the USA (as you know, only a bullet cast from silver can kill a vampire). The main targets of Nighthawk in the first hours of the great war were to be headquarters, communications centers, air defense infrastructure, warehouses for special ammunition and their delivery vehicles. However, the F-117A was also given more exotic tasks. In particular, in accordance with the secret plan "Downshift-02" aircraft of this type were supposed to attack one of the dachas of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee on the Black Sea coast, which is within the reach of tactical aviation based in Turkey.
Having received at its disposal such a superplane as in the early 1980s. it seemed the F-117A, the American command was in a well-known position in life, when you want to use it, and pricks, and my mother (in the sense - the Congress) does not order. For the first time, the F-117A was supposed to be used "in business" in October 1983, those. even before the official achievement of operational readiness of the 4450th group. They were supposed to take part in the attack on terrorist camps in southern Lebanon. According to various sources, from 5 to 7 aircraft received weapons, and the coordinates of the targets were entered into the onboard inertial systems. However, US Secretary of Defense K. Weinberger canceled this order 45 minutes before the flight to the Middle East.
The same thing happened in 1986, when planning a raid on the residence of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The heavy military transport C-5s were supposed to transfer several stealths from Tonopah to the US Air Force Roth airbase in Spain. Having penetrated into the airspace of Tripoli, covered by very sophisticated air defense systems (including the S-200 air defense system), several "Nighthawks" were to strike with corrected bombs at the colonel's villa. However, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, W. Crow, categorically opposed this plan, lobbied by the Air Force command interested in testing their most modern weapons. He stated that "the stele technique is too valuable to be jeopardized." As a result, the attack on Tripoli on April 14, 1986, was inflicted by F-111 aircraft. Having lost two cars, the Americans did not achieve the main goal of the operation - the physical elimination of the Libyan leader.
For the first time, the F-117A were used in hostilities on December 21, 1989 as part of Operation Just Cause (Just Cause) - the American intervention in Panama. Two Nighthawks each dropped a 907 kg GBU-27 laser-guided bomb at the Panamanian National Guard barracks in Rio Hato, where President Noriega was supposed to be. The press service of the US Defense Ministry reported that "the operation was successful", the bombs hit pre-selected targets with pinpoint accuracy - areas of the terrain located at a distance from the barracks, guaranteeing from destruction, but at the same time, capable of causing panic among Panamanian soldiers. Indeed, the guardsmen jumped out of the barracks in their underwear, however, as it turned out later, it was still planned to get into the buildings. The bombs were laid with a large deviation from the targets due to unfavorable weather conditions and pilot errors. Panama's air defense, which did not even have a radar, of course, did not pose a serious threat to American aviation, and the only reason for the participation of the F-117A in this operation was the same desire to test it in battle, as well as to facilitate (by creating a favorable "PR") passage through US Congress funding another B-2A stealth bomber program.
The first large-scale operations using the F-117A unfolded during the war with Iraq in January-March 1991. However, for the stealth crews, this war began long before the first explosions in Baghdad - back on August 19, 1990, when the night stalkers from The 415th TFS left their home base and headed for Saudi Arabia. Eighteen Nighthawks of the squadron performed a non-stop 14.5-hour flight with refueling from nine accompanying KS-10. Their new home for the next six months was the Khamis Masheit air base in the south-west of the country, located on a desert plateau at an altitude of more than 2,000 m. This airfield is more than 1,750 km away from Baghdad, and it was chosen because Iraqi missiles could not reach it. " earth-to-earth ". With the advent of secret planes, Khamis Masheit took unprecedented security measures and tightened the regime to the limit, providing the pilots of the 415th squadron with ideal conditions for preparing for war, which they diligently did for 5 months.
Training flights were carried out exclusively at night in the maximum autonomy and stealth mode. Particular attention was paid to practicing air refueling with complete radio silence. They flew mainly within the borders of Saudi Arabia, only in some cases approached the Iraqi border to check the reaction of Hussein's air defense. The stealths were never found, as evidenced by the unchanged operation of the Iraqi radars (when an ordinary plane flew up to the border, the air defense immediately "raised its head"). According to the squadron pilots, their invisibility became an important moral factor that added courage to them during night raids over enemy territory. The success of the training flights prompted the American command to increase the number of F-117A in the region. In December 1990, another 18 Nighthawks from the 416th TFS arrived at the base.
And then came midnight from January 16 to 17, 1991 - the high point of the F-117A, when the first group of 10 "Nighthawks" of the 415th squadron, each of which carried two 907-kg adjustable bombs, took off to deliver the first strikes in a new war. Neither before nor after the events of that night did the crews of the One Hundred Seventeenths achieve such significant success. The participant of that raid Mr. Donaldson (callsign “Bandit 321”) recalls: “We did everything in complete radio silence, focusing exclusively on time. Now we must start the engines, now taxi out of cover, start the run, etc. At the calculated moment, we met 10 tankers taking off from the Saudi Riyadh base and refueled. They flew in a common formation to the Iraqi border, then split up and went each to his own target. We did everything so that they could not detect us, turned off all lights and removed the radio antennas. We could not say a word to the comrades and could not hear if anyone wanted to give us a message. We followed the route, keeping a close eye on the time. The first bombs were dropped by a couple, led by Mr. Feist (Bandit 261), on the Iraqi interceptor and tactical missile control center southwest of Baghdad. Thanks to the precise timing of our actions in the next minutes, most of the planned targets were taken by surprise and struck, incl. The 112-meter tower in the center of Baghdad is the key to the entire command and control system of the armed forces. This vital target was destroyed by Mr. Kardavid (Bandit 284)."
As soon as the first explosions thundered in Baghdad, all ground-based air defense systems, especially artillery, opened indiscriminate fire in the night sky, trying to hit targets that were invisible to them and which by that time had already laid on a return course. For its unconditional picturesqueness, this moment was especially fond of artists: on most of the paintings depicting the F-117A, there is only one plot - fireworks of fiery trails in the black southern sky, silhouettes of mosques against the background of conflagrations and shadows of mysterious, almost alien "stealth", dissolving in the darkness.
The list of objects damaged by the first group includes two command posts of the air defense sectors, the Air Force headquarters in Baghdad, the joint command and control center in Al Taji, the seat of the government. The second wave of F-117A (3 vehicles from the 415th and 9 from the 416th squadron) struck repeated strikes at the Air Force headquarters, air defense command posts, as well as telephone, television and radio stations in Baghdad, at the satellite communications center. “These attacks blinded the Iraqis,” Thug 321 continues, “and they were unable to detect in time the attack of conventional aircraft that were approaching after us. The air defense was completely disorganized. We saw on the indicators in our cockpits how the Iraqi MiG-29s flew around us. But they were blind, they could not find us and take over."
During the first day, similar 5, 5-hour raids were made by all 36 "Night Hawks", of which 24 were in the air exclusively in the dark, and 12 were partially in the light, taking off after 17 hours local time. Most of the strikes were carried out by single aircraft, and only three ground targets were attacked in pairs, in these cases, the slave using the infrared system could evaluate the results of the leader's bombing and adjust his attack. As a rule, the F-117A operated autonomously, without the involvement of REP aircraft, since jamming could attract the attention of the enemy. In general, in the course of the war, in order to increase secrecy, the stealth operations were planned so that the nearest Allied aircraft was at a distance of at least 160 km from them. Only in some cases, the "one hundred and seventeenth" interacted with the EF-111 and F-4G.
The F-117A crews made flights to planned targets every night. After two weeks of the war, it became clear that the combat effectiveness of the Nighthawks was quite high. They began to be sent on missions more and more often. The workload on the crews grew. To help the exhausted pilots who flew combat missions every night, 6 more stealth pilots, pilots and some of the equipment from the training 417th TFTS were deployed to Khamis Masheith on 26 January. Thus, the total number of F-117A that took part in the conflict reached 42.
The arrival of reinforcements made it possible to somewhat reduce the load on the crews and materiel. Now the pilots took off every one and a half to two days, and all the same, each of them eventually flew in combat conditions from 100 to 150 hours.
The thesis about the high efficiency of the F-117A in that war is considered indisputable. In particular, this is evidenced by the successful use of "stealth" to destroy strategic bridges in Iraq, while earlier more than 100 unsuccessful sorties were performed on them by F-15, F-16 and F / A-18 aircraft. Another example: four days before the start of the Allied ground forces' offensive, seventeen F-117As struck the oil pipelines within 27 minutes, with the help of which the Iraqis intended to fill the barrier ditches in Kuwait with oil: 32 of 34 targets were hit. No less important result The combat work of "Nighthawks" was the destruction of the positions of the air defense missile system in Central Iraq, which made it possible for the B-52 crews to carry out carpet bombing without hindrance."Stealth" is also credited with the destruction of several Iraqi Tu-16s, allegedly preparing to strike with chemical munitions: In total, during the war, the F-117A flew 1271 sorties lasting more than 7000 hours and dropped 2087 laser-guided bombs GBU-10 and GBU-27 with a total mass of about 2000 tons. Their effectiveness (the relative number of sorties with the destruction of designated targets) was, according to official estimates, 80-95%. In particular, it is argued that the pilots "stealth" achieved 1,669 direct hits, making only 418 misses. (Note that during the Vietnam War, efficiency averaged 33%, and by the early 1990s, 50% was the norm for conventional aircraft.) But perhaps the most impressive statement is that with a strength of only 2, 5% of the total number of aircraft deployed in the Persian Gulf, F-117A hit about 40% of all strategic targets attacked by the allies.
Speaking later at a meeting in the US Congress, the commander of the Air Force of the multinational forces in the Persian Gulf, General Lt. Ch. Gorner, on the basis of these data, stated that stealth aircraft, such as the F-117A and B-2, would be indispensable in future local conflicts similar to the Gulf War.
The centerpiece of Horner's speech was a comparison of two raids against heavily defended Iraqi nuclear installations in Al Tuvaita, 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 F-4G anti-radar and 15 KC-135 tankers. This large aviation group was unable to complete the task. The second raid was carried out at night with only eight F-117A, each armed with two GBU-27 bombs, accompanied by two tankers. This time, the Americans destroyed three of the four Iraqi nuclear reactors. According to Horner, the same damage could have been caused by two B-2 bombers in one sortie without the involvement of tankers.
However, we will not continue to quote here enthusiastic responses to the successes of the "Nighthawks" of American generals, senators and other persons responsible for processing public opinion. Partly because there is other information about the effectiveness of the F-117A in Iraq. For example, some sources claim that out of several KABs, only one hit the target, and the real effectiveness of "stealth" did not exceed 30%. With the cost of one GBU-27 bomb at 175,000 USD, this made the use of high-precision weapons very burdensome. According to official statistics, in the Persian Gulf, “smart” weapons accounted for less than 8% of all aviation ammunition used by the allies, but their cost was 85% of the cost of all missiles and bombs dropped on the enemy.
In addition, on the combat account of the F-117A (and at the same time on the conscience of its crews) there are several sad incidents. For example, the destruction of a bomb shelter in Baghdad on February 13, which was mistaken for a command post. As a result of this attack, more than 100 civilians were killed, which caused a great resonance in the world. Another interesting point: all sources of information controlled by the US Air Force unanimously assert that during the entire war, not a single "stele" was not only shot down, but even damaged by enemy fire. At the same time, there is information that one F-117A was shot down on January 20, 1991 by the Iraqi Igla MANPADS.
January 1991. A wonderfully publicized operation against Iraq - Desert Storm. Indeed, one night over the Arabian desert, not the newest (at that time) OSA air defense system from the first two-rocket salvo "removed" the F-117A stealth - the most "fashionable" invisible aircraft. By the way, there were rumors that a GRU reconnaissance group went to the crash site, which managed to pick up some of the electronics, samples of the cabin skin and glazing.
Another stealth aircraft F-117A stealth was shot down over Yugoslavia, about 20 km from Belgrade, near the Batainice airfield, by the ancient C-125 air defense system with a radar missile guidance system.
The plane allegedly fell in the desert in Saudi Arabia, and Hussein's subordinates simply did not have the opportunity to present its wreckage as proof of their victory.
With the end of Operation Desert Storm, the success of the F-117A began to decline, although in this region the stealth fought periodically throughout the next decade. So, during the "punitive" operation against air defense facilities in southern Iraq (command posts, air defense missile systems, radar stations), held on January 13, 1993, the F-117A turned out to be ineffective: six of these machines were able to hit only 2 targets out of 6 assigned. In two cases, the laser guidance of the bombs was disrupted when they passed through the clouds, in the third the pilot could not find the target, and in the fourth he incorrectly determined the turning point of the route and bombed the false target. This indicates the ability of the F-117A to perform operations only in simple weather conditions. And the described raid, which, by the way, was attended by 38 different types of aircraft, took place at night with poor visibility. It was the weather, according to the Pentagon representatives, that caused the low performance of the raid: of 32 planned targets, only 16 were hit. In December 1998, F-117A, operating from bases in Kuwait, took part in Operation Desert Fox. - the bombing of Iraqi factories for the production of weapons of mass destruction. In 4 days, American aircraft flew 650 sorties against 100 targets, and the fleet fired 100 Tomahawks. However, almost nothing was reported about the results of the operation, which can be interpreted as evidence of their absence. Slow war with the participation of "stealth" in the so-called. the no-fly zone in southern Iraq continues to this day (article dated 2002 - paralay).
