F-117 Kosovo Shootdown

[elderforest]

Hi,

Does anyone know the final word on why the F-117 Nighthawk flying during the Kosovo campaign got bagged by a SAM?

The last I heard was that one of the weapon bay doors got stuck open which compromised it's radar stealthiness . . .

. . . hang on . . here come the MIB's !!

[Jackonicko]

It's my understanding that the LO characteristics of the F-117 are widely misunderstood. The aircraft is not 'invisible' to radar, nor is it even all that Stealthy from every aspect. Turn that big flat belly towards an enemy radar, for example, and it will be detected.

That's why the mission planning system is so vital - to avoid detection, the -117 pilot has to carefully plan a mission between enemy radars (whose effective range is signifficantly reduced by the aircraft's stealth characteristics) and turns must be carefully planned to avoid 'showing' the aircraft's more visible aspects.

My understanding is that the aircraft was detected by a newly moved mobile radar, which had not been expected.

[Impiger]

Elderforest

I was there - the story you recount was certainly the line put about in US briefings at the time. Don't make it kosher though!

[Spur Lash]

Could have been lots of things;

Same route in and out - unwise,
Speculative shot with lots of missiles - unlucky,
Spy in the camp - undetected.

[jimgriff]

According to anonymous sources close to the Pentagon the F-117 stealth fighter was not brought by a Yugoslav anti-aircraft missile. It fell victim to a crash of its on-board computer. That particular plane was one of eight experimental planes whose computer was running on Windows CE operating system. According to the pilot, he was returning back to base when he heard a familiar taah-tahm tune. The sound was very familiar but definitely did not belong to the cockpit environment. A second later the pilot realized where he heard it so many times before. It was a sound of Window shutting down. Another second later the computer screen turned black and the plane began behaving erratically. The pilot attempted to reboot the computer while trying to keep the jet flying. The plane was barely responding to the controls -- a behaviour expected from a "fly-by-wire" aircraft. Unlike conventional planes that can be flown manually F-117 needs the computer just to maintain the straight course. If the on-board computer of F-117 is turned off the plane becomes aerodynamically unstable and even the best pilot cannot control it. Indeed, Windows were still loading when the jet began rapidly changing pitch angle, steeply climbing up and then plunging down. In a few seconds of a wild ride the wings began to flatter and eventually the right wing fractured and separated from the fuselage. The pilot pulled the ejection handles. Though the Pentagon declined to comment the evidence points to the allegations to be true. Air combat command grounded the remaining seven jets from the experimental Windows CE group immediately after the incident. According to an air force technician at Aviano air base in Italy who spoke on condition of anonymity the air force engineers believe that it was the recently discovered "50 days" glitch that brought down the plane. It was recently reported that Windows 98 crashes after 49.7 days of uninterrupted work because of the timer buffer overflow. Apparently, the same glitch was present in the version of Windows CE used in the crashed F-117. Indeed, the flying log shows that the plane was in continuous operation for 50 days. The 2 months preceding the crash the plane was used very extensively. It was never used so extensively before. Even when the plane was grounded for express maintenance and refuelling the computer was not powered down. Switching eight stealth fighters to Windows CE was a part of broader strategy by the Pentagon to control costs by relying on already developed civilian technology and off-the-shelf components. A similar mishap happened a couple of years ago when Windows NT crashed and paralyzed a Navy battleship for 2 hours. It is expected that senior Pentagon officials would hold a news conference to announce whether or not the U.S. armed forces will continue relying on Windows operating system.

[Fox3snapshot]

Oooooooh dear! I hope your joking!

Led to believe the F117 isn't the whiz bang platform that it has always been made out to be. The size of the support package would seem to confirm this rumor and lets face it with the amount of aircraft we are talking about to get two LGB's on target, an F15, 16 or 18 with the same top cover should be able to do a similar job???????

[wessex19]

Jimgriff,

Your quote "A similar mishap happened a couple of years ago when Windows NT crashed and paralyzed a Navy battleship for 2 hour."

US Navy haven't operated Battleships for a number of years now. If my memory serves me right, USS New Jersey was there last. US Navy has operated destroyers (DDG's) with over the horizon technology.Were you referring to their Spruance Class ?? If not, which class of Destroyer. Please explain!!!

[Woff1965]

"All versions of Windows are buggy as a rain forest and crash as often as a drunk in a Ferrari"

That is a quote by a friend who works as a computer consultant - I cannot believe anyone would use Windows in a safety critical environment. Even the "Posh" versions of Windows get odd if left long enough. One lare ge company I know of reboots its Windows NT servers every 24 hours to avoid crashes.

If you leave a Windows system run long enough it starts to develop all sorts of weird problems including "memory holes". Anyway the Fly-by-wire system in the F117 is a modified version of oneof the teen series fighters fly-by-wire system.

Why use Windows CE - Linux would be a much more rational choice.

[A Civilian]

I heard that due to political-diplomatic fu ups certain countries which will remain nameless but are major holiday destinations decided that certain aircraft could not overfly there terrority which meant the doeboys had to fly along a narrow flight corridor into and out of Serbia all the time and the Serbs then did the logical thing

"memory holes" or "leaks" are nothing new to any operating system. When a program is ran the operating system allocates enough memory for the process to run and once it ends is susposed to unallocate the memory. This doesnt always occur though the fault doesnt always lie with the OS.

All OS's do this not just WinNT. If you start and stop a program on running on any OS a hundred times you'll notice that by start 25 you're probably wont be able to load

[BlueWolf]

The version I heard was that the inside of the bomb bay, and its doors, had neither the shape nor the coatings required to make them radar stealthy, and that as soon as they were opened, the Serb radar spotted the -117, guiding in regular AAA fire.

[DamienB]

Sure I read a few months after the event that they'd just been using the same route for several days in a row and it was a mobile SAM moved under the flight path specifically to catch them should they be dumb enough to continue using that route.

As for Windows, might have been true of early version but not anymore - above quoted computer consultant can't be a very good one, or maybe he can figure out why I've had XP running 24/7 for up to 18 months uninterrupted, and the last time I had to reboot was only to put in an extra hard drive? As always, tools/bad workmen/blame...

[jimgriff]

The posting about the F-117 running windows as an OS is a SPOOF!!
It is not real!! It is all a BIG FIB!!
I confess, it was posted in a second of maddness. Please do NOT belive it!!!

Now will the black Omega parked outside please go home?!

[Jackonicko]

Jimgriff you absolute bastard.

I tried to post ROTFL after your post and was told my reply wasn't long enough, then something distracted me. Since then I've had even more of a laugh as more and more people posted clearly believing your spoof, until there was a real danger of a wet office carpet.

Now you've ruined the fun.

Bastard!

PS: Everyone knows that the -117 FBW FCS runs on the old Amstrad OS........

[Diamond 'katana' geezer]

One rumour that i had heard was that they had very cleverly used the mobile phone network of the area to create a grid pattern dome over the entire area, Serbia, Croatia (sp?) They then knew nearly every movement in and out of this 'dome'

With many movements they were unable to fire for whatever reason. Maybe a lone aircraft was just too much of a temptation!!

Probably just as much tosh as the windows thing....you decide!

Geez

[Daysleeper]

Hang on , wasnt that in a dean koontz novel about Iran.

[elderforest]

Thanks guys . . I think that answers my question . . !!

So just to recap, what brought the F117 down was:

1. The pilot shouldn't have flown in the same bit of sky twice (there was probably a McDonalds or Starbucks nearby . . . well if there wasn't - there is now . . )

2. He should have flown straight and level for over 30 secs in the combat area (even though in the 'Battle of Britain' film they tell you not to do so!)

3. Should've upgraded to a Commodore 64 from Jet Set Willy on the Speccy (this maybe a red herring)

4. Oh yeah . . and someone told the baddies he was coming anyway . .

PS. Why don't they send BEagle 3 to find BEagle 2 like on Thunderbirds? Or are they all too busy on the Airbus FTA contract?

Cheers.

Elderforest - remember AD exercises? remember when we had some AD?

[ChristopherRobin]

the mobile phone network has more than a grain of truth in it, but it wasn't used in Kosovo, it was a theory put forward by a british scientist to do what you said it would.

I think that in order to defeat stealth you have to look at what stealth (in the radar sense) is trying to defeat, namely radars that transmit energy and then receive some of that energy back again.

The principal effect of the F117's design is to scatter that energy away from the the receiving antenna which is usually on the same dish as the transmitter.

Now, if you network 2 dishes that are far apart, one on transmit and one on receive, and located them in a poisition along which you suspected a F117 would fly, you could transmit your energy and the F117 could conceivably scatter the energy towards the receiving dish, thus revealing it to the integrated system.

So called bi-static radars are not rocket science. Now all that may be speculation, but a few years ago, when Iraq was about to install fibre communications to integrate their air defence, we bombed the cr@p out of them.

An overreaction, as many thought at the time, or a pre-emptive response to a serious threat?

[Pilgrim101]

OK,

You've beaten it out of me - Good quality, high resolution Thermal Camera, albeit with a very narrow field of View, strapped to a ZSU 23mm Quad, predictive reasoning on the (already referred to) restricted flight path and a few shoulder launched SAM routinely spaced and in telephone contact with each other. Look at the exit holes on the wing of the downed aircraft.

Now the men in grey suits will have to get very dusty when they come for me

[MajorMadMax]

Nice pics and vid here

Cheers! M2

[BOAC]

Good link, MMM. To support jimgriff's post - you can see Windows in a couple of the pictures and they have definitely crashed.