F-117 secrecy.
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Ummm... that is because there ARE no B-2s at DM.
There were exactly 21 B-2s built* - including the 6 test & development airframes which were converted to late-production standard at the end of the production run.
1 was destroyed in a crash (23 February 2008, B-2 Spirit of Kansas, 89-0127), 1 is at the 412th Test Wing at Edward Air Force Base, California, and the other 19 are all at the 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri.
* Plus two test articles, built without engines or instruments for static testing.
There were exactly 21 B-2s built* - including the 6 test & development airframes which were converted to late-production standard at the end of the production run.
1 was destroyed in a crash (23 February 2008, B-2 Spirit of Kansas, 89-0127), 1 is at the 412th Test Wing at Edward Air Force Base, California, and the other 19 are all at the 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri.
* Plus two test articles, built without engines or instruments for static testing.
Bentwaters
Goatscukers visit to Bentwaters circa 1986. (Courtesy of Bentwaters Museum)
cheers
cheers
Boom operator tales
Halfway down the page, he talks about fueling the 117 fleet and other unknown (stealth) platforms 
for which he cannot disclose.
He also mentions a severe interview without coffee
could be warranted if when gassing up the likes of the F-117, a mistake happened and the airframe got scratched. Thus leading to the integrity of the airframe material being compromised.
Cheers
for which he cannot disclose. He also mentions a severe interview without coffee
could be warranted if when gassing up the likes of the F-117, a mistake happened and the airframe got scratched. Thus leading to the integrity of the airframe material being compromised.Cheers
Cloaking device
The F-117 Stealth Fighter Program Actually Had A 'Klingon Cloaking Device'
With technology that had never been seen before, the U.S. Air Force went to amazing lengths to keep the stealth F-117 Nighthawk program under tight wraps during the 1980s. As the program matured into an operational force, deploying F-117s in small numbers became a real possibility. But maintaining the aircraft’s veil of secrecy while doing so was uncharted territory. Enter the “Klingon Cloaking Device,” a ruse that would help prove such deployments could work.
With technology that had never been seen before, the U.S. Air Force went to amazing lengths to keep the stealth F-117 Nighthawk program under tight wraps during the 1980s. As the program matured into an operational force, deploying F-117s in small numbers became a real possibility. But maintaining the aircraft’s veil of secrecy while doing so was uncharted territory. Enter the “Klingon Cloaking Device,” a ruse that would help prove such deployments could work.
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Early F-117 Secrecy?
A bit silly. During the development years it is reasonable to assume that the Soviets knew more about the underlying technology than a lot of the folks working on the program. The reason that they did not attempt a duplicate is because they could not afford it. Their science was absolutely excellent; just no Rubles.
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No Fly Zone,
Absolutely right. An excerpt from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_technology
".....During the 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense launched project Lockheed Have Blue, with the aim of developing a stealth fighter. There was fierce bidding between Lockheed and Northrop to secure the multibillion-dollar contract. Lockheed incorporated into its bid a text written by the Soviet/Russian physicist Pyotr Ufimtsev from 1962, titled Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction, Soviet Radio, Moscow, 1962. In 1971 this book was translated into English with the same title by U.S. Air Force, Foreign Technology Division.[16] The theory played a critical role in the design of American stealth-aircraft F-117 and B-2.[17][18][19] Equations outlined in the paper quantified how a plane's shape would affect its detectability by radar, its radar cross-section (RCS).[20] This was applied by Lockheed in computer simulation to design a novel shape they called the "Hopeless Diamond", a wordplay on the Hope Diamond, securing contractual rights to produce the F-117 Nighthawk starting in 1975.....".
......
More on that person could be read here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petr_Ufimtsev
Absolutely right. An excerpt from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_technology
".....During the 1970s the U.S. Department of Defense launched project Lockheed Have Blue, with the aim of developing a stealth fighter. There was fierce bidding between Lockheed and Northrop to secure the multibillion-dollar contract. Lockheed incorporated into its bid a text written by the Soviet/Russian physicist Pyotr Ufimtsev from 1962, titled Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction, Soviet Radio, Moscow, 1962. In 1971 this book was translated into English with the same title by U.S. Air Force, Foreign Technology Division.[16] The theory played a critical role in the design of American stealth-aircraft F-117 and B-2.[17][18][19] Equations outlined in the paper quantified how a plane's shape would affect its detectability by radar, its radar cross-section (RCS).[20] This was applied by Lockheed in computer simulation to design a novel shape they called the "Hopeless Diamond", a wordplay on the Hope Diamond, securing contractual rights to produce the F-117 Nighthawk starting in 1975.....".
......
More on that person could be read here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petr_Ufimtsev
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It was not the lack of funds but a lack of understanding of the ability of turning the Ufimtsev’s work into a practical air vehicle. For example the USSR had the funds to develop the MiG-29 and the Su-27 both of which first flew in (1977) the same year as the Have Blue project and went operational one year before the F-117. In addition Ufmtsev’s work was specifically associated with antenna development and not radar signature reduction. So there is no indication that the Soviets were close to understanding low signature technology at the time of the F-117’s development. If there was any understanding that Ufmtsev's work had practical military applications his paper would have been highly classified.
"In Rich's own words, the unsung hero of Lockheed's effort was an anonymous staff mathematician and electrical engineer named Denys Overholser. Overholser and his mentor, another mathematician named Bill Schroeder, had discussed the possibilities of utilizing some of the equations associated with optical scattering (how electromagnetic waves bounce off variously shaped objects) on this project. Both had the rather odd hobby of reading obscure Russian mathematics papers and had made the ultimate "nerd's nerd" discovery. They had stumbled across a paper published in Moscow a decade earlier titled "Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction." It had been written by Pyotr Ufimtsev, the Soviet's chief scientist at the Moscow Institute of Radio Engineering and the last in a long line of scientists developing a long series of wave equations originally derived centuries ago by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell.
The U.S. intelligence community had helped translate this research and brought it to the West. The paper was in no way classified or related to weapons development at all. It was purely theoretical math. Years later, Ufimtsev immigrated to the United States to teach at the University of California, Los Angeles, and only then discovered his inadvertent contribution to the development of stealth aircraft.
The equations that Ufimtsev had developed made the reflections of radio waves off hard surfaces predictable. Not invisible, transparent, or tactical in any way-just predictable. The problem for Lockheed was that the calculations were so ferociously difficult that the most advanced supercomputers in the world at the time could only compute results for flat surfaces. Any attempt to perform the calculations for the curved surfaces you would find on a conventional aircraft-well, those machines would still be grinding away toward a solution today.
Schroeder recognized how these equations could be applied to Lockheed's current project. The solution was not even to attempt to design an aircraft with any curved surfaces, but to build one with dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of individual flat triangular and rectangular plates. Then the challenge was to compute the reflection from each and every flat surface before adding them all together to build a picture of the aircraft's total radar signature. Once you knew where every bit of radar reflection was coming from, you could then reorient those individual plates so that the reflection would go off in a direction away from the radar looking at it."
LINK
"In Rich's own words, the unsung hero of Lockheed's effort was an anonymous staff mathematician and electrical engineer named Denys Overholser. Overholser and his mentor, another mathematician named Bill Schroeder, had discussed the possibilities of utilizing some of the equations associated with optical scattering (how electromagnetic waves bounce off variously shaped objects) on this project. Both had the rather odd hobby of reading obscure Russian mathematics papers and had made the ultimate "nerd's nerd" discovery. They had stumbled across a paper published in Moscow a decade earlier titled "Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction." It had been written by Pyotr Ufimtsev, the Soviet's chief scientist at the Moscow Institute of Radio Engineering and the last in a long line of scientists developing a long series of wave equations originally derived centuries ago by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell.
The U.S. intelligence community had helped translate this research and brought it to the West. The paper was in no way classified or related to weapons development at all. It was purely theoretical math. Years later, Ufimtsev immigrated to the United States to teach at the University of California, Los Angeles, and only then discovered his inadvertent contribution to the development of stealth aircraft.
The equations that Ufimtsev had developed made the reflections of radio waves off hard surfaces predictable. Not invisible, transparent, or tactical in any way-just predictable. The problem for Lockheed was that the calculations were so ferociously difficult that the most advanced supercomputers in the world at the time could only compute results for flat surfaces. Any attempt to perform the calculations for the curved surfaces you would find on a conventional aircraft-well, those machines would still be grinding away toward a solution today.
Schroeder recognized how these equations could be applied to Lockheed's current project. The solution was not even to attempt to design an aircraft with any curved surfaces, but to build one with dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of individual flat triangular and rectangular plates. Then the challenge was to compute the reflection from each and every flat surface before adding them all together to build a picture of the aircraft's total radar signature. Once you knew where every bit of radar reflection was coming from, you could then reorient those individual plates so that the reflection would go off in a direction away from the radar looking at it."
LINK
F-19 Specter does exist......in a unit patch
Testors' model was of the fictional 'F-19':
Model by Dan Lee
Before the F-117 was unveiled, I made a number of 'zaps' based on a picture of the 'Lockheed F-19', allegedly of the '???th TFW, Tonopah AFB' which I used to leave lying around in the USA - or stuck firmly under the perspex in various Base Ops planning rooms...
I also left one inside the cockpit of a U-2 at Patrick AFB - they must have wondered about that!
Model by Dan LeeBefore the F-117 was unveiled, I made a number of 'zaps' based on a picture of the 'Lockheed F-19', allegedly of the '???th TFW, Tonopah AFB' which I used to leave lying around in the USA - or stuck firmly under the perspex in various Base Ops planning rooms...
I also left one inside the cockpit of a U-2 at Patrick AFB - they must have wondered about that!
This USAF Intelligence Squadron's Insignia Appears to Show the "F-19 Specter" - The Drive
Maybe there was a classified program (one of many) run at some time possibly 80s in parallel with F-117 utilising the 19 Specter shape then so decades later, an reserve intel unit of not much publicity unit badge has a fictional a/c on it?
Any thoughts?
cheers
No sign of retiring as yet
It looks like au contraire to the final final flight of the remaining F-117A s after Frits lot of retirement.
New Video Of F-117s Flying Out Of Tonopah Emerges Despite Their Fates Being Sealed - The Drive
Last edited by chopper2004; 30th Jul 2018 at 02:19.
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Since its retirement from active flying status in 2008, the Air Force’s cadre of F-117 Nighthawks have been maintained at their original, climate-friendly hangars at the Tonopah Test Range Airport in Nevada. Given the cost of establishing secure storage facilities at Aircraft Maintenance and Regeneration Center (AMARC at Davis-Monthan AFB), the Air Force chose instead to store the retired F-117s at the pre-existing secure facilities at Tonopah Test Range.
Per Congressional direction within the FY07 National Defense Authorization Act the aircraft were placed in Type 1000, flyable storage for potential recall to future service. In order to confirm the effectiveness of the flyable storage program, some F-117 aircraft are occasionally flown."
Per Congressional direction within the FY07 National Defense Authorization Act the aircraft were placed in Type 1000, flyable storage for potential recall to future service. In order to confirm the effectiveness of the flyable storage program, some F-117 aircraft are occasionally flown."
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Oh, are we allowed to talk about F-117 now? 
Is the F-117 as much a phantom as the new UK Fighter going to be?
https://theaviationist.com/2019/02/2...-social-media/
A few years ago the explanation was a few were flown periodically to ensure functionality during long term storage (inviolet/ type 1000 storage?) A several hour flight at low level and using terrain masking in 2019 seems a bit more than an airframe function test. The 117 wasn't normally down low.
Back in the saddle over Syria and Iraq
Turns out they may have seen combat the other year....
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/four...magazine-says/
Cheers
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Turns out they may have seen combat the other year....
https://theaviationgeekclub.com/four...magazine-says/
Cheers