Most Stealthy Aircraft - It needs combustion. Unstable on all three flight axes without the aid of an onboard computer. There are no curved surfaces. limited payload.
This surprising reconnaissance report is likely to be of concern to some pilots. But another disclosure erased those concerns:
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The aircraft was a Lockheed Martin F-117A Nighthawk. On this day 40 years ago, under tight security by the government, it first rose from the bottom of a dried-up lake in Nevada - known today as Area 51.
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All of these imperfect fighter characteristics were necessary to achieve the F-117's only real requirement - stealth. When the F-117 took off on this day in June 1981, it became the first stealth aircraft to take to the skies.
The Cold War conflict was the first in which combat aircraft were primarily powered by jet aircraft. Although the United States has a technological advantage over its adversaries, contested airspace still poses significant risks to pilots and their aircraft. Enemy's growing technology can trap American fighter jets and send them out of the sky at breakneck speed.
US airlines have accepted the challenge: reduce any features that could reveal the location of the aircraft. This means flying below the speed of sound to reduce noisy sound waves. This means no afterburners or large exhaust jets from engines that can emit an infrared signature. This means a flat surface that will bounce off radar waves.
Around the time Lockheed Martin won the F-117 contract in 1978, the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet took to the skies for the first time. General Electric designed the all-new F404 engine specifically for the Hornet. Reliable, maintainable, lightweight and affordable, the F404 quickly won lines.
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The F404-F1D2 was built for the F-117 with all but a few workers at the Lynn, Massachusetts plant. It was an almost identical copy of the F/A-18 F404. On a dedicated assembly line staffed only by state-licensed workers, GE has built more than 100 of these machines.
A 1970s piece of the F404 that was powered by the F/A-18 Hornet, designated F404-GE-402. The F404-GE-F1D2 did not have a afterburner. Credit: G.E
Bill Formosi, General Electric's F404-F1D2 Program Manager from 2000 to 2004, recalls seeing the F-117 in person for the first time.
"It's probably the highlight of my career," Formosi recalled. He was at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. They pulled the F-117 out of the hangar and into the Quonset hut to get everything ready for flight.
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When they got ready to launch the plane, they had us pile into the back of a pickup truck and escorted our F-117 out as it cruised. People think that because of the special exhaust and lack of a afterburner, it doesn't have much power - they'd be wrong. The plane took off and the whole truck shook."
“Even though I come about 20 years after the plane first flew, the first time I was standing next to an F-117, and then I was in the truck when one was launched… I mean, it just blew me away.
Formosi, who still works with GE as Director of Materials and Logistics, is one of the few GE employees who worked on the F404-F1D2 program.
"That was really her beauty." They were able to take an existing engine that had the required thrust and weight and make it work. There have been some modifications to accommodate the specialized intake on the F-117.
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Unlike other aircraft of the time, the F-117's air intakes were grilled and covered with a special radar-absorbing coating. There were also spring slots opening on the floor to get more air into the engine. However, once airborne, the hatches will close again to maintain the aircraft's stealth characteristics.
"If you look at the F-117 from behind, you'll notice that you can't see the engines like you can see on other planes," Formosi explained. "It's intentional and had something to do with keeping it a secret." Instead of a combustible like the F404 found in the F/A-18, there was a 12-stage exhaust that switched from round at the engine end to flat at the exhaust end."
"This was done to spread the hot exhaust gas over a larger area, minimizing its thermal effect."
The exhaust of about 15 feet also needed layers of fabric to absorb engine heat. An overhead can affect the radar-absorbing coating that covers the outside of the aircraft.
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Republic F-84 Thunderjet with experimental exhaust nozzle, circa 1958. The same general design principles were applied to the F404-F1D2 exhaust pipe. (Image credit: NASA)
Many people who work in aviation are also interested in this industry. Formosi, without exception, has had some free time working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. He found the F-117 gauge assembly that was gathering dust in his house, which he believes someone brought back to him when he was the F1D2 Program Director. Formosi assembled and painted the model and said it was still "without a doubt" his favorite plane ever.
Remember the surprise when Lin's employees learned that the plane's engine had been made by General Electric. “Nothing philosophical to say. It was really a matter of pride to know that GE had a hand in it.” The Northrop (later Northrop Grumman) B-2 Spirit, also known as the Stealth Bomber, is a US military heavy bomber, with stealth technology that does not She can see it, designed to explode. Anti-aircraft defense. The aircraft, a two-man crewed subsonic wing, was designed by Northrop, then Northrop Grumman, and produced from 1987 to 2000.
The bomber can drop both conventional and thermonuclear weapons, such as up to eighty 500-pound (230 kg) Mk 82 JDAM guided bombs or sixteen 2,400-pound (1,100 kg) B83 bombs. The B-2 is the only certified aircraft capable of delivering large air-to-surface weapons in a stealthy configuration.
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Development began under the Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB) program during the Carter administration, which abandoned a Mach 2-capable B-1A bomber in part because the ATB showed such promise. But development difficulties delayed progress and increased costs. In the end, the program produced 21 B-2s at an average cost of $2.13 billion (in 1997), including development, engineering, testing, production, and procurement.
The project's significant financial and operational costs made it controversial in the US Congress before the end of the Cold War, which greatly reduced the need for a stealth aircraft designed to strike deep into Soviet territory. As a result, lawmakers trimmed a planned purchase of 132 bombers in the late 1980s and 1990s to just 21.
As of 2022, there are twenty B-2s in service with the USAF. (One of them was destroyed in a crash in 2008.
) The Air Force plans to operate it until 2032, when it will be replaced by the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider.
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The B-2 can fly attack missions up to 50,000 feet (15,000 m); The unfuelled range is over 6,000 nautical miles (6,900 mi; 11,000 km) and it can fly over 10,000 nautical miles (12,000 mi; 19,000 km) with mid-air refueling. It entered service in 1997 as the second aircraft designed with advanced stealth technology, after the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk attack aircraft. Primarily designed as a nuclear bomber, the B-2 was first used in combat to drop non-nuclear conventional bombs during the Kosovo War in 1999. It was later used in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.
By the mid-1970s, military aircraft designers had learned a new way to avoid missiles and interceptors, which today is known as "stealth". The idea was to build an aircraft with an airframe that deflects or absorbs radar signals so that less is reflected by the radar unit. An aircraft with a radar stealth capability can fly virtually undetected and can only be attacked by weapons and systems that do not rely on radar. Although there are other detection measures, such as human observation, infrared scanners, and acoustic locators, the relatively short detection range or unsophisticated technology has allowed most aircraft to fly unseen, or at least without tracking, especially at night.
In 1974, DARPA requested information from US airlines about the largest radar cross-section of an aircraft that would be effectively invisible to radar.
Initially, Northrop and McDonnell Douglas were chosen for further development. Lockheed has experience in this area with the development of the Lockheed A-12 and SR-71 aircraft, which incorporated a number of classified features, notably the vertical stabilizers, the use of composite materials in key locations, and overall surface finishes in the impressive radar. fee. A major improvement was the introduction of computer models used to predict radar reflectance from flat surfaces with the data collected driving the design of a "flat" aircraft. Development of the first such designs began in 1975 with the "Hopeless Diamond", a prototype built by Lockheed to test the concept.
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The plans were well presented by the summer of 1975, when DARPA launched the Experimental Survival Test (XST) project. Northrop and Lockheed were awarded contracts in the first round of tests. Lockheed took the sole prize for the second round of tests in April 1976 that led to the Have Blue program and possibly the F-117 stealth attack aircraft.
Northrop also had a secret technology demonstration, Tacit Blue in development in 1979 at Area 51. It had developed stealth technology, LO (low vision), fly by wire, curved surface, composite,
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