The Nighthawk is a stealth fighter attack aircraft of the United States Air Force and the world's first aircraft designed entirely with stealth technology. The F-117 was produced by Lockheed and designed before the 1970s, first test-flown on June 15, 1981, and delivered to the U.S. Air Force on August 23 of the following year, delivering a total of 59 aircraft to the Air Force. The F-117A remained a secret until November 10, 1988, when the U.S. Air Force first released photos of the aircraft, and in April 1989, the F-117A was first publicly available at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
F-117 Nighthawk
The wingspan is 13.20 meters, the length is 20.08 meters, and the height of the aircraft is 3.78 meters
The wing area is 84.8 square meters.
The empty weight is 13.5 tons, the internal weapon load is about 2.2 tons, and the maximum take-off weight is about 23 tons.
The power plant is equipped with two F404 afterburnerless turbofan engines with a maximum level flight speed of 1040 km/h.
The normal level flight speed is Mach 0.9 and the combat radius is more than 1100 kilometers.
Main airborne equipment: Retractable down-look infrared sensors and laser pointers, forward-looking infrared sensors with dual field of view, mission computers, flight control computers/navigation interfaces and autonomous driving computer systems, as well as GPS and digital activity maps.
The performance of the aircraft is not outstanding, its maneuverability and speed, range is relatively poor, mainly in order to achieve stealth performance, the designer had to design it into a different look, in order to minimize the radar reflection area. This design, which does not conform to the principle of aerodynamics, comes at the cost of reduced maneuverability, speed, etc. The whole body of the aircraft is black, and the fuselage is coated with wave-absorbing material, which can absorb radar waves to achieve the purpose of stealth.
Battle of Barnabas:
On December 20, 1989, the United States invaded Panama, and the United States flew F-117 Nighthawks to participate in the war to support the airborne operations of American fighters in The Rio Alto in Panama.
Fame in the Gulf War:
During the Gulf War, the F-117 Nighthawk became famous, and it is reported that it carried out more than 1,300 dangerous missions during the "Desert Storm" without any damage. Among the various aircraft participating in the war, they undertook the task of attacking targets in the urban area of Baghdad. 42 F-117As flew 1,300 sorties, bombed 40 percent of the strategic target list without a single loss, and were shot down for the first time in a NATO air strike on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on March 28, 1999.
The F-117 is the American Lockheed. Martin developed a single-seat subsonic stealth combat/attack aircraft, mainly used to carry laser-guided bombs to carry precision attacks on targets. The aircraft adopts a unique polyhedron shape design, the wing and butterfly tail are using diamond-shaped sections, the fuselage is a sharp flight angle cone at both ends, the entire aircraft shape is composed of many folds, coated with wave-absorbing materials, so that the radar reflection waves are concentrated in several beams of the horizontal plane, so as to achieve stealth purposes. The aircraft also adopts a number of measures to reduce infrared radiation and aircraft noise.
Service Deployment:
The aircraft was equipped with the 4450 Tactical Group in Nevada and gained combat capability in 1983. The 49th Tactical Fighter Group, which accompanied operations for the first strike of Operation Desert Storm, took part in the fighting over Baghdad. The F-117's polyhedra fuselage construction, radar absorbing material, platypus exhaust, and its stealth fighter configuration combined to make it virtually undetectable by enemy radar in combat.
The U.S. Air Force began gradually retiring and mothballing the F-117 in 2006, and by April 21, 2008, the F-117A had flown from New Mexico to Nevada Airport in November 2008 after completing its last mission. At this point, the F-117 has been in service for 27 years, and the first generation of stealth fighters has come to an end.