Since its official "retirement" on April 22, 2008, the world's first stealth fighter, the F117A Nighthawk, has received more attention than ever. At 4 p.m. on Friday, August 16, some netizens took pictures of F117A again on Columbia Avenue near the Pamdale Regional Airport in Palmdale, California. However, unlike in the past, this F117A was tied up and wrapped into a rice dumpling, making people mistakenly think that they returned to the scene when the FC31 Eagle fighter had just appeared.
F117 was wrapped in rice dumplings and appeared on the road
When it was just retired, the U.S. military hired several shredders to dismember an F117A, and the scene was very sad, and the U.S. Air Force seemed to use this move to prove that it had parted ways with the world's earliest stealth fighter. Behind the scenes, however, the opposite is true. U.S. warplanes are generally sent to the "Aircraft Graveyard" at Davis Munson Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, for mothballing, but the F117A receives special treatment, except for a few Destroyed Nighthawks, dozens of other aircraft are sent to the Climate Control Hangar of the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada, where they receive a higher level of maintenance and maintenance than the "Aircraft Cemetery", and they have been in good condition.
The F117 that was dismantled was actually only a few
From 2008 to now more than a decade, the F117A is also "retired and not retired", there have been many reports of its sightings in many places in the United States, such as the west of the United States, north of Las Vegas, there have been rumors of the F117A re-entry for many years, and on February 26, 2019, photographer Richard van der Meyren took a photo of the F-117A with no obvious logo on the fuselage, when it was flying over the restricted airspace near Death Valley in southern California. The next day, the F117A briefly appeared nearby again. Even in 2017, there were rumors that the F117A had rejoined the fighting in Syria and Iraq.
The F117A took off again
However true these rumors are, at least it shows that the F117A is far from the time of its real retirement, so why is the US Air Force so painstaking to maintain the F117A's flight capabilities? We can do some analysis from the performance of the aircraft itself. F117A is the first stealth fighter in history, to put it ugly, it is a disability, the aircraft speed is low, can not supersonic, poor maneuverability, topped the title of fighter "F", but can only do the work of the attack aircraft, its only point, is stealth, as an aircraft designed for stealth, its stealth capability is much stronger than fighters such as the F22 and F35, because of this, the F117A re-takeoff, the only thing that can be reused by waste is its stealth ability.
The reason F117 was repurposed was obviously only its stealth ability
Previously, there were rumors that after the F117A was reactivated, it mainly served in the simulated J-20 and Su-57, taking on the task of "imaginary enemy", and now it seems that this speculation is reasonable. Over the years, in order to realistically simulate the stealth fighters of China and Russia, the US military has tried everything to create a J-20 shape feature recognition model, such as brushing the F-35 with FC31 livery, brushing the F-16 with the camouflage of the Su-57, and even using the F22 as an imaginary enemy.
Simulate the J-20 landing failed F22
However, even the F22, is not enough to simulate the stealth performance of the J-20, some time ago the exposure has exposed the close-up of the F22, we found that this kind of paint early stealth paint of the Raptor fighter details have long been unbearable, the fuselage cracked, such a state, obviously can not be compared with the J-20 new concept of stealth skin, some people even suspect that the current F22 may have lost the original stealth ability, more just in the pretense, in this case, Using the F117A, which has the best stealth ability, is a very natural thing.
The re-activation of F117 is a logical one
From the comeback of F117A, we should understand a truth, the so-called military transparency of the United States, in fact, is very limited, you see, just what they want you to see, behind the heavy black curtain, there are a lot of unknown areas, ordinary people can not know at all.