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The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk was the world's first operational stealth aircraft, a single-seat, twin-engined attack aircraft built by Lockheed's Skunk Works for the United States Air Force. Despite its fighter designation, it was a dedicated night precision-strike platform whose faceted airframe and radar-absorbent skin made it exceptionally difficult to detect, and it remains a landmark type for any simulator pilot interested in the birth of low-observable combat aircraft.
The F-117 Nighthawk is a retired American single-seat, subsonic, twin-engined stealth attack aircraft developed by Lockheed's Skunk Works division and operated by the United States Air Force. It was the first operational aircraft designed from the outset around stealth technology. Although commonly nicknamed the 'Stealth Fighter' and carrying an F for fighter in its designation, it was designed and employed as a dedicated attack aircraft, with air combat manoeuvring performance inferior to that of contemporary fighters. Sixty-four were built in total: five YF-117A prototypes and fifty-nine production F-117As.
Work on what became the F-117 began in the 1970s as a response to increasingly sophisticated Soviet surface-to-air missiles, which had inflicted heavy losses on the Israeli Air Force in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and led a 1974 Defense Science Board assessment to conclude that air defenses would likely prevent NATO air strikes on targets in Eastern Europe. The project began in 1975 with a model nicknamed the 'Hopeless Diamond'. In 1976 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency issued Lockheed Skunk Works a contract to build and test two stealth strike aircraft under the code name Have Blue, subscale demonstrators that used jet engines from the Northrop T-38A, fly-by-wire systems from the F-16, landing gear from the A-10 and environmental systems from the C-130. Both Have Blue aircraft crashed during testing, but the data gathered proved the stealth concept and led to increased funding for an operational aircraft under the program name Senior Trend. On 1 November 1978 Lockheed decided to proceed with development of the F-117. The design exploited theoretical work by Soviet mathematician Pyotr Ufimtsev on radar returns from edges, applied by Lockheed engineers Denys Overholser and Bill Schroeder using a computer program called Echo to arrange flat radar-scattering panels, or facets, across the airframe. The first YF-117A, serial number 79-10780, made its maiden flight from Groom Lake, Nevada, on 18 June 1981, just 31 months after the full-scale development decision. The first production F-117 was delivered in 1982, and the aircraft achieved initial operating capability in October 1983 with the 4450th Tactical Group, based at Tonopah Test Range Airport, Nevada. It remained a black project for years, with its existence denied by USAF officials until 10 November 1988. The last of the fifty-nine production F-117As was delivered on 3 July 1990. The type was awarded the Collier Trophy in 1989.
The F-117 is a single-seat, twin-engined aircraft with a distinctive faceted shape made from flat surfaces, which heavily contributes to a radar cross-section of about 0.001 square metres. It is powered by two General Electric F404-GE-F1D2 turbojets, which lack afterburners; the non-circular tailpipes mix hot exhaust with cool ambient air to minimise the infrared signature. The airframe is aerodynamically unstable in all three principal axes and depends on a fly-by-wire flight control system for controlled flight. It carries integrated digital navigation and attack systems, with targeting via a thermal imaging infrared system and a laser rangefinder and designator. Published figures give a wingspan of 43 feet 4 inches, a length of 65 feet 11 inches and a height of 12 feet 5 inches. Empty weight is given as 29,500 lb, with a maximum take-off weight of 52,500 lb. The aircraft has no defensive armament, relying entirely on its low observability, and carries internal ordnance in a bomb bay capable of housing up to two 2,000 lb bombs, with a total internal ordnance load of up to 5,000 lb.
Published performance figures give a top speed of around 680 mph, a service ceiling of 45,000 feet and a range of about 650 miles, with a combat radius cited elsewhere at around 540 miles and a cruising speed near Mach 0.92. The aircraft is restricted to subsonic flight, since breaking the sound barrier would produce a sonic boom that would increase both its acoustic and infrared signatures. Its inherent aerodynamic instability, corrected continuously by the fly-by-wire system, together with its limited manoeuvring performance relative to contemporary fighters, led crews to nickname it the 'Wobblin' Goblin'.
Five YF-117A prototypes preceded the fifty-nine production F-117A aircraft, giving a total production run of sixty-four airframes built between 1981 and 1990.
The F-117 was flown exclusively by the United States Air Force, initially by the 4450th Tactical Group at Tonopah Test Range Airport, which was redesignated the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing in October 1989. Its existence was publicly acknowledged only on 10 November 1988, and for its first years in service it operated almost entirely under cover of darkness. Its first combat mission came during Operation Just Cause, the US invasion of Panama, on 19 December 1989, when two F-117As from the 37th TFW attacked military targets. The type gained wide recognition during the 1991 Gulf War, flying about 1,300 sorties and striking around 1,600 high-value targets in Iraq. F-117s also took part in the conflict in Yugoslavia in 1999, during which one aircraft was shot down by a surface-to-air missile, the first known instance of a stealth aircraft being detected and destroyed by an enemy force; the pilot ejected safely and was rescued some eight hours later. The aircraft was subsequently active during Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 and Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. The USAF retired the F-117 in 2008, primarily as the F-22 Raptor had entered service to assume its role, though airframes were kept in Type 1000 storage so they could be returned to flying status, and some Nighthawks have continued to be used for research, testing and training purposes into the 2020s.
For a simulator pilot the F-117 offers a very different flying experience from a conventional fighter: it is a subsonic attack aircraft with no afterburners and no gun, entirely dependent on stealth rather than speed or agility, and its inherent instability in all three axes means the aircraft is only kept flyable by continuous fly-by-wire correction. Its handling in air combat manoeuvring is markedly inferior to contemporary fighters, reflecting its design purpose as a night precision-strike platform rather than a dogfighter, and its historical role flying single or paired sorties deep into defended airspace to deliver laser-guided ordnance via its internal thermal imaging and laser designation systems makes it best suited to methodical, low-level or medium-altitude penetration missions rather than aerial combat.
