Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: myelo on February 20, 2008, 03:33:18 PM
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I'm trying out approximately how many combat missions stealth aircraft have flown. Does anyone have any links or ideas?
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Sorties? or Operations. going all the way back to at least Panama? or was it Grenada...
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sorties
just a rough idea, doesn't have to be precise number
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Panama.
Myelo just call the U.S. Air Force Public Affairs Office and ask... remember use a heavy Arabic accent and stay on the phone for longer than 3 minutes.
:noid
Mac
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Well the F-117 flew 1,300 sorties in the 91 Gulf War
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Also what aircraft are you including in the "Stealth" category? Are you wanting to include the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 JSF? And are you wanting to include the SR-71 Blackbird which was stealthy.
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heres some info, not much but a place to start
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj97/spr97/arkin.html
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Do you have a "need to know"?
Are you a communist, a spy, a traitor or a democrat? :D
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My need to know is I'm arguing with someone who says stealth AC are useless and a waste of money because they can be easily shot down despite the technology. When I pointed out that only 1 stealth AC had ever been shot down in combat, he said that's because they have rarely been used.
Airscrew thnks for the link.
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That other guy is wrong. They've been used on thousands of sorties, and they've been used multiple times on "day one" missions kicking down the door inside a heavily defended area, without a single loss during those highest risk missions. In fact, the only stealth loss came in a mature conflict in a theater where the enemy probably had access to our air tasking order and routes of flight.
:furious
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Originally posted by eagl
In fact, the only stealth loss came in a mature conflict in a theater where the enemy probably had access to our air tasking order and routes of flight.
:furious
According to the Serbian officer in command of the SAM battery, that is exactly the information he had. In an interview he gave, he said they were able to listen in on NATO radio communications, including conversations between pilots and AWACS air controllers. Through these intercepts, the Serbians were able to figure out the air routes and targets.
They also claim to have modified the SA-3 Goa's warhead to emit electromagnetic waves because our stealth technology doesn't take into account older long pulse duration radars. If they did modify their warheads, would the modification work, at least in theory?
But I believe if they didn't know the routes and targets, the F-117 wouldn't have been shot down.
ack-ack
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Originally posted by Ack-Ack
According to the Serbian officer in command of the SAM battery, that is exactly the information he had. In an interview he gave, he said they were able to listen in on NATO radio communications, including conversations between pilots and AWACS air controllers. Through these intercepts, the Serbians were able to figure out the air routes and targets.
They also claim to have modified the SA-3 Goa's warhead to emit electromagnetic waves because our stealth technology doesn't take into account older long pulse duration radars. If they did modify their warheads, would the modification work, at least in theory?
But I believe if they didn't know the routes and targets, the F-117 wouldn't have been shot down.
ack-ack
The other thing I heard on this was the Stealth's were flying the same flight corridor repeatedly. They'd get a slight "blip" and moved more SAMs to that spot...and got a luck shot that took it down.
How true that is, I dont know.
Reference the Golden BB Axiom
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some more stuff
http://aviationtrivia.homestead.com/F117.html
The F-117 first saw action on 12/20/89 during Operation Just Cause in Panama. During Operation Desert Storm in January and February of 1991 the F-117 was the only Coalition fixed wing aircraft allowed to strike targets in- side Baghdad's city limits. Although only 36 F-117s were deployed in a total force of some 1,900 fighters and bombers, they flew more than 33% of the bombing missions on the first day of the war. In all the F-117 flew more than 1,250 sorties, dropped more than 2,000 tons of bombs, and flew over 6,900 hours of missions.
http://www.afa.org/magazine/dec1996/1296storm.asp
Desert Storm marked the first large-scale employment of stealth aircraft--the F-117--equipped with precision weapons. The combination has revolutionized warfare. The F-117's stealthiness enabled us to achieve surprise every day of the war, attack any target we wanted, and leverage the capabilities of other assets. The F-117s delivered the first strikes, destroying a wide array of critical targets and paralyzing the Iraqi air defense network. Their attacks on the radar sites and command, control, and communications bunkers that controlled the Iraqi defenses opened the door for wave after wave of nonstealthy aircraft to strike effectively and, most important, safely. The F-117's ability to paralyze the Iraqi air defense network in the opening minutes of the war was critical to gaining air superiority, a vital prerequisite to ejecting the Iraqi Army from Kuwait.
In 1995, my chief master attack planner from Desert Storm calculated the "value" of stealth, or the stealth "multiplier effect," in a bomber study for the Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces. He found that, in the first twenty-four hours of the Gulf War air campaign, each F-117 sortie was "worth" sixteen nonstealth sorties. As Iraqi air defenses were whittled down, this ratio leveled off about one to eight--still extraordinary. The B-2, equally stealthy but with eight times the payload and five times the range, multiplies even the F-117 "multiplier" and opens the door to large-scale air campaigns prosecuted from outside the theater. Unfortunately, not many people know this because the commission chose not to publish the data.
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Originally posted by LePaul
The other thing I heard on this was the Stealth's were flying the same flight corridor repeatedly. They'd get a slight "blip" and moved more SAMs to that spot...and got a luck shot that took it down.
How true that is, I dont know.
Reference the Golden BB Axiom
I forgot where i read it, but i saw an account given by the pilot of the F-117. He said that 2 missles were fired that he knows of. The first was not even close, but the second came close enough to he aircraft without hitting it, to put it into a spin, from which he could not recover.
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What I want to know is why the Nighthawk has an 'F' designation. Should be B-117.
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Are you counting simulated missions? Add a few hundred for me. ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-19_Stealth_Fighter
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Originally posted by myelo
My need to know is I'm arguing with someone who says stealth AC are useless and a waste of money because they can be easily shot down despite the technology. When I pointed out that only 1 stealth AC had ever been shot down in combat, he said that's because they have rarely been used.
Airscrew thnks for the link.
Yeah your friend is wrong, as I stated in my other post in the 91 Gulf war alone the F-117 Nighthawk flew 1300 combat sorties and not a single one was lost, no other aircraft that have been used in combat have the survivability record that stealth A/C do.
Tell your friend this, why would the U.S spend billions & billions of dollars to develop and build stealth A/C if they could be easily shot down, I think that Congress would be a little mad at the military for spending the money they did to develop stealth technology if it was easy to defeat.
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And would they keep building newer and more advanced Stealth aircraft if the concept didn't work?
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Yeah I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say the guy who said stealth didn't work is just a high school age or younger kid.
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First flight! FTW! (I know, old, but hey...so am I)
(http://www.airlineempires.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/better_stealth_fighter.jpg)
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Has anyone heard of the "Aurora"? It's supposed to be the militaries next gen in spy planes, and it's supposed to have a Pulse Detonation Wave Engine that allows it to reach hypersonic speeds of mach 6 or more. Since the Air Force retired the SR-71 Blackbird it has no spy planes, so you have to assume that if their going to retire their spy plane that they have something that replaced it. Heres a pic of what it's thought to look like.
(http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r168/trax28/Aurora-SPFX.jpg)
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Originally posted by trax1
Since the Air Force retired the SR-71 Blackbird it has no spy planes, so you have to assume that if their going to retire their spy plane that they have something that replaced it. Heres a pic of what it's thought to look like.
They did have a replacemant- they're called "spy satellites".
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Originally posted by Treize69
They did have a replacemant- they're called "spy satellites".
Yeah but with spy satellites you have to wait until they pass over the area you want to look at, and some governments and terrorist groups can know when those satellites are passing over head and can hide what there doing, with a spy plane you can send it to photograph anywhere you need at anytime and you can't predict when a spy plane is gonna fly overhead.
If spy satellites where the answer we would have gotten rid of spy planes a long time ago because we've had spy satellites for decades.
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Originally posted by ChickenHawk
What I want to know is why the Nighthawk has an 'F' designation. Should be B-117.
The USAF tried to trick the Soviets (at the time) into thinking they had something they really didn't. According to treaties signed by both sides, they weren't allowed to develop any new bomber aircraft. So, they decided to give it the prefix of "F" so that it wouldn't look like a heavy bomber.
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Originally posted by SpikesX
The USAF tried to trick the Soviets (at the time) into thinking they had something they really didn't. According to treaties signed by both sides, they weren't allowed to develop any new bomber aircraft. So, they decided to give it the prefix of "F" so that it wouldn't look like a heavy bomber.
Actually thats not true, the designation "F" has nothing to do with any treaties we had with the USSR. The Air Force has never officially explained, but there are several theories on it, heres from a website:
"The "F-" designation has never been officially explained. However, military organizations have never been quick to embrace new technologies, and the USAF in particular has always been most proud of its fighters ("F-" aircraft), slightly less so of its strategic bombers ("B-" designations), and has never been enthusiastic about providing direct support of ground troops ("A-" type attack planes). It is possible that an aircraft of radically new design would win support more easily if it was a "sexy" fighter rather than "just" an attack plane.
One of the more common explanations for the "F-" designation of the Nighthawk was that it was for security reasons. The aircraft does not exhibit the characteristics of an attack ("A-" designation) aircraft in that it does not have a gun, nor rockets to engage enemy ground targets and provide close-in air support (CAS) for friendly personnel on the ground. Also, the typical role of an attack jet is to operate during daylight hours and/or at low altitudes, which is contradictory to the concept of this platform. The Nighthawk is by default and definition, a strategic aircraft and deserving of the "B-" designation for bombers. The given reasoning behind the misleading title Stealth "Fighter" was to disuade and misdirect possible foreign espionage attempts to gather accurate intelligence on the project. "
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Originally posted by ChickenHawk
What I want to know is why the Nighthawk has an 'F' designation. Should be B-117.
I've heard it was to deceive the 'evil empire' into believing it was a fighter.
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Originally posted by ChickenHawk
What I want to know is why the Nighthawk has an 'F' designation. Should be B-117.
Noted military aviation expert Andreas Parsch has a really good writeup on cover designations that the US Air Force used for once secret (and some still secret) programs. For instance:
YF-110B = MiG-21 Fishbed B
YF-113A = MiG-17 Fresco C
YF-113B = MiG-23 Flogger F
YF-113E = MiG-23 Flogger E
YF-117A = Lockheed Senior Trend (which become the F-117A)
YF-117D = Northrop Tacit Blue
Check out Andreas' writeup and designation matrix http://www.designation-systems.net/usmilav/coverdesignations.html (http://www.designation-systems.net/usmilav/coverdesignations.html)
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Originally posted by CMC Airboss
Noted military aviation expert Andreas Parsch has a really good writeup on cover designations that the US Air Force used for once secret (and some still secret) programs. For instance:
YF-110B = MiG-21 Fishbed B
YF-113A = MiG-17 Fresco C
YF-113B = MiG-23 Flogger F
YF-113E = MiG-23 Flogger E
YF-117A = Lockheed Senior Trend (which become the F-117A)
YF-117D = Northrop Tacit Blue
Check out Andreas' writeup and designation matrix http://www.designation-systems.net/usmilav/coverdesignations.html (http://www.designation-systems.net/usmilav/coverdesignations.html)
Excellent link. Thanks Airboss.
I guess my indignation arose from the early days when there was still a lot of hype surrounding the F-117 and the hopes that it was some new super fighter that would kick some serious arse. It was quite a let down when I found it didn't even have a gun on it.
I saw my first one flying at an airshow last summer and I have to say that it kinda grows on you after you see it in person. :cool:
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Originally posted by ChickenHawk
Excellent link. Thanks Airboss.
I guess my indignation arose from the early days when there was still a lot of hype surrounding the F-117 and the hopes that it was some new super fighter that would kick some serious arse. It was quite a let down when I found it didn't even have a gun on it.
I saw my first one flying at an airshow last summer and I have to say that it kinda grows on you after you see it in person. :cool:
Well then you should really be excited about the F-22 Raptor as it is a "super fighter", it's not only one of the most manuvarable fighters ever developed, it's also a stealth airplane. It's everything that the F-117 was not in the fighter roll. No other fighter in the world compares to it, it can take on around 5-6 F-18 and have no problem taking them all out before they even get any kind of shot on it. I was watching a interview with a Raptor pilot and he said that if he's not going up against atleast 5-6 other fighters it's not a fair fight.