Why Is The 'Retired' F-117 Nighthawk Still Flying?

Why is the F-117 Nighthawk, America's first true "stealth" aircraft, still prowling the skies years after its retirement in 2008?

Since the F-117 officially stopped flying, the famous triangular black jet has been spotted on numerous occasions. Even a video taken by a highly credible source emerged in 2010 of a lone F-117 ripping around the northern portion of the Nellis Range Complex, while other videos depicting the F-117 refueling from a KC-10 Extender and playing with an instrumented testbed aircraft north of Groom Lake have also appeared on the net. Additional sightings have occurred as recent as October of last year, and some have even said they saw a pair of F-117s recovering at Nellis AFB early in the evening fairly recently.

It was originally stated that th e entire F-117A fleet, minus one pre-production example which was scrapped as an experiment at Plant 42 in Palmdale, CA, would be put into regenerative storage at the F-117′s original operational home, desolate Tonopah Test Range Air Base in south central Nevada. The stored aircraft's systems would be "mummified" and their wings would be removed so that up to five aircraft could fit into a single hangar which once housed two of the jets during their early operational heyday. Although there were murmurs about a handful of F-117s being kept in flying condition, the USAF has not addressed exactly how many of the black jets would be kept in such a state, and more importantly, why they would be kept in a flyable condition in the first place.

Keeping even a small force of F-117s flying is not a cheap or easy task. As the program's active operational talent retires, or migrates deeper into other aerospace programs, the "brain-drain" pertaining to such a unique weapons system would represent serious challenges.

Also, the Nighthawks were unique and temperamental aircraft and required a comprehensive logistical train to keep them in the air. Keeping just a handful of these jets flying would be costly and not without risk. In order to do so the USAF, or Lockheed Martin, would have to keep pilots current without the simulators and large training regimens that once existed for the aircraft. Furthermore, knowledgeable maintenance folks would have to keep these aircraft in the air and their temperamental radar absorbent material, which is somewhat archaic by today's standards, would need constant care.

Is such a feat possible? Sure it is. Would keeping a small handful of these aircraft and crews flight ready be prohibitively expensive? Yes. Seeing as we know that at least one, and reportedly up to six F-117s are still flying, the question now becomes why is the DoD and/or industry going through the trouble and cost of doing so?

EndFragment

Find out from the orginal article published here.

#F117