How come a jet that is “retired” in 2008 continues to appear on the most challenging job in the training world? The F-117 Nighthawk is in a weird, long-lived micro-niche: it is an object of historical interest and also a functional one. The first stealth aircraft in the world went into U.S. Air Force service in 1983, assisted in making low-observable strike a viable reality, and then at least, on paper, gave way to newer aircraft. However, some part of the fleet has been kept airworthy on a selective research and training sorties and continues to provide a capability not yet fully simulated by the search stealth aircraft of modern front-line or the simulators.
The essence is straightforward, when the engineers and operators require a true, manned, low-observable plane to put sensors, techniques, and protocols to the test, the Nighthawk continues to offer a reasonably controlled “known” stealth signature that is acceptable. The remaining inventory has been recognized publicly to be around 45 aircraft and operation is set to end at least to 2034 limited research and training. That renders the F-117 not so much a relic as a surrogate, an asset which can be risked, instrumented as well as tasked, and not necessarily to the detriment of highly demanded front-line airframes in the way of priorities of operations.
That aspect of “surrogate” is important since it is not only a question of pilot expertise, but it is a question of detection. Sharpening radar, infrared search and track, and other cueing chains can be done with the Nighthawk in a manner that is difficult to do synthetically. It also facilitates those high end operations that require the forces desire to have “red air” that acts like a low observable threat, or in a manner where they require air defenses to be trained on a repetition to be demonstrated against targets, which do not reflect familiar radar returns. The F-117 becomes an object of calibration, in that environment, in a stealthful airplane with a history of measurement stretching over decades and a stable configuration that can be used to test comparable results over time.
Even the outward contradictions of the aircraft are still beneficial to the program. Regardless of the “F” or F-type designation, the Nighthawk was not designed to engage in an arial battle, but precision attacks. It had no gun, and depended upon its internal bays to reduce its signature, its payload, which was often termed two 2000 pound-class weapons, being optimally adjusted to give more accuracy than bulk. The formerly restrictive mission statement is now enabling its test-and-training brand: less variables, less outside stores, and less configuration modifications that might make signature work more complex.
The Nighthawks has been involved in operation since long ago with the Tonopah Test Range Airport within the Nevada Test and Training Range. Their environment is adaptable. Some external validation of activities has been rare due to aviation spotting, with two F-117s flying out of Groom Lake as Tonopah was being rebuilt, and the modern usefulness of the aircraft is traced back to the geography of its original secret operations. The fact that physical mobility is an indication of something significant: the “retired” fleet is orchestrated into action rather than an exhibition pipe.
Having the legacy stealth airframes stay in air is also the impetus to an uncomfortable engineering discussion that transcends tactics and telemetry: emissions. Essays quoted elsewhere indicate the F-117 has approximately 2,700 or 2,800 gallons of fuel aboard, with common emissions calculations pegging jet fuel at 9.75 kilograms of CO 2 per gallon. One sortie is not the footprint of an institution, but the arithmetic renders the larger trade space apparent: the flight testing can provide unsubstitutable realism, and each hour at sea involves quantifiable carbon cost which is increasingly being monitored elsewhere by engineering organizations.
The long service of the Nighthawk is, after all, an indication of an ongoing need a true stealth aircraft capable of being put at risk of threat emitters, and evaluated, without putting the crown-jewel platforms at risk. To an aircraft born of faceted geometry, radar-absorbent materials and a close operational secrecy the most modern thing about the F-117 perhaps is that it remains an instrument of flying to consult even now that it continues to respond to the questions more modern systems continue to require.
