Talk:Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Cost of Program

The info box says the cost of one aircraft was 42.6 million, and the entire program (including 64 aircraft built) was 111 million. That's obviously not possible. Sailboatd2 (talk) 13:24, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

42.6 million is the marginal cost, if you wanted to build one more F-117 it would cost that. 111 million is the program cost, per airplane actually built. 64 aircraft X 111 million => 7.1 billion total program cost. Aesma (talk) 00:58, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

F-111 as designation example

The article has a paragraph commenting on the USAF's apparent inconsistency of giving an F designation to what is actually an attack aircraft. Then it correctly states that the USAF has however used the F designation for attack aircraft in the past and cites the F-105 and F-111 as examples of this practice. First, I have to commend whoever wrote that, as the first sensible writer I have seen who acknowledges the F-105's deviation from norm, but then I beg to differ regarding the F-111: in the early 60s, this airplane was intended as both a tactical bomber (F-111A) and a long-range fighter (F-111B). Though the latter failed to materialise, I have always understood that the F designation absorbed the attack rôle when one single aircraft was able to perform both (until the advent of F/A-18, which was some fifteen years down the road). With that reasoning, the F-111 would be justified and not an exception regarding its F designation. In the very least, the F-111 would not be consensual here, so I ask: should we not drop it as an example? Would the F-105 not be enough? Any thoughts? SrAtoz (talk) 19:34, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

I think your comment is valid in that DoD system nomenclature is fairly uniform and consistent since WW2, yet it has like I've just learned more to do with keeping the fighter designation from earlier in its operational history, in order for the program's heads to attract the kinds of pilots they sought for the operational goals. Symcophan888 (talk) 03:47, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

retirement section

This sentence doesn't make sense, "Other weapons began to take on the F-117A's roles, such as the F-22 Raptor gaining ability to drop guided bombs in 1993" since the F-22 wasn't introduced for 10 more years. 108.182.13.221 (talk) 21:29, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, the nighthawks weren’t retired until the F-22s were able to take over. CJBruh (talk) 11:54, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Location of Nellis AFB

The following line from the article ...

"All military personnel were permanently assigned to Nellis AFB, but most personnel and their families lived in Las Vegas. This required commercial air and trucking to transport personnel between Las Vegas and Tonopah each week."

... would seem to imply that Nellis AFB is somehow geographically detached from Las Vegas. It is not. All gates (I believe there are five) are in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, mostly within the incorporated city of North Las Vegas. The operational location of the unit during its early days was the Tonopah Test Range, substantially north of the Las Vegas valley; that would make somee kind of sense. The personnel of the original unit were counted on the rosters of Nellis AFB, they worked at the Tonopah Test Range, and were flown or bussed from Nellis to Tonopah on a daily or weekly basis. No planes or busses were or are required to get anyone from "Las Vegas" to "Nellis AFB," as the venues are physically and geographically contiguous. Just an observation from somone who lives here and worked there for a while. F117-A (talk) 07:08, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

GAN

This is a response to Iazyges' request over at WT:MILHIST regarding the GAN. Although I'm not exactly addressing lazyges' request, the way I see it, the article has some major issues. After having looked at the Operational history section, I'm inclined to say that there are significant improvements to be made, most notably to the prose. In particular, there isn't a lot of flow in the writing, and so as a result the information doesn't appear to link. For example, the first paragraph of the section talks about the basing of the aircraft during the period from 1984 to mid-1992, and the logistical measures the USAF took to shield operations from the public. Then in the next paragraph the article jumps back to 1983, and straight after it talks about what the pilots call themselves. In addition, the article is missing information about the aircraft's service during Operation Enduring Freedom (2001) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003). Given these two issues, I'm afraid it does not meet GA criteria. Regards, --Sp33dyphil (talk) 08:02, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Secrecy

The Development section says:

very few people in the Pentagon knew the program even existed, until the F-117s were revealed to the public in 1988

The first reference for that is Cracks in the Black Dike that says:

In mid-October, various news services announced that the Pentagon was about to reveal some information about the fighter

Implying that it was known about inside and outside the Pentagon before then. That is the closest it has on the subject.

The second reference is BBC News | Iraq | Top Gun - the F-117 Stealth Fighter and the closest that it says that is relevant is .... uh well where does it say anything relevant?

I was employed by Lockheed at the time they left Burbank in 1990. I know we talked about the ATF prior to the development of the prototypes. I do believe the Pentagon knew about the project before 1988.

I know that the two prototypes built by Lockheed were built in the building south of the main entrance to the Burbank (or Bob Hope or whatever) Airport.

I know that I wrote a program that processed Skunk Works aircraft manufacturing instructions to pick out the tools and materials to convert them to the same software that the White World used and it is nearly certain that the ATF is one of the aircraft it processed but of course I have nothing saying any of that is true. I know that we talked about the ATF a lot. Sam Tomato (talk) 01:38, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Attack aircraft?

This article says that the F-117 is an attack aircraft, yet the linked Attack aircraft article does not mention the F-117, and says that since the 1960's the A-10 and Soviet/Russian Sukhoi Su-25 Frogfoot are the only dedicated attack aircraft designs widely introduced. Does that article need to be updated?Gruhl~enwiki (talk) 13:36, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

The F-117 being an attack aircraft is cited in the article. A general wiki article, such as Attack aircraft can't list every example and wiki articles are not reliable sources. -Fnlayson (talk) 13:58, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Featured picture scheduled for POTD

Hello! This is to let editors know that the featured picture File:F-117 Nighthawk Front.jpg, which is used in this article, has been selected as the English Wikipedia's picture of the day (POTD) for August 23, 2021. A preview of the POTD is displayed below and can be edited at Template:POTD/2021-08-23. For the greater benefit of readers, any potential improvements or maintenance that could benefit the quality of this article should be done before its scheduled appearance on the Main Page. If you have any concerns, please place a message at Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day. Thank you! Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:34, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk is a semi-retired American single-seat, twin-engine stealth and attack aircraft that was developed by Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works division and operated by the United States Air Force. Its maiden flight took place in 1981, and it was the first operational aircraft to be designed around stealth technology. This F-117 was photographed flying over Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

Photograph credit: Aaron Allmon II

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Parts Bin Aircraft

An interesting comment from an F117 pilot being interviewed on YouTube stated that the F117 was somewhat a parts bin design. Major components lifted directly from previous aircraft. Although this is likely to be a common practice in newly designed aircraft, I think this fact is interesting observation for what was seen to be such a radical machine. This may not be worthy of investigation / inclusion but may be of interest to the type (as me) who like to read the talk section for a wider view and opinion rather than the all too often moderator reversions that plague some Wiki entries.

Service Ceiling Metric conversion

In the "Specifications(F-117A) " section, Service Ceiling is 45 000 ft then converted to 14 000 m. Exact conversion is 13 716 m. Having promised to NEVER edit any article ever again, I'm submitting this information strictly for consideration from those who are ACTUALLY allowed to edit.24.53.51.129 (talk) 15:41, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

That is simply rounding and is not an error per se. -Fnlayson (talk) 17:11, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Does that mean it can be changed to the exact figure or will rounding be imposed?24.53.51.129 (talk) 17:46, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

• The specification template does the unit conversion by default based on the format of input number. -Fnlayson (talk) 02:32, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Retirement

In the 3rd paragraph at the top of the page it says " The U.S. Air Force retired the F-117 in April 2008, primarily due to the fielding of the F-22 Raptor." with a citation of a book published in 2005, years before the decision was made to retire the F-117.

Later down in the "Later Service and Retirement" section it states "The loss in Serbia caused the USAF to create a subsection of their existing weapons school to improve tactics. More training was done with other units, and the F-117A began to participate in Red Flag exercises. Though advanced for its time, the F-117's stealthy faceted airframe required a large amount of maintenance and was eventually superseded by streamlined shapes produced with computer-aided design. Other weapon systems began to take on the F-117's roles, such as the F-22 Raptor gaining the ability to drop guided bombs. By 2005, the aircraft was used only for certain missions, such as if a pilot needed to verify that the correct target had been hit, or when minimal collateral damage was vital. The USAF had once planned to retire the F-117 in 2011, but Program Budget Decision 720 (PBD 720), dated 28 December 2005, proposed retiring it by October 2008 to free up an estimated $1.07 billion to buy more F-22s. PBD 720 called for 10 F-117s to be retired in FY2007 and the remaining 42 in FY2008, stating that other USAF planes and missiles could stealthily deliver precision ordnance, including the B-2 Spirit, F-22 and JASSM. The planned introduction of the multi-role F-35 Lightning II also contributed to the retirement decision."

Why try to summarize that entire section with one sentence which misses most of the context around the decision? Slipknottin (talk) 20:45, 1 January 2023 (UTC)