From: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V2 #8 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Wednesday, 18 November 1992 Volume 02 : Number 008 In this issue: Re: The $6 Million Man Re: The $6 Million Man Quote o' the week F-117 Article (1/3) F-117 Article (2/3) F-117 Article (3/3) The $6 Million Man The $6 Million Man The $6 Million Man Re: F-117 Article (1-3) Re: "This Is Stealth" publication info. Re: F-117 Artcle (3/3) Re: F-117 Artcle (3/3) See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Brent L. Bates ViGYAN AAD/TAB Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 07:28:19 EST Subject: Re: The $6 Million Man I don't remember the name of the vehicle, but one interesting note. I believe the real pilot survived the crash with out even a scratch. After seeing those shots you would think he would be dead. Brent L. Bates Phone:(804) 864-2854 M.S. 361 FAX:(804) 864-8469 NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, Virginia 23681-0001 E-mail: blbates@aero36.larc.nasa.gov or blbates@aero00.larc.nasa.gov ------------------------------ From: Brent L. Bates ViGYAN AAD/TAB Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 07:40:43 EST Subject: Re: The $6 Million Man I guess I should read ALL my mail in the morning, BEFORE, replying. How bad was he hurt? Brent L. Bates Phone:(804) 864-2854 M.S. 361 FAX:(804) 864-8469 NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, Virginia 23681-0001 E-mail: blbates@aero36.larc.nasa.gov or blbates@aero00.larc.nasa.gov ------------------------------ From: "Philip R. Moyer" Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 08:23:44 -0500 Subject: Quote o' the week "I just tried to get the nose up so I didn't do the lawn dart trick in the runway." - Lockheed test pilot Thomas Morgenfeld speaking about the seconds before the F-22 crash Cheers, Phil ------------------------------ From: brndlfly@Athena.MIT.EDU Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 10:29:29 EST Subject: F-117 Article (1/3) The following is an article that appears in the November 1992 issue of Air Force Magazine. The article includes lots of inside stuff about the F-117 program from sources such as Ben Rich. For the SWS types (Skunkers With Scanners): if you're looking for a good background for your workstation, try the cover of this magazine. Transcribed without permission by brndlfly@athena.mit.edu. Now that the mailing list has bounced this once, let's try it again... -T T Velazquez MIT Aero/Astro brndlfly@athena.mit.edu "Crayolas are one of the few things the human race has in common." -Robert Fulghum - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How the Skunk Works Fielded Stealth by David J. Lynch (?!?!) In recent months, a steady flow of new information about the F-117 has emerged, providing a detailed understanding of just how the first "stealth" fighter was transformed from a novel laboratory concept into the combat start of Desert Storm. Newly declassified technical data and the recollections of key Lockheed Corp. participants show that what often has been portrayed as a smoothly run, top-secret development program actually encountered its share of problems. They were, however, resolved with unusual ingenuity and skill. Despite the F-117's public image as the most modern of warplanes, the radar-evading aircraft had its technical origins late in the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Hula-Hoops were in vogue when Lockheed's Kelly Johnson and Ben Rich turned their attention to improving on the U-2 spyplane then flying reconnaissance patrols over the Soviet Union. "Much to our amazement," Mr. Rich recently recalled, "the Russians tracked us all the way. They couldn't do much about it, but they tracked us." Then the USSR shocked the world in 1960 when it shot down a U-2 and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers. The Central Intelligence Agency asked Lockheed to investigate ways to reduce the radar cross section (RCS) of advanced aircraft. Together with Lincoln Laboratories, Rich and company went to work on the problem. The team achieved early success in its work on the A-12 and, later, the SR-71 Blackbird, reducing the RCS of the planes by two orders of magnitude. Two years later, the D-21 unmanned drone achieved a reduction of another order of magnitude. The SR-71 was a breakthrough, according to Paul Martin, the program manager at Lockheed Advanced Development Co., known to the world as the "Skunk Works." It was in the SR-71 program, he said, that Lockheed "first developed aircraft shaping methods, radar absorbing structural edges, radar absorbing coatings, and other design features that greatly reduced the SR-71's radar signature." In 1974, however, when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) requested proposals for a stealthy small fighter, Lockheed was not even invited to submit one. At the time, company officials were forbidden to boast of their prowess in low-RCS aircraft because the high-altitude snooping of the U-2 and the SR-71 was being conducted for the CIA. The corporation was permitted to bid only after Mr. Johnson obtained a letter from CIA officials authorizing Lockheed to disclose limited details. The Importance of "Echo 1" In 1975, DARPA was persuaded to accept an unsolicited Lockheed proposal. The heart of the proposal was a computer program dubbed "Echo 1," which allowed its aircraft designers to predict a radar return. Skunk Works experts manipulated a set of well-established mathematical formulas for determining how various shapes would reflect electromagnetic radiation. Lockheed's early computer modeling, however, was limited to calculations in only two dimensions, meaning that the resulting aircraft would have an ungainly, faceted design rather than a smooth, seamless one. In fact, Mr. Rich and his Lockheed team christened that first, sharply angled aircraft "the Hopeless Diamond." The seven-foot-long model was brought to a range in Palmdale, Calif., for early radar testing. Initially, Pentagon officials regarded with deep skepticism Lockheed's claims of having developed some revolutionary radar-evading properties. "The reaction from the Air Force and DARPA was, 'That was all theory,'" said Alan Brown, the first F-117 program manager. Mr. Rich recalls demonstrating the new approach for a visiting officer. With radar beams bombarding the test stand, the two men intently watched a display screen. Nothing appeared. "All of a sudden," recalled Mr. Rich, "a black crow landed on the model. The officer said, 'I see something.'" That series of demonstrations indicated that Lockheed was on the right path, but the company and the Air Force had along way to go before they would be certain they weren't chasing a mirage. One early stumbling block was financing. The Pentagon wanted Lockheed to build two stealth prototypes with $20 million in government cash. Mr. Rich knew he needed another $10 million to pull off the assignment and had to approach Lockheed's top executives for the money. His timing could not have been worse. Lockheed was just emerging from its L-1011 commercial aircraft debacle which had cost the company billions. When Mr. Rich pitched the $10 million request to Lockheed Chairman Roy Anderson and President Lawrence Kitchen, they blanched. In 1976, however, Mr. Rich and Mr. Kitchen made a joint representation to Lockheed's board on the potential of stealth. When they were finished, Mr. Rich had his $10 million check. From this point forward, stealth development went deep into "the black," or the classified world. The vehicle was the Have Blue program, which produced stealth technology demonstrators. To enhance security, program management was shifted from DARPA of the Air Force Special Projects Office. "That'll Never Fly" Under Have Blue, Lockheed built two single-engine stealth demonstrators, which began test flights in 1977. Each was about forty percent smaller than the F-117. Each was distinguished by tail surfaces that pointed inward. Even some Lockheed partisans were initially unimpressed with the Have Blue's unusual appearance. "Kelly [Johnson] came in, kicked me in the ass, and said 'That'll never fly,'" Mr. Rich recalled. The eighteen-month Have Blue test series, however, was a striking success and convinced the Air Force to go ahead with development of a stealth fighter. On November 6, 1978, Lockheed received the contract for full-scale engineering development of what became the F-117, but the Have Blue flights foreshadowed a number of critical problems that would not be resolved until F-117 testing. Among them: how to mask the aircraft's exhaust and how to integrate a host of off-the-shelf avionics packages with the new airframe. In addition, the designers had to grapple with 1,001 details that could have derailed the program. "It was very good that we did Have Blue prototypes first," said Mr. Brown. "That gave us a real head start." F-117 development commenced under a program called "Senior Trend." By the time the Skunk Works team was done, it had produced fifty-nine copies of the unique charcoal-black fighters for a unit flyaway cost of $42.6 million. The program moved from design go-ahead to first flight in a mere thirty-one months and to initial operational capability in sixty months. One the F-117's existence was confirmed publicly in November 1988, Air Force and Pentagon officers depicted the jet's procurement as a model program whose success was due largely to the streamlined procurement and oversight of the black world. In the past year, however, a somewhat different picture has emerged. "The F-117 program faced several fiscal, performance, and schedule challenges." the Air Force reported not long ago to a Senate subcommittee. Those challenges included "a shortage of aerospace workers, rapidly increasing inflation, growth in material lead time, and delays in security clearances." It appears that none of the problems was ever viewed as a show-stopper, but the schedule for first flight and initial operational capability slipped by almost one year after two test aircraft crashed. Over the life of the program, full-scale development costs increased by fifty-three percent, the Air Force told the Senate subcommittee. The new information makes it clear that fielding the first operational stealth airplane did not stem from one technological solution or breakthrough. Rather, the work of the designers and engineers was all-encompassing, and close attention to seemingly minor details was critical. In the words of Mr. Brown, "We paid lots of attention to detail - door openings and hinges, that sort of thing." - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ From: brndlfly@Athena.MIT.EDU Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 10:31:10 EST Subject: F-117 Article (2/3) The following is an article that appears in the November 1992 issue of Air Force Magazine. The article includes lots of inside stuff about the F-117 program from sources such as Ben Rich. For the SWS types (Skunkers With Scanners): if you're looking for a good background for your workstation, try the cover of this magazine. Transcribed without permission by brndlfly@athena.mit.edu. Now that the mailing list has bounced this once, let's try it again... -T T Velazquez MIT Aero/Astro brndlfly@athena.mit.edu "Crayolas are one of the few things the human race has in common." -Robert Fulghum - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Seven Deadly Signatures Lockheed officials say that, to meet their goal of building a warplane that was all but impossible to detect at useful ranges, F-117 designers had to address seven types of observable signatures: radar, infrared, visual, contrails, engine smoke, acoustic, and electromagnetic. At a top speed of 646 miles per hour, the F-117's survival depends on its being impossible to detect in time for an enemy to take action. While the public understands the plane to be "invisible," stealth really is a combination of factors that makes the F-117 difficult for an enemy to detect, track, and target. "You're not making these things invisible," said Benjamin Lambeth of RAND Corp. Stealth "reduces substantially the distance at which the plane can be detected. By the time detection occurs, it won't be tactically useful." Relatively prosaic parts of the aircraft posed stiff design challenges. Concerns about the exhaust system had surfaced in the Have Blue flights. Normally, a jet's red-hot exhaust pours from the tailpipe in a cylindrical boil, leaving a beer-can-shaped hot spot in its wake. To make the F-117 difficult to see with infrared sensors, Lockheed needed a tailpipe that would flatten and cool the exhaust while simultaneously shrouding radar-reflecting portions of the plane. In July 1979, the Skunk Works turned to a small, Santa Ana, Calif., firm to design the fighter's distinctive exhaust system. Astech/MCI, one of Lockheed's 500 or so F-117 suppliers, took only ten months to design a nickel alloy tailpipe of a special honeycomb design that flattened the exhaust. The design also hid the pinwheeling turbine blades of the twin General Electric F404 engines buried inside the airframe. "We were trying to reduce the infrared signature and the radar signature," said Astech/MCI program manager Don Cunningham. "This [design] contributes to that at the back end of the aircraft." Another sticky problem was the development of the four pitot tubes that extend from the aircraft nose to gather air data. The four faceted and heated probes contain multiple openings that gather differential pressure readings. The data are compared and analyzed by on-board computers, providing the F-117's flight-control computers with all the information they need to fly the airplane. Designers quickly decided it was impossible to coat the tips of these four tubes with radar-absorbent material. Coming up with another process to preserve the plane's low observability "took about three years of very careful design," Mr. Brown said. A host of problems, some very minor and some fairly serious, were encountered in the development of the F-117's cockpit avionics. Most of the on-board systems were lifted from the F/A-18 strike fighter and modified for the stealth fighter. The Skunk Works' Richard Silz said that initially even the fighter's intercom suffered "severe background noise." Getting a UHF radio antenna to retract properly at high speeds and "stay together structurally" was another problem. Other Pilots, Other Planes Many avionics problems surfaced only in flight testing. As off-the-shelf avionics packages were mated to the F-117, engineers found it difficult to determine if a problem had actually been solved. Six test pilots were flying three different planes, and what was good enough for one pilot was subpar for another. The differentiation problem would reappear on weapons-release testing as each airplane demonstrated "its own personality due to equipment installation tolerances," Mr. Silz said. Adapting the Infrared Acquisition and Detection System (IRADS) built by Texas Instruments was a major problem. From the start, Lockheed encountered half a dozen serious problems with the dual turret system, including picture quality and stability, acquisition and designation, video noise, and laser noise. "Flight test got into trouble trying to solve too many problems at the same time," Mr. Silz told a meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Irvine, Calif., earlier this year. With the program stumbling early, Lockheed formed a "tiger team" under the direction of the Skunk Works chief scientist. The team, comprising experts from several different divisions, began by designating a single aircraft and pilot to conduct the IRADS tests, thus ensuring consistent test appraisals. The tiger team solved the problem in about one year and 100 test runs, according to Mr. Silz. Making the turret openings on the aircraft invisible to radar proved more of a problem and is illustrative of the fine detail required for stealth to work in an operational environment. The challenge for Lockheed was to find a material for the turret coverings that would allow the gear's own laser and infrared emissions to penetrate freely while remaining opaque to enemy radar. The first choice, Mr. Brown said, was a gallium arsenide window. After a technician accidentally fractured one of the $500,000 sheets in a test, however, Lockheed engineers decided it probably wasn't right for the tough acoustic environment of the turret housings. Lockheed immediately opted for a far less expensive and more effective solution, creating a stainless steel "tennis racket" screen to cover the turrets. The wire spacing was tight enough to keep radar out, while loose enough for IR and laser to penetrate, even though F-117 designers were concerned about the aerodynamics of allowing air into the housings. "I had to be damn sure I didn't make a harmonica," Mr. Rich said. As weapon certification testing began, the F-117 team began to see more of the detail that needed to be ironed out for stealth to work in practice. ------------------------------ From: brndlfly@Athena.MIT.EDU Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 10:32:45 EST Subject: F-117 Article (3/3) The following is an article that appears in the November 1992 issue of Air Force Magazine. The article includes lots of inside stuff about the F-117 program from sources such as Ben Rich. For the SWS types (Skunkers With Scanners): if you're looking for a good background for your workstation, try the cover of this magazine. Transcribed without permission by brndlfly@athena.mit.edu. Now that the mailing list has bounced this once, let's try it again... -T T Velazquez MIT Aero/Astro brndlfly@athena.mit.edu "Crayolas are one of the few things the human race has in common." -Robert Fulghum - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lower the Trapeze? The F-117's weapons bays, for example, are fitted with a trapeze sling for loading and unloading bombs. At first, engineers feared that bombs like the GBU-10 would damage the plane and ordered that they be released from the aircraft with the trapeze sling down. "This was a major detectability problem for the aircraft," said Mr. Silz, because the sling would create a significant radar signature. Eventually, Lockheed's aerodynamics specialists reworked their calculations and found that the weapons could be dropped with the trapeze safely stored inside the bays. That cut the plane's radar exposure window during attacks by a factor of five, according to Mr. Silz. F-117 weapon testing ended up taking about twice as long as it could have, however. Test managers had decided early in the program to fill one of the two weapons bays with test instrumentation. Forty-eight individual test plans were drawn up for the F-117. Eight to nine months into the flight-test effort, Lockheed concluded it would be impossible to carry out each of the written test plans and still achieve an early IOC. The Air Force and the test team decided to shelve the original plan in favor of a streamlined approach to certifying initial proficiency in day training, refueling, weapons, instruments, practice weapons, and initial guided weapons tests. Mr. Silz said essential testing was completed by IOC in October 1983. For several years after that, Lockheed and the Air Force continued to fill in the missing parts of the test equation. "While this approach to testing worked and is probably in the best traditions of the Skunk Works, flight test is just this year finishing the final reports on the last of the original test plans written over ten years ago," Mr. Silz said. Initial worries about the maintenance sensitivity of the F-117's radar-absorbent materials appear to have been overstated. However, Lockheed went to great lengths to simplify the necessary maintenance and reduce the frequency with which the radar absorbent material (RAM) coatings would need to be removed. Designers placed the access panels for servicing aircraft subsystems within the landing gear and weapons bays and also used a single avionics bay to minimize "the need to remove and replace RAM coatings around access areas," according to Martin. Lockheed engineers made all of the panels on the F-117's underside hexagonal in shape. Every line on the plane's underside thus was parallel to the trailing edge of the wing, which ensured that any return from a door would be swamped by the minimal signature of the wing, Mr. Brown said. No Swiss Watchmakers "It had to be built by conventional airplane technicians," he added. "You don't want to design it so it had to be built by Swiss watchmakers." Obtaining the necessary security clearances for each of the workers on the program was a daunting task. Each worker had to be cleared at the "secret" level, a process requiring several months. Mr. Rich said he spoke personally with every member of the F-117 work force, which started with a core of about seventy-five and later grew to a few thousand. "We had a tremendous clearance problem," said he. "It held us back." Top union officials were cleared first so that Mr. Rich could work with them to smooth the labor flow. Meanwhile, workers awaiting clearance wee assigned to "the icebox," a large shop where they worked on parts that did not give away the real focus of their work. Perhaps the key element in Lockheed's approach to moving stealth from concept to reality was a conscious decision to rely on off-the-shelf hardware as much as possible. In this way, engineers were able to focus on the breakthrough of reducing RCS without having to "invent" new avionics and engines. "We utilized proven systems from existing aircraft to reduce the overall system development risk," said Mr. Martin. The F-117's "borrowed" components included the GE F404 engines from the F/A-18, cockpit gear from the Air Force F-16 and Navy F/A-18, the B-52's navigation system, environmental control systems from the C-130, and critical fly-by-wire flight-control computers from the F-16. A corollary to the initial reliance on off-the-shelf hardware was a continuous improvement program after deployment. That effort was illustrated by Lockheed's response to the crash of three F-117s early in the program. The first crash, Mr. Rich said, occurred because of a mix-up in the pitch and yaw controls. The pilot called for a change in pitch, and the airplane yawed into a crash. the pilot survived with a broken leg. Two of his colleagues were not so lucky when their operational fighters crashed. After finding that spatial disorientation had played a role in the two crashes, the Air Force commissioned the development of the Pilot Activated Automatic Recovery System. Mr. Silz described PAARS as operating at all altitudes and speeds whether the landing gear is up or down. Even if it is not engaged, the autopilot on command orders the flight-control system and autothrottle to execute a series of preplanned maneuvers that will recover a tumbling aircraft to straight and level flight. "To our knowledge, no one has had to resort to use of this system for real, or at least they haven't admitted to it," said Mr. Silz. PAARS, which was part of a broader improvement program, was delivered to Tactical Air Command in late 1990. It is the first automatic recovery system installed in Air Force fighters for general use, according to Lockheed. The F-117's makers believe their success demonstrates the benefit of avoiding the traditional procurement approach. Working in secrecy and enjoying relative immunity from congressional and press scrutiny, the Skunk Works team worked with a small Air Force office to bring stealth from the laboratory to operational use. Mr. Brown, who was the first F-117 program manager, said he was relieved of normal contracting and paperwork chores, which went to another Lockheed manager. "That left me more time to do real work," he said. The Air Force monitoring team, he added, consisted of six officers, "which was delightful." Photo Captions p.22: head-on picture of an F-117 (gear number 813) with the cockpit open. This is the same picture as the cover of the magazine. "The success story that became the F-117 began in the late 1950's. Three decades and several glitches later, the black jet, with its potent bomb load and radar-evading properties, justified the faith of its proponents and made believers out of its critics with its sterling performance in the Persian Gulf War." p. 24: overhead shot of an F-117 on the production line, unpainted, showing the natural color of unpainted RAM. "One difficulty for Lockheed in its construction of the F-117 fleet was getting security clearances for enough aerospace workers. 'It was a tremendous problem,' said Lockheed's Ben Rich. 'It held us back.'" p. 24: picture of an F-117 model on a movable arm for RCS testing. "Such a radical technology had its doubters. The model above was bombarded with radar beams without result. Once, a skeptical visiting officer claimed to 'see something' on the display; a crow had landed on the model." p. 25: an operational F-117 over some hills, banking hard toward us. "Despite developmental problems, the F-117 program was a success, moving from design go-ahead to first flight in just thirty-one months and to initial operational capability twenty-nine months later." p. 25: the much talked-about photo of a preproduction Senior Trend aircraft. Noticeable differences are the gray coloring and the presence of an instrumentation boom in the nose. "The full-scale development aircraft of the Senior Trend program (above) lacked the F-117's distinctive black coloring, which was strictly an aesthetic choice that had nothing to do with the aircraft's stealthiness." p. 26: a dark photo of an F-117 on the ground behind camo net. "A highly classified system, the F-117 flew only at night for its first five years. Here, technicians work behind camouflage netting. Note exposed engines, normally behind plates to avoid detection of blades and exhaust." p. 26: F-117 flown by Capt. (?) Donaldson, taken by the boomer of a KC-135. "The plane's detractors had a field day mocking the angular surface of the F-117, but the faceting was vital, deflecting radar so that it was impossible to detect the aircraft in time for an enemy to take action." p. 27: a pilot sits in an F-117 simulator. "This realistic mission simulator shows the abundance of information at the pilot's disposal, especially from the forward-looking infrared display at center. A new wrinkle has been added: the Pilot Activated Automatic Recovery System." p. 28: small but good shot of an F-117 against a background of clouds, taken by a chase plane or something. "Some credit the F-117's success to its avoidance of traditional procurement processes. A small team, working free from public scrutiny, brought stealth from the laboratory to operational use, which many said couldn't be done." ------------------------------ From: shafer@rigel.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 07:44:22 PST Subject: The $6 Million Man Well, he damaged the cornea of his eye so badly that he has to wear an eyepatch and his elbow is sufficiently bad that he holds that arm oddly and doesn't do any heavy lifting with it. He's not in chronic pain or anything. We were talking last month and he said that he thought he'd come out of it pretty well. Mary ------------------------------ From: shafer@rigel.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 07:50:14 PST Subject: The $6 Million Man On Wed, 18 Nov 92 07:28:19 EST, Brent L. Bates ViGYAN AAD/TAB said: B> I don't remember the name of the vehicle, but one interesting note. I B> believe the real pilot survived the crash with out even a scratch. After B> seeing those shots you would think he would be dead. Not without a scratch, no. He was injured, as I mentioned before. The ejection-seat headrest gave him a lot of protection as the M2-F2 slid along the ground upsidedown. Both his elbow and his face and eye were injured in the sliding, one by flopping loose and the other by the sideways component of the slide. He was concussed, etc. When I was looking for some information for my paper we tracked it down in his logbook but he was totally unable to remember either flight, as his head injuries had taken most of his memories of 1967. Bruce, the Six-Dollar Man (as we always called him), joked that this wasn't so bad; it wasn't that good a year anyway. Other than this memory loss he had no other cognitive injuries. The moral is always wear all your seatbelts. - -- Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR NASA Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA shafer@rigel.dfrf.nasa.gov Of course I don't speak for NASA "A MiG at your six is better than no MiG at all." Unknown US fighter pilot ------------------------------ From: shafer@rigel.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 07:44:22 PST Subject: The $6 Million Man Well, he damaged the cornea of his eye so badly that he has to wear an eyepatch and his elbow is sufficiently bad that he holds that arm oddly and doesn't do any heavy lifting with it. He's not in chronic pain or anything. We were talking last month and he said that he thought he'd come out of it pretty well. Mary ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 10:32:51 -0800 Subject: Re: F-117 Article (1-3) T Velazquez writes: > > The following is an article that appears in the November 1992 issue of >Air Force Magazine. Thanks for sharing this! In my opinion, this is what this mail list is all about! What is neat about this, is that this piece has the same flavor as The OXCART History has, at least for me. Several key points I'd like to point out. > Despite the F-117's public image as the most modern of >warplanes, the radar-evading aircraft had its technical origins late >in the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Hula-Hoops >were in vogue when Lockheed's Kelly Johnson and Ben Rich turned their >attention to improving on the U-2 spyplane then flying reconnaissance >patrols over the Soviet Union. This seems to echo what the OXCART History said as well - that stealth began back in the 50's. See page 2 of The OXCART History. > From this point forward, stealth development went deep into >"the black," or the classified world. The vehicle was the Have Blue >program, which produced stealth technology demonstrators. The plurality of 'demonstrators' is the key word. Not the first time I've heard this. Larry ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 10:41:34 -0800 Subject: Re: "This Is Stealth" publication info. I wrote: > >I bought an interesting picture book on Stealth this past weekend. > >The title is: "This Is Stealth" by Eric Simonsen. The book has the obligatory >nice shots of F-117A's and B-2's (some taken by Bill Hartenstein, the guy > ... >This book goes further. It shows drawings of the 2-seat F-117B and the >proposed Royal Air Force version (another two-seat version). Also Eric had >an artist do drawings of several advanced, still-black concepts. Two of these >were Aurora concepts. >... >There are 3 of the NEW, recently released, M-12/D-21 shots as well. Several people have asked for the publication details of this book. They are as follows: "This Is Stealth" Erik Simonsen ISBN 1-85367-129-0 Greenhill Books Presidio Press Novato, CA Larry ------------------------------ From: upp@comm.mot.com (Steve Upp) Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 12:48:58 CST Subject: Re: F-117 Artcle (3/3) > "Such a radical technology had its doubters. The model above >was bombarded with radar beams without result. Once, a skeptical ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >visiting officer claimed to 'see something' on the display; a crow had >landed on the model." What the heck does 'without result' mean here? Do you really believe that the airframe was able to absorb or deflect 100% of the radar beam? Give me a break... This kind of claim is an absolute joke, unfortunately the public by and large believes it and since the project is 'BLACK' no one can independently verify it without the risk of going to jail. I would assume many people who read this list heard the reports of F-117's being observable over Iraq during the war. I had the opportunity to talk with an individual who flew many missions during the war aboard an E-2 (a Navy carrier based radar aircraft) . He confirmed the press reports that said that they were able to track the airplane without difficulty during its entire mission. I'm trying to remember now, but I believe that during the first night of the air battle the F-117's were accompanied by radar jamming aircraft (Wild Weasles). That says quite a bit about the confidence the Air Force had in their ability to avoid enemy radar! After all the jammers could have been used to escort more of the known 'non-stealthy' missions that instead were left more vulnerable because they had to escort the 'stealthy' aircraft. > "Some credit the F-117's success to its avoidance of >traditional procurement processes. A small team, working free from >public scrutiny, brought stealth from the laboratory to operational >use, which many said couldn't be done." There is a definite downside to this. The lack of public scrutiny could also mean that there is less risk that their funding will get cut because the system doesn't work as well as the price tag suggests. - --- Steve Upp email: upp@comm.mot.com Motorola Land Mobile Products Sector voice: (708) 576-4953 1301 E. Algonquin Road, IL02 Room 4413 fax: (708) 576-6150 Schaumburg, IL 60196 ------------------------------ From: "Philip R. Moyer" Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 13:51:40 -0500 Subject: Re: F-117 Artcle (3/3) >I'm trying to remember now, but I believe that during the first night of the >air battle the F-117's were accompanied by radar jamming aircraft (Wild >Weasles). That says quite a bit about the confidence the Air Force had Uh, this isn't my area of specialty, but aren't Wild Weasles anti-radiation aircraft? I mean, they're not meant to jam, like EF-111s, but instead they hope an enemy radar will paint the aircraft so they can send an anti-radiation missile back up the beam. At least, that's my understanding. I could be completely wrong. (Phil feels himself treading on thin ice here) If anybody knows what sort of equipment the Wild Weasles carry, I'd sure appreciate hearing about it.... Cheers, Phil ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V2 #8 ******************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "listserv@harbor.ecn.purdue.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to subscribe to that instead, replace all instances of "skunk-works-digest" in the commands above with "skunk-works". 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