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The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk is a retired American single-seat, subsonic twin-engine stealth attack aircraft developed by Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works division and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF). It was the first operational aircraft to be designed with stealth technology.
Skunk Works logo. Skunk Works is an official pseudonym for Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs (ADP), formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. It is responsible for a number of aircraft designs, highly classified research and development programs, and exotic aircraft platforms.
[45] [46] However the F-117 still had flaws; it had to refuel and was defenesless in an enemy attack. All F-117 sorties had to be refueled. [44] In the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia two stealth aircraft were used by the United States: the veteran F-117 Nighthawk, and the newly introduced B-2 Spirit strategic stealth bomber.
Working with radar expert Denys Overholser, mathematician Bill Schroeder and senior lead airplane designer Ken Watson, they produced a design that won the competition. [8] The result was the Have Blue technology demonstrator that led to the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk. During the summer of 1976, Dick suffered a stroke and left the program.
The Lockheed Have Blue was born out of a requirement to evade radar detection. During the Vietnam War, radar-guided SAMs and AAA posed a significant threat to US aircraft.. For this reason, strike aircraft during the war often required support aircraft to perform combat air patrols and suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD).
This was applied by Lockheed in computer simulation to design a novel shape they called the "Hopeless Diamond", a wordplay on the Hope Diamond, securing contractual rights to produce the F-117 Nighthawk starting in 1975. In 1977, Lockheed produced two 60% scale models under the Have Blue contract.
A stealth engineer at Lockheed, Denys Overholser, read Ufimtsev’s publication and realized that he had developed the mathematical theory and tools necessary for finite element analysis of radar reflection. [3] This discovery played a key role in the design of the first true stealth aircraft, the Lockheed F-117.
Benjamin Robert Rich (June 18, 1925 – January 5, 1995) was an American engineer and the second director of Lockheed's Skunk Works from 1975 to 1991, succeeding its founder, Kelly Johnson. Regarded as the "father of stealth", [1] Rich was responsible for leading the development of the F-117, the first production stealth aircraft.