国家地理:Wings Over The Gulf 波湾战机 - 7

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The F-117 is a product of Lockheed's Advanced Development Projects group, which for decades has designed the most top-secret planes in the air force inventory¹, including the SR-71 Blackbird. In many ways, the Blackbird was the first stealth aircraft, its sleek² shape making it harder to spot on radar³.

Stealth technology was developed in response to the heavy losses the United States suffered in Vietnam from surface-to-air missiles and radar-guided guns. The development of radar-seeking missiles was one response to the threat. The other was a top secret effort to create an aircraft that would be nearly impossible to detect by radar. If it could be built, such a plane would bring the element of surprise back to air warfare⁴.

The first known result of the program was Have Blue, the predecessor⁵ of today's stealth fighter. Have Blue remains⁶ classified to this day. But it proved so stealthy that in 1978 Congress authorized⁷ production of an F-117 prototype, code-named Senior Trend. By 1981, funds were allocated⁸ for an entire wing of F-117s, 59 planes in all.

A new facility was built specifically to keep the highly classified project under wraps. The stealth base at Tonopah Test Range sits deep in the Nevada desert. Tonopah's so remote that pilots and crew are flown in for week-long stays. The secrecy⁹ was considered necessary because of the tension between the United States and the Soviet¹⁰ Union during the 1980s. The F-117 was a major leap forward in the evolution of fighter aircraft. And the air force knew it. Even the shape of the plane was kept secret for years.

The secrecy was eased somehow after December, 1989 when the Nighthawk struck the first blow in Panama. Still the only concrete details that emerged were about its cost, 52 million dollars per plane, 8.2 billion for the total program. Crashes during training caused skeptics to brand the plane "the wobbly goblin".

All the pilots who fly it really think that's a bogus wrap. There was, there was one that was crashed in testing, in the books called the Have Blue program when this was started. And we've lost two and that were operational at night. It was probably, no one really knows why they crashed. It was probably due to spatial¹¹ disorientation back to us. (It's) a single-seat night airplane. It's easy to f(ly), you can lose your orientation¹² which way is up which way is down. Or be working on a task and an airplane will do something and you may not notice it, and it could have gone out of control. It's all subjective¹³, you know, it's all speculation¹⁴. No one knows. But the airplane is rock-steady. I don't know of any airplane is as stable as this thing is. It's easy to fly. It's stable. That name is totally bogus.

The F-117 is a comparable airplane in size of the F-15 as their manufactures share a lot of the same components¹⁵, landing gear on the F-15, and this airplane has the same, same tires, a lot of the same substances. Avionic system, hydraulics and pneudraulics, pneumatic types of controlling things to it. The cockpit is also about the same as that in the F-15.