- 7 weeks ago
For educational purposes
"Nighthawk Secrets of the Stealth" is a Discovery Channel documentary that explores the development and deployment of the F-117A Nighthawk, the world's first operational stealth fighter jet.
"Nighthawk Secrets of the Stealth" is a Discovery Channel documentary that explores the development and deployment of the F-117A Nighthawk, the world's first operational stealth fighter jet.
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LearningTranscript
00:00The F-117 goes in virtually undetected, and the first thing anybody knows is something blows up.
00:18We proved that stealth had the capability to reintroduce surprise in the area of warfare.
00:24We tend to be a very, very confident group.
00:27We know our risks. You just know what you have to do, and you're able to concentrate and do whatever it takes.
00:33We don't fly this airplane during the daytime. It's going to be flown at night.
00:36And you've got to get comfortable with the night, or else you're going to become a statistic.
00:57Matt McKeon is a captain in the United States Air Force.
01:07He flies the F-117 Nighthawk, better known as the Stealth Fighter.
01:17Only 59 Nighthawks were made. They cost $42.6 million a piece, and they have changed the rules of air warfare.
01:27In the United States Air Force.
01:42Since World War II, nations have relied on radar to ward off attacks from the sky.
02:01But now, the United States has a weapon that flies through radar without detection, then wreaks destruction.
02:09It is quiet, precise, and deadly, and so far, no one has a way to stop it.
02:19Stealth began with the SR-71 Blackbird, a spy plane built in the 60s by the Lockheed Corporation.
02:43Its only apparent defense was to fly higher and faster than the enemy.
02:56But the plane had a secret advantage. Its streamlined shape was stealthy.
03:02Although the Blackbird is a large plane, it looks small, viewed head-on, the way radar sees it.
03:10The Blackbird was designed by the Skunk Works, a division of Lockheed specializing in secret projects.
03:17Engineers at the Skunk Works were excited by the Blackbird's low radar profile.
03:22But in the days of the slide rule, the thought of making a plane stealthy from top to bottom was laughable.
03:29The equations were just too big to calculate.
03:34By the 70s, however, computers had grown in speed and power.
03:39Now it was possible to solve the puzzle of stealth.
03:45In 1975, Lockheed built a computer program called Echo-1.
03:50Echo-1 predicts how objects reflect radar energy.
03:54It's the blueprint for stealth aircraft.
03:58This is how it works.
04:00Radar sends electromagnetic waves into the air.
04:03When these waves hit an object, such as an F-15, they bounce off in many directions.
04:09A strong return of energy warns a radar operator that something is coming.
04:15Like all conventional aircraft, the bulky F-15 gives a strong radar return.
04:21Electromagnetic waves explode off its bumps and curves.
04:25But Echo-1 revealed that a diamond-shaped aircraft would channel and deflect energy off to the sides.
04:32The plane would not be invisible to radar, but it would be very hard to see.
04:37Now Lockheed had to prove their theory in the real world on a radar testing range.
04:50We made a small model with flat sides, and we called it the Hopeless Diamond.
04:55And we put it on the range, and the manager came to me, and he says,
05:00Mr. Rich, you know, you dropped the model.
05:05I said, I'll go on.
05:08And I said, well, let's go look.
05:10You know, the models were about half a mile down range.
05:12And so we looked.
05:14You know, the model was there.
05:15And all of a sudden, he says, wait a minute, I'm seeing it.
05:17Because he had turned the gain down to his maximum gain.
05:20And all of a sudden, a bird landed on the model.
05:23And he saw the bird and didn't see the model.
05:27At the time, Echo-1 could only calculate radar's effect on flat shapes.
05:33So Lockheed had to design a plane with no curved surfaces.
05:38By 1977, they had built the first pure stealth aircraft.
05:43The small, very stealthy, half blue.
05:47The Pentagon was stunned.
05:49The interesting thing about the half blue, when it demonstrated this very low radar cross-section,
05:56was it suddenly became an answer in search of a question.
06:00You know, we got this tremendously good capability,
06:03and the question then was, well, what's the best possible way to use it?
06:08Pretty much the first priority was, could it be of a strategic capability?
06:13And so the question was, could this concept grow large enough to fill that particular mission area?
06:20And after doing model testing, both aerodynamic and RCS, it became evident to us that no, it could not be done.
06:31The risks became unacceptable once you grew beyond a certain size,
06:36and the size kind of was about what you see today on a ramp in the F-17, once you went beyond that.
06:41And there were certain areas in the airframe which are probably classified, but you just started to run into problems.
06:47Interestingly enough, the basic concept worked.
06:50It maintained signature, but it was an aerodynamic issue.
06:54We suggested to the Air Force when we went to the F-117 that we should round off some of the edges
07:01to make it a better aerodynamic airplane, and they really didn't want to do that
07:05because it was felt that there was some black magic about how we got this low radar cross-section,
07:11and we just didn't want to mess with it.
07:13In this hangar in Burbank, California, Lockheed built the first F-117.
07:19Workers were sworn to absolute secrecy.
07:22Stealth technology had entered the black world.
07:25The Pentagon declared it top secret.
07:31In the late 70s, Cold War tensions were running high.
07:35So before a single plane was finished, the Air Force had formed a squadron to fly it.
07:41My first experience with what the aircraft looked like was actually at the Skunk Works.
07:47And the initial look at the aircraft was actually a wooden mock-up of the fuselage of the airplane.
07:54And if you look at the fuselage of the 117, you'll say it's not very aerodynamic looking
07:59with a high peak canopy and all that.
08:01And we looked at it and we said, we're not going to fly that thing.
08:04That thing, it's impossible for that to fly.
08:06You know, so it was quite a shock to first see it.
08:10But then over time, as the aircraft went together and we began to see it on the production floor
08:15to begin to take shape, it took on a beauty of its own.
08:18You know, and then we realized that we had something special that we were dealing with.
08:23By June 18, 1981, the first 117 was ready to fly.
08:29This was not a prototype.
08:31Lockheed didn't build one.
08:33Hal Farley was at the controls of a full-size test plane.
08:37The first day went well, but one major bug was uncovered.
08:53I was fortunate enough to be the first chase on that airplane.
08:56And he took off.
08:58At the time he broke ground, I joined up on his wing.
09:01And we were watching an airplane that kind of oscillated.
09:04It was enough that we kept the flight pretty short, put it on the ground.
09:08And the engineers went to work and said, yeah, we have a fin problem.
09:13You know, there's just not enough tail on this airplane to keep it stable.
09:17The 117's tail fins were quickly enlarged, which got rid of the wobbling.
09:23Later, the Air Force made another change.
09:26They wanted the Nighthawk painted black.
09:28We had a requirement that the airplane should have low visibility
09:33as well as low radar cross-section, and we designed it in shades of gray.
09:38The Air Force felt that as the airplane flew at night, it should be black,
09:42and that, in fact, is not the best color for flying at night, it turns out.
09:46But real men don't fly funny pastel airplanes.
09:51Everything on the airplane had to be in concert with its mission,
10:08which was stealth and precision.
10:10A very, very difficult design challenge of its day was the design
10:14and development of the pedal probes.
10:17We have four independent airspeed systems, which not only measure the airspeed of the aircraft,
10:23but they also measure, through differential pressure, the pitch angle and the yaw angle of the aircraft.
10:30And that's critical to the flight control system.
10:33And, in fact, had we not been able to incorporate a fully automatic fly-by-wire flight control system,
10:42this aircraft wouldn't know to keep the pointy end into the wind.
10:46The 117 is neither fast nor agile, but it doesn't have to be.
10:55If it stays stealthy, it stays safe.
10:58Even its twin engines are stealthy.
11:01Special grills cover their inlets.
11:03Air can come in, but radar can't.
11:06Engine exhaust is channeled through a thin ledge of bricks in back of the plane.
11:11The exhaust is cooled, then ducted up past the tail fins to confuse heat-seeking missiles.
11:17The 117 is coated with radar-absorbent material.
11:22But under its skin, you'll find aluminum, steel and titanium.
11:27The stealth is not made out of any exotic materials.
11:32In fact, many of its parts were cannibalized from other planes.
11:36The idea was to use proven systems, so the 117 could be operational as soon as possible.
11:43But the planes took time to build.
11:46In the 80s, Lockheed delivered an average of just six Nighthawks a year.
11:52The planes were delivered here, to the Tonopah test range, a secluded base in the high Nevada desert.
12:01In 1982, Tonopah changed from a dusty airstrip to a high security fortress.
12:08The crews sent here were selected for their skill and maturity.
12:13They had to be experienced.
12:15They were breaking in a strange new aircraft with a high price tag.
12:20It was a stressful assignment.
12:23Crews were separated from their families and worked 12-hour days.
12:27They could never discuss their mission.
12:30The 117 was America's secret weapon, and it was critical to keep it a secret as long as possible.
12:37Stealth pilots had to keep an even keel and a low profile.
12:53Back when we were a secret program, we would go to work on Mondays and come home on Fridays.
13:00And the families were never allowed to know where we were going, what we were doing.
13:06All they knew was we flew A7s.
13:07I think they thought we were going to Hawaii for the week, which would have been nice, but we were going to the middle of a desert.
13:13Until 1989, pilots were forbidden to tell anyone without clearance what they did for a living, and few had clearance.
13:26Living in the black world was a very difficult thing for all of us, because you don't like to tell your friends lies.
13:33You can't tell them yes, and you can't tell them no, you know.
13:36And so sometimes you just have to swallow hard and use the cover story that we used all those years, you know, that we're doing avionics testing or electronic testing with the A7 and that sort of thing.
13:49You just, you have to do that. I mean, it's one of those things that to protect the value of the program, it's something that you must do.
13:59And we overcame that over time. We got used to having to have to do that, particularly with your family.
14:05I mean, you go home and your wife says, what kind of day did you have today?
14:09And you say, sorry, dear, I can't talk about that, you know.
14:13When I first heard about the aircraft, I was actually stationed in Washington in the Pentagon at the time.
14:18And I was about to change jobs to go up and work a job at which this airplane was embedded in.
14:24And so when I got to the office and was settling in, I was getting some initial briefings,
14:29and some of my colleagues put a picture of this aircraft up and said, have you ever seen this before?
14:34And my response was no. Have you ever heard anything about a program called F-117s?
14:41And I said, no. And so they said, well, it is true, it is an aircraft, and it had already been in business for some time.
14:48I said, you've got to be kidding me, you know.
14:50I didn't think we could keep anything in this country such as a program of this size, a secret for that long.
14:57After the Gulf War, the veil of secrecy that clung around the Nighthawk was finally lifted.
15:02Stealth operations were moved from Tonopah to Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.
15:11Stealth has entered the light, but its mystique remains intact.
15:16Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.
15:21Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico.
15:45As of July 1992, the home of the F-117 Nighthawk.
15:52Unlike Tonopaw Test Range, Holloman is a fairly typical base.
15:57Security is tight here, but now it's possible for a camera crew to follow the men and women
16:02who lurk in the shadows of the stealth.
16:05These jets do have their own characteristics and have their own personalities.
16:09Each one flies differently, each one's built differently.
16:12There isn't one jet that's alike out here.
16:14They all basically look alike from a distance, but when you get up close to them, look at
16:17the structural and everything else, it's different.
16:20And the pilots, they have a fit sometimes.
16:23They say, well, one jet does this, why does this jet do this?
16:26They say, well, sir, this is not that jet.
16:28It's different.
16:33Don't skip the hangar!
16:37These airmen are searching for rocks, coins, wires, anything that could be sucked into
16:42a delicate jet engine.
16:45The base is filled with a kind of relaxed urgency.
16:57Now that 117s aren't top secret, they fly around the clock.
17:042 miles south, Cajun 2 is coming back to you.
17:07You have the possible gear problem.
17:09Roger.
17:10Who is that?
17:11Cajun 2.
17:12Cajun 2 is coming back to you.
17:17Elias Torres is training as an air traffic controller.
17:20A plane with a gear problem is coming in.
17:23The pressure is on.
17:25Brief 1, I need to re-enter and join up with Cajun 2 is on an 8-mile base to runway 16 for
17:31possible emergency.
17:32What we're going to plan to do is we're going to put him straight ahead on the runway.
17:36Let's just go with temporary 2-5 off.
17:38Okay.
17:39Let's keep everybody going.
17:41We'll pin him and get him off.
17:43To controllers, an F-117 is like any other plane.
17:47It goes up.
17:48It comes down.
17:49Get taxis away.
17:51The controller's job is to make sure these things happen smoothly.
17:55You got your form pack in your form 70, sir?
18:13No.
18:14I need a film pack and I need an EDTM, please.
18:17Yes.
18:21This is the 415th Squadron flight operations desk.
18:25Stealth pilot Andy Papp is signing for the airplane he'll fly this evening.
18:29Okay.
18:30Okay.
18:31If the weather's bad, I'll call back to you guys.
18:33I don't think it's going to be bad.
18:37All of us are fighter pilots.
18:38All of us are fighter pilots.
18:40So most of us are pretty good at PNG's.
18:42And one way to help you do that is to build up your leg muscles so you can prevent yourself
18:46from G-locking.
18:47From G-locking.
18:48And what that does, you know, pull, blood pools down in your lower extremity.
18:51And instead of being up in your brain where it needs to be.
18:55It's down around your backside and your legs.
18:58So by pumping up your legs, you can squeeze them and keep the blood up there.
19:00A little bit.
19:01That can give you an advantage on the enemy.
19:02So it's going to give you an advantage on the enemy.
19:03All of us are fighter pilots.
19:04All of us are fighter pilots.
19:05So most of us are pretty good at PNG's.
19:06And one way to help you do that is to build up your leg muscles so you can prevent yourself
19:11from G-locking.
19:13And what that does, you know, pull, blood pools down in your lower extremities.
19:17And instead of being up in your brain where it needs to be, it's down around your backside
19:22and your legs.
19:23So by pumping up your legs, you can squeeze them and keep the blood up there a little bit.
19:27That can give you an advantage on the enemy.
19:29So, you know, when he's graying out at about seven or eight or nine G's, you're just getting
19:34warmed up and ready to kill him.
19:36And that's what it's all about.
19:38So it's kind of hard to get time in here with these guys.
19:42But we do.
19:43You got to get a ride.
19:44Thanks, guys.
19:45You're welcome.
19:47This is a squat.
19:52And this helps build up the entire leg, the leg group, those muscles down there.
20:12Most of us old guys have a hard time with knees.
20:16But we do all right.
20:17What did you find?
20:18F-11s.
20:19It was a pretty good time.
20:20It's an older airplane, but it's the one you had to fly.
20:22Stick and rudder kind of airplane.
20:23But this one's more, you're more of an artist, you know?
20:24You really are.
20:25It's pretty cool.
20:26You go in there, you pick out your target.
20:27Then you just watch the bomb ride and hopefully you hit where you're supposed to hit.
20:33If there's any jet you want to fly.
20:34If there's any jet you want to fly into a combat situation, this would be it.
20:36There's no doubt in my mind.
20:38The seat's uncomfortable, but it's often safe.
20:39It really is.
20:40You sure you want to get a set in here?
20:41Okay, here's the route taking a look at Form 70 and photo packs.
20:42Before every flight, pilots attend a mass briefing that tells them what the night is.
20:43It's pretty cool.
20:44It's pretty cool.
20:45You go in there, you pick out your target.
20:46Then you just watch the bomb ride and hopefully you hit where you're supposed to hit.
20:49If there's any jet you want to fly into a combat situation, this would be it.
20:54There's no doubt in my mind.
20:57The seat's uncomfortable, but it's often safe.
21:00It really is.
21:01You sure you want to get a set in here?
21:03Okay, here's the route taking a look at Form 70 and photo packs.
21:08Before every flight, pilots attend a mass briefing that tells them what the night holds
21:13in store.
21:14Their missions require a great deal of planning, much more than other military aircraft.
21:20Two comments, actually.
21:21When you're heading up there, obviously, if flight leads, keep an eye out on the weather.
21:25If it necessitates, we'll skip on from .8 over to the Taos target at .12.
21:32This, of course, is an exercise.
21:35Following Santa Fe, you get into Albuquerque, staying at .180, and you're taking the pretty
21:42large building on a row of buildings, and a good ID point there is the building that's
21:47on an angle there at the end of the block.
21:49Okay, so keep an eye out for that.
21:51Then on into Red Rio, you have two offsets.
21:54You're running down the runway, basically.
21:57What I want you to do is target the third aircraft in the Rivets.
22:01Okay, the picture shows a lot more airplanes than are out there.
22:04There's about eight airplanes out there.
22:06So take the third as your dimpy.
22:09Questions on the photos?
22:11Okay, slide.
22:13Pretty good thunderstorm up there.
22:14Whoa.
22:15Major Andy Papp and his squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Creedler, are leaving for a night
22:28mission.
22:29Thank you, sir.
22:30Papp carries a data transfer module in his flight pack.
22:35It will be loaded into the 117's onboard computers.
22:39The module contains maps, flight plans, and other information that allows the plane to virtually
22:45fly itself into the battle area.
22:47We're really looking for the cream of the crop, and that's exactly what we did.
22:57We went to the personnel system, and we said, please give us the best that you have.
23:02And they said, you're going to destroy our personnel system.
23:05I mean, we've got to allocate these guys around, you know, and we've got to watch their careers
23:09and all that.
23:10But we said this is very important.
23:12We couldn't tell them why we wanted them.
23:14And then word came down from on high that they needed to give us what we asked for.
23:19And they did.
23:20Hello, sir.
23:21How are you doing?
23:22Good.
23:23How are you doing?
23:24I'm hanging.
23:25It flew code one, first code.
23:26Did it?
23:27Oh, yeah.
23:28You got a trash screen last night?
23:29No, sir.
23:30That screen's trash like from last week, but it's not as trash as the rest of them were.
23:34What?
23:35Just a couple of?
23:36A couple of strands over there.
23:37Hopefully we can keep it that way.
23:38Yeah, really?
23:39Because this is my jet.
23:40Uh-huh.
23:41I'm your crew team.
23:42I'm your crew team.
23:43I'm your crew team.
23:44I'm your crew team.
23:45I'm your crew team.
23:46I'm your crew team.
23:48I'm your crew team.
23:49All right.
23:50Yes, I am.
23:51Yes, sir, sir.
23:52They call me Chef, and I'm calling Chef Pierce.
23:55Okay.
23:56They call me Sir Pierce.
23:57Okay.
23:58We're in here.
23:59We tend to be a very, very confident group.
24:00We know our risks.
24:02We tend to know our capabilities pretty well, and you just know what you have to do, and
24:08you're able to concentrate and block everything out except what you have to do, concentrate on
24:13your mission, and do whatever it takes.
24:16I don't know if you call it a coolness.
24:18I don't know if you call it a discipline.
24:19I really don't know what the word is, but it's almost an aloofness where you just remove
24:25yourself from your environment just to strictly concentrate on what you're doing.
24:29I don't think it's peculiar to the stealth.
24:31I think it's pretty widespread to almost any area.
24:35A race car driver, I think, can do the same thing.
24:38He's very aware of his environment.
24:39He's got very good situational awareness, and the same thing's true in a fighter.
24:43I think it's true of all fighters.
24:46If you're going to be a good fighter pilot, you can be a good stealth pilot, or a good
24:50F-15 pilot, or a good A-10 pilot, or a good F-16 pilot.
24:54You tie all the same factors together.
24:55We just happen to do it at night in a black jet.
24:59I'll go ahead and hit both the power and the air.
25:02You go ahead and raise up the tracks, okay?
25:20When the guys come into the program, initially, of course, we give them heavy academics, heavy
25:26simulator training, and then I basically talked to them, and I stressed one point, saying,
25:31this is not any different an airplane than any fighter airplane that you've ever flown.
25:37The only thing that you've got to remember is we don't fly this airplane during the daytime.
25:42It's going to be flown at night, and you've got to get comfortable with the night.
25:46You've got to trust your instruments, and, of course, up there, on the range,
25:51there's not many city lights around.
25:53So when you take off, it's taken off like into the black hole,
25:57and you've got to trust your instrument, and trust the airplane.
26:00And, by God, you have to do that, or else you're going to become a statistic.
26:06The Nighthawk that flies today is not the aircraft that flew in the Gulf War.
26:20The new version is called the OSIP for Offensive Combat Improvement Program.
26:25Existing 117s were refitted with new cockpits incorporating full-color displays and an automatic flight recovery system.
26:35A touch of a button will bring a tumbling aircraft back to straight and level flight.
26:40This was a response to two fatal crashes in the mid-80s.
26:44Both accidents happened when pilots lost their bearings at night.
26:48Spatial disorientation is always going to be a problem in any airplane, particularly those you fly at night.
26:55Spatial disorientation isn't based on aircraft, it's based on the human.
26:59And the fact that your sensory perceptions are not what's really going on.
27:03You know, with your inner ear, you can get different effects where you think you're leaning right,
27:09when in fact you're leaning left, or you think you're going up, when in fact you're going down.
27:12And that's true of an airplane at night, it's just much more likely because of the absence of visual cues.
27:18Do we get spatially disoriented? Yes, probably just as much as anybody else.
27:22We just do it so much, we're probably better flying at night because we've had so much practice.
27:28We've got to get spatially disoriented.
27:38We need to leave the air.
27:40Here we go.
27:42Alline Gertens, in a minute by horse.
27:47I'm coming back.
27:48I'm coming back.
27:49I'm coming back.
27:51I'm coming back.
27:53Have you seenizable.
27:54I'm coming back.
27:55I'm coming back.
27:56I'm coming back.
27:57Bruce Cridler commands the 415th Fighter Squadron, a job he took after the Gulf War.
28:23During the war, Cridler flew his share of exhausting combat missions.
28:27Now his job is to pass on the wisdom he gained from the experience to the men and women in his command.
28:34Timing. Timing is everything.
28:36Today, in the wake of the Gulf War, the F-117 is considered one of the most formidable weapons in the U.S. arsenal.
28:53But for nearly ten years, the stealth fighter was an unknown quantity.
28:59Few knew the aircraft existed, and those who did wondered if it would work as advertised.
29:04The shroud of secrecy cast over the 117 was so great that even Air Force planners seemed unsure of the plane's capabilities.
29:11On December 19th, 1989, 117s were used for the first time in combat as part of a U.S. strike on Panama,
29:17what the Bush administration called Operation Just Cause, what the Bush administration called Operation Just Cause.
29:24Six aircraft were sent in to hit two separate targets, but one mission was canceled, and eventually just two planes were sent in to strike a target.
29:31That was changed at the last moment.
29:36Details of the mission are still secret.
29:38But the result was the fact that the UAE was killed by the U.S. Army.
29:40On November 19th, 1989, 117s were used for the first time in combat as part of a U.S. strike on Panama,
29:45what the Bush administration called Operation Just Cause.
29:50and eventually just two planes were sent in to strike a target that was changed at the last moment.
29:57Details of the mission are still secret, but the result was that the 117s dropped laser-guided bombs into a field
30:05next to a Panamanian army barracks. Major Greg Feast was the mission flight lead.
30:11I think that the press and everyone couldn't believe that 117s were sent,
30:16since they can drop precise munitions, why they were dropped on fields.
30:20They figured we were supposed to hit the buildings.
30:23When told that we weren't supposed to hit the buildings, we were supposed to drop 50 meters short of the barracks.
30:31It is very difficult to train to drop in the middle of a field.
30:36To put a triangle over a field on a pitcher and say, hit that bush, is very difficult.
30:42Bad communications between the Air Force and the Army resulted in accusations of incompetence.
30:48Some used Panama as evidence that the F-117 program was a $6 billion failure.
30:54What we learned from Just Cause was that we needed to be careful in the way that we explained to higher headquarters
31:05what our capability was, to make sure that they had reasonable expectations about what we could do,
31:13and what we were really good at.
31:15What we really did well, and what we eventually got a chance to demonstrate in Desert Storm,
31:21was to find very small pinpoint targets in urban areas and take them out with great precision.
31:29In August 1990, Operation Desert Storm began.
31:38Twenty-four stealth fighters were sent to King Khalid Air Base in southwestern Saudi Arabia.
31:45I think a lot of senior officers saw the utility of the F-117,
31:53but when it came to actually using it in combat, I had some doubts.
31:58Now, I believed all the test data.
32:00The test data said that it would be able to go in there and get the job done and not get shot down.
32:04But on the other hand, when you're actually ordering 50 sorties a night or so
32:09into the most heavily defended target in the world, you can't help but wonder if you can make it.
32:14Panama had raised doubts, but the F-117 pilots were determined that this war would be fought their way,
32:22with planning and precision.
32:28I picked my pilots for just cause, and Major Greg Feast was my number one choice,
32:34because he was my best shooter.
32:37In the aftermath, he had to sit there and read all that press about how he couldn't hit anything with a $46.2 million airplane.
32:48You know, he aired here, he made this mistake, he made that mistake.
32:51And throughout all that period where you know he was taking all that press and rolling around in his mind,
32:58he was still my number one shooter.
33:00And on the 15th of January, when I made my final cut on who was going to be the first 117 guy to drop a bomb,
33:09there was no doubt in my military mind that it was going to be Major Greg Feast.
33:13Because he was, and he still is the best.
33:20The code words for the start of the air campaign, I think, was execute wolf pack.
33:25H-hour was 0100Z, which is 3 o'clock in the morning Baghdad time.
33:31And we had a saying at that time that the quickest way home was through Baghdad.
33:36And we knew that once we started it, that it would be over fairly shortly, we hoped.
33:47At 11pm on January 16th, the first wave of stealth fighters left for Iraq.
33:55The Allied command staff had pinned their hopes on the 117.
33:59They sent the plane to destroy Iraq's heavily fortified air defense system.
34:04If stealth worked, it would open up the sky for thousands of Allied planes.
34:09If it failed, this would be a long, brutal war.
34:13At 2.51am, Greg Feast dropped the first bomb of Operation Desert Storm.
34:28Appropriately, his target was a radar operations center.
34:32I had two targets.
34:38I dropped in the first one without being shot at, and I had a wingman a minute behind me.
34:43And I thought I'd look back and watch his bomb hit.
34:46And when I looked back, I saw tracers.
34:48I wasn't sure what they were. I had never seen them before.
34:51And at first, I thought it was some kind of, I had hit something that was shooting off fireworks or something.
34:59And then I figured out they were shooting at me.
35:01So I looked out in front of me and thought, boy, I'm glad I don't have to fly into that.
35:04However, then I looked out about 100 miles in front of me at my second target.
35:08And that, again, looked like the fireworks at Disneyland.
35:30I don't know if you're familiar with the big sky theory, which says, you know, the sky is huge,
35:34and therefore there must be enough room for me and whatever other airplane or whatever the threat is,
35:40so the big sky theory will protect me.
35:43As I look back on what Baghdad looked like, especially early on,
35:48we had this feeling that maybe the big sky theory was wrong
35:52because Baghdad was a city of three million people, and they had it lit up from one end to another.
35:57You were always uncomfortable with people shooting at you.
36:06Trust me, you're always uncomfortable with people shooting at you.
36:09You didn't seem invincible anymore.
36:12You became maybe less nervous, less fearful.
36:16But then again, something would happen, and it would scare the pants off you,
36:20and your eyes would get real wide again, and you'd get your caution back.
36:24Nobody, I don't think, ever lost a caution, lost the edge, lost a concern,
36:28because all it takes is one shot, you know, one goal and BB.
36:32And that could come from anywhere.
36:33So I don't think guys got complacent.
36:35Guys got tired, but not complacent.
36:38The toughest were, I think, the first six days because we didn't have enough pilots at the time,
36:53and we were busy.
36:54We were mission planning.
36:55The missions were changed.
36:57We were flying.
36:58We were supervising.
36:59We were in this, what we call the goat rope, going around,
37:03and until the other airplanes and the rest of the pilots,
37:08and we got an additional 12 pilots around the 24th of January.
37:12It got a little bit easier.
37:13We could take a breather, but it wasn't much of a breather
37:16because we actually stepped up how many missions we would fly a night.
37:22And, you know, there were a couple times where we flew 64 missions a night.
37:33In the 43 days of the Gulf War,
37:40stealth pilots flew 1,300 missions,
37:44dropping more than 2,000 tons of bombs.
37:49And despite the intensity of Iraq's defenses,
37:52not a single Nighthawk was shot down.
38:03My contract with my pilots was that we trained them,
38:12and it was kind of my report card.
38:14Either they all came home and I passed,
38:17or I lost one guy and I failed.
38:21All I could think of at the time was that,
38:24well, if I made it through,
38:26how was I going to talk to these guys' wives,
38:29and what was I going to tell their wives when they didn't make it?
38:33I was responsible for their safety.
38:35I felt personally responsible for their safety.
38:37They're all tremendously talented pilots,
38:39tremendously disciplined.
38:41The maintenance guys had gotten the jets ready,
38:44the weapons loaders had gotten all that squared away,
38:46and we needed it all to come together.
38:48And it did.
38:49And the Iraqis just plain missed.
38:59It's been Ouiii.
39:06We reserved Baghdad exclusively for the 117s and the Tomahawk missiles.
39:32We did that for several reasons.
39:33First of all, primarily, is because of the intensity of the defenses around Baghdad.
39:40We could have used other airplanes in there, but we would have incurred losses,
39:44and we'd also had to do a great deal of defense suppression.
39:48And if you saw on television, they had guns and SAM sites throughout the city
39:52on top of hospitals and government buildings and all sorts of defenses that we would have to take down.
39:59So that meant we would have had widespread damage throughout the city.
40:02We'd incurred a lot of civilian casualties and a lot of things that we just morally are not right,
40:09and there was no reason to do them because we had the advantage of the F-117.
40:17Stealth fighters destroyed nuclear weapons plants, command bunkers, Scud missile sites,
40:24chemical warfare plants, ammunition dumps,
40:26and anything else considered too difficult for normal planes to hit.
40:34In this strike, 117s were sent to destroy a squadron of cargo planes reportedly loaded with chemical weapons.
40:43The planes were gassed up and waiting on a Baghdad runway.
40:46They were also sent against bridges.
40:50Eventually, every link to the city of Baghdad was destroyed.
40:54I would say the intelligence has to be really good for us because we only carry two bombs.
41:06And somebody, I think it was General Glosson, said we were kind of like a little ball-peen hammer.
41:11You know, we'd go over and we would hit something right on the head,
41:15whereas like a B-52 was kind of like taking a broom out there and sweeping out everything.
41:21And so, even though you're dropping a 2,000-pound bomb,
41:25if you hit the wrong building in a complex because the intel has told you
41:29that this was the building to hit when it should have hit the other building,
41:33you know, it was a miss.
41:35And that just meant that somebody else had to go back there and do the job.
41:39The stealth fighter's average of direct hits was better than 75%,
41:46considered a breakthrough in precision bombing.
41:50But that leaves a sizable number of bombs that landed in the wrong place.
41:56It's undeniable that the 117 is vastly more accurate
42:00than the so-called precision bombers of the past.
42:03But smart bombs will never be smart enough
42:06to tell the difference between soldiers and civilians.
42:10In one incident, a stealth fighter struck a bunker filled with non-combatants.
42:20We didn't hit any targets that we weren't told to hit
42:24by the General Glosson, General Horner, and the staff up at RIA.
42:29And that target came down as a military communications center bunker.
42:34I'm not sure the exact reason why the civilians were in there.
42:40I heard speculation that they had the people go use this place as a bomb shelter
42:48because it was hardened.
42:50And if that's the case, you know, bad luck every now and then, you know.
42:55I was in Britain during World War II,
43:17and it was very frightening to go from conventional air raids
43:22to having the V-2 rocket come pouring in,
43:25and the first you know about it is that the house across the street gets blown up.
43:29You know, you don't have any sound, the sound, the, being supersonic,
43:32the sound comes after the rocket.
43:35And that was very scary.
43:36That put a very different view on the civilian population.
43:39And this is very similar because the F-117 goes in virtually undetected,
43:43and the first thing anybody knows is something blows up.
43:51The psychological effect of the F-117 is interesting.
43:55It's, first of all, you couldn't have gotten a better,
43:58more sort of hideous airplane out of central casting
44:03that looks like Darth Vader's helmet to strike terror into people's hearts.
44:06And you sort of wonder whether it could be something that was used
44:10as aircraft carriers have been also.
44:13He sort of stationed the aircraft carrier off, you know,
44:15just sort of as a show of U.S. resolve.
44:18Well, in this case, it would be fly the F-117s anywhere,
44:21wherever the F-117 goes.
44:23That's an indication of what the U.S.'s political will is.
44:26And a lot of this probably depends upon the still-maintained invulnerability of the airplane.
44:34So, you know, if their F-117s start being regularly shot down,
44:39they would lose a lot of this aura that they have.
44:44Obviously, for every measure, there's a countermeasure.
44:47The F-117 is preeminent today, but tomorrow there'll be some way to counter it.
44:52And I'm sure people are working hard at that.
44:54However, that negates one of the most important things,
44:58is that the F-117 will always be able to negate the existing air defense systems.
45:05And if you think about the world we face in the future,
45:08we're going to face a lot of existing defense capabilities in future theater conflicts.
45:13So, obviously, the F-117 is solid with regard to what it has to do today.
45:18It's morning at Holloman Air Force Base.
45:35Weapons specialists are mounting laser-guided bombs on the F-117.
45:39This is just a drill, but at a moment's notice,
45:55these practice bombs can become real bombs.
46:03And the F-117 can take them anywhere in the world.
46:09Everything on the airplane had to be in concert with its mission,
46:24which was stealth and precision.
46:26Very, very difficult design challenge of its day
46:29was the design and development of the pedal probes.
46:33We have four independent airspeed systems,
46:36which not only measure the airspeed of the aircraft,
46:39but they also measure, through differential pressure,
46:42the pitch angle and the yaw angle of the aircraft.
46:47And that's critical to the flight control system.
46:50And, in fact, had we not been able to incorporate
46:53a fully automatic fly-by-wire flight control system,
46:59this aircraft wouldn't know to keep the pointy end into the wind.
47:03Also, you'll notice around the airplane where the canopies meet,
47:05and when the weapons bay is opened,
47:08and on the gear doors, you'll see sawtooth edges.
47:11That's also done to break up a radar signature.
47:13Anytime you have two edges that meet,
47:14you end up with a reflective edge.
47:16The engine inlet system for the aircraft is also very unique, as you can see.
47:23It's composed of a series of grids that are fairly deep,
47:28and what they do is allow air to pass through to the engines
47:31to provide thrust to the airplane.
47:34But they look, at most frequencies, again,
47:36like a flat plate to a radar when radar energy hits it.
47:40If you look at the tail, you don't see any visible exhaust.
47:42The reason is that ledge or line that runs across here,
47:45there's a set of bricks that goes the full width of the tail.
47:48We take and spread the exhaust out across the width to cool it,
47:52right across these bricks, and then duct it up
47:54so that there's no jet blast immediately behind the airplane is above.
47:58That gets rid of all of our infrared signature below.
48:01If you imagine you're an air-to-air fighter trying to find us from above,
48:04you'll see that the tails slope out.
48:06If you go directly at 6 o'clock, the tail will cover the exhaust
48:08from right behind the airplane.
48:10Another very unique aspect of the airplane are its FLIR and DALUR screens.
48:16These are forward-looking infrared up on top of the aircraft.
48:20This is the downward-looking infrared.
48:21These are two critical elements of what we call the IRAD system,
48:26the infrared acquisition and designation system.
48:29One of the big drawbacks, it does not have an air-to-air weapons system in it,
48:37and the visibility is not real great out of it as far as seeing other airplanes.
48:42It's kind of like sitting in a birdcage.
48:44You're looking out and you have all these large bars going down.
48:48You get to where you get used to them flying the airplane.
48:50You just get used to moving your head around and you don't really notice them.
48:54But when you get in the area where you're looking for other airplanes,
48:57they can be hidden behind one of those posts.
49:00It would not be a good air-to-air machine.
49:03It is very maneuverable, though.
49:04I think where it's really a radically new airplane is it's really the first airplane
49:09where stealth was the primary driver in the design.
49:13That was somewhat of a driver in the SR-71,
49:17but aerodynamics was also very important as well, too.
49:21And that made it one of the first really pure attack airplanes.
49:27A lot of attack airplanes are really hot-rod fighters
49:31that have been turned into sort of a light bomber.
49:35And because of that, you don't need to go to all the effort to evade the enemy's radar.
49:44And it allows the pilot to concentrate much more on his primary mission,
49:49which is attacking the target.
49:51And so he doesn't have to do these evasive maneuvers.
49:53And very importantly, he can fly at a much higher altitude, you know, 10,000 feet or more.
50:00And whereas if you're jinking down at low level between the trees
50:04to avoid being shot down, you see the target, and you've got a few seconds to hit it,
50:08and you're most likely going to miss the target or never even find the target.
50:12Whereas if you're cruising along at 10,000 feet,
50:15you can see the target just miles away in a much more calm state of mind,
50:20find the target, which is not easy to do,
50:22and then keep the crosshairs of your bomb site on the target as the bomb goes down.
50:29So that is a real strength of the F-117,
50:32is giving a much greater accuracy of delivery because of all this,
50:35and also making it a much more survivable for the pilots.
50:39A lot of stuff goes through my mind, or did at the time,
50:45about, you know, what we're doing,
50:47and are we doing sort of nasty things to kill people.
50:51But another view of that is that, in fact,
50:54when it was demonstrated in the way the F-117 was operated,
50:57it's such a very precise airplane,
50:59you can use it to attack targets and hit exactly what you want
51:03with enormous precision that there's nothing like the kind of casualties
51:07that you, that resulted in the Iraq war that you've had in previous wars.
51:13And certainly you don't get all the spread of bombs being dropped all over the place
51:18on very, in civilian areas.
51:20And you also do a great deal to make it easier for our own land, land-based troops.
51:26So, you know, one might argue there's a lot of rationale in that kind of discussion,
51:30but I think, you know, events have proved if you're going to be in this kind of business
51:34that at least you might as well have something that will just do strictly military damage.
51:39The aircraft really did end up to be very, very cost-effective.
51:45The average unit flyaway cost of all of the aircraft produced is $42.6 million,
51:50and that's in then-year dollars,
51:52the year that the Air Force purchased each of the production lines.
51:56The total development cost for the entire,
52:00for all of the stealth technology that we've brought to bear,
52:03total development cost was just under $2 billion.
52:08$1.4 billion of that came to Lockheed and our subcontractors.
52:13Now, to put $2 billion in context,
52:16and this may make Ford and General Motors unhappy,
52:19Ford spent $3.5 billion developing the Taurus,
52:23and General Motors spent an equal amount developing the Saturn.
52:27Now, they get to divide by a lot bigger numbers
52:29than just the 59 production units that we built and sold to the Air Force.
52:35We were always fighting to get money and being in the black,
52:39so few people knew about us.
52:41It was hard to get the money
52:42because people couldn't understand, you know,
52:46what they had to keep this money for.
52:51And in the meantime, they charged everything to my program.
52:54All the, you know, nobody had ever built stealth bases,
52:57so they built that base at Tonopah,
53:00and they charged it to my contract.
53:02After you do the strike and you're on your way home,
53:05I mean, what keeps you awake?
53:07Stealth music.
53:07It was pretty common.
53:12Again, you have to picture a single-seat night fighter
53:17that's got pretty advanced avionics, great autopilot in it.
53:23After we would get into Saudi Arabia,
53:27your big concern is finding your tanker, doing the rendezvous.
53:31The tanker guys were superb, and so that was usually a no-brainer.
53:35Get on the tanker, get your top off,
53:37and then you'd follow the tanker for a while
53:40until it was time for him to break off.
53:42After I'd gotten my gas off the tanker,
53:45and I'd pull back out in a position if the weather was good
53:47where I could very comfortably watch him,
53:49and I'd turn the autopilot on,
53:50so we're now just tracking along the tanker.
53:53And I'd put my earphones in and put some tunes in,
53:57and I'd pull out my soy sandwich,
53:59and I'd just sit there and have breakfast.
54:02And later on in the war, when I started flying,
54:06and the real light goes where we'd be landing right after the sun up,
54:10I'd eat my soy burger and have my little bottle of El Wadi Saudi water,
54:16and I'd watch the sun come out and marvel.
54:18I don't fly with bears.
54:22Bears for me are bad luck,
54:23because every time I flew a bear, just the AAA was tremendous,
54:27so I just quit flying bears.
54:28It was a superstition.
54:29A lot of pilots are superstitious about one thing or another.
54:32I don't do bears.
54:33But yeah, there was a Geronimo.
54:35I think it was an aircraft 829.
54:36I'm not sure that flew in most of the combat missions.
54:39We took him out one time to let him see what the AAA looked like.
54:41That's why his eyes were frozen wide open.
54:43And then somebody flew some Bart Simpson dolls,
54:45and we flew, you name it, we flew it.
54:47The first night of the combat, I think I had 85 or 87 flags
54:51stored in various areas of the airplane and cockpit.
54:55And I had a flag that I carried the entire war, and I still carry.
54:58I took it with me, every mission, not just in combat, but since then.
55:03And still, when I go on trips, I carry it in my bag.
55:05Personally, for me, the combat missions, I'm sure they affected me.
55:10You'd have to ask my family whether that was good or bad.
55:13I have a few more gray hairs than I had before.
55:16But the way I looked at it was I had trained for over 13 years
55:21to do a mission, to fly in combat,
55:24and it was gratifying to be able to actually do what I had trained for.
55:28None of us wanted to go to war,
55:30but when called upon to do it, we were ready to go,
55:32and it was good to see that all our training paid off.
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