This F-117 is flying over the Persian Gulf in April 2003, in the early days of the war in Iraq. The planes also saw action in the Gulf War a decade earlier, over Panama in the late 1980s, and in operations in the former Yugoslavia--where in 1999 one was actually shot down by hostile fire, a big hint that stealth characteristics aren't infallible. The first test flight of the aircraft, developed by the "skunk works" at Lockheed Martin, took place in June 1981 at test ranges in Nevada. It became part of the Air Force's operational capabilities in 1983.
Stealth aircraft like the Nighthawk are not easy to control. Research into stealth technology dates to the 1950s, and almost as far as the advent of radar itself during World War II. But it wasn't until decades later that computers had progressed enough to be able to control the inherently unstable designs in flight through quick and constant adjustments. It's not just that computers now have more powerful processors; cutting-edge aircraft design in general today also favors so-called fly-by-wire technology, in which speedy electronic signals replace mechanical and hydraulic systems. The F-117 has quadruple redundant fly-by-wire flight controls.
The challenges of flying the aircraft nearly proved fatal to the test pilot of the first production F-117A. In April 1982, Lockheed Martin's Robert Riedenauer, a recently retired Air Force pilot, had barely left the ground when the plane flipped over and crashed--the pitch and yaw controls working opposite from what Riedenauer expected.
Photo by U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Derrick C. Goode
