I find this ridiculous. The bomber was designed to penetrate heavily defended soviet airspace equiped with the latest in SAM technology, but it's RCS doesn't seem to have been simulated in the game. Tests I ran showed it was being detected and engaged just as easily conventional planes flying the same route.

Without stealth, NATO's greatest strength, superior technology, can't be fully experienced.

It does have a lower RSC. I did some tests with a Su-27, head on, radar set to frontal aspect:

F-117A
Detected: 37 km
Lock: 21 km

Another Su-27
Detected 130+km
Lock: 100 km

This should effect the range of SAM-systems to. However if the tunguskas can lock on to a maverick, as they can in lock on, they should have a descent range on the F-117?

quote:

Originally posted by Deuce420:
I find this ridiculous. The bomber was designed to penetrate heavily defended soviet airspace equiped with the latest in SAM technology, but it's RCS doesn't seem to have been simulated in the game. Tests I ran showed it was being detected and engaged just as easily conventional planes flying the same route.

Without stealth, NATO's greatest strength, superior technology, can't be fully experienced.

the same issue was alive and well in f2.5. I have not looked at it in LOMAC or FC. But it is rather maddening to try and form a stealthy strike package that has no better luck than a lumbering formation of BUFFS.

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/99610606/m/5721096983

It is so funny to see this thread I just built a mission with 2 F-117s coming in to bomb a target. I intercepted them with my SU-27 and went to guns on one of the F-117s and it did instanteously explode into three or four big pieces lol. I love the special effects ED put into that explosion. I followed the pieces down to the ground just to watch it. The F-117s are very fragile planes build with layers of high tech composite sheets.

Actually the F-117s probabbly can not take much damage in real life either. I remember the one F-117 crash from an airshow a few years back that crash landed on a house after it lost its rudder. Another F-117 was shot down by a ground fired missile system in the Yugo War. Maybe this plane has lost its technological edge and out lived its useful lifespan.

It would take just a few 20mm shells in that plane to damage the little flight surfaces, hit the bombs in the payload, or damage the computer that keeps that bird airborne. It is stealth that keeps that bird alive, if an ememy plane is able to see it, it is a dead birdy. That is why they fly only night missions.

quote:

Actually the F-117s probabbly can not take much damage in real life either. I remember the one F-117 crash from an airshow a few years back that crash landed on a house after it lost its rudder. Another F-117 was shot down by a ground fired missile system in the Yugo War. Maybe this plane has lost its technological edge and out lived its useful lifespan.

The one at the airshow didnt lose its rudder, it lost its entire right wing. The one shot down in Yugoslavia was shot down with a heater round from (I forget) a mobile launcher system. Correct me if I am wrong.

I saw the video it looked like it was just one of its two verticle stablizers which looks like a rudder. But it may have been the wing. It looks like the pilot was going at max speed and stressed the plane lol. I wonder if the pilot, Capt. Bryan Knight got reprimanded for that manuever.

Here is a nice site with pics of the shoot down crash.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/f-117.htm

I'm trying to find the video of the airshow. Here we go.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9709/14/f117.crash.update/am.crash.lake.24sec.mov

http://www.cnn.com/US/9709/14/f117.crash.update/am.crash.airfield.29sec.mov

quote:

Originally posted by 214th_Hitman:
The one shot down in Yugoslavia was shot down with a heater round from (I forget) a mobile launcher system. Correct me if I am wrong.

There's a lot of "excuses" of how and why it was shot down but the fact is it was shot down by a SA-3. On that day the Sa-3 also shot down the Myth that Stealth=Immortal.

The F-117 was shot down by an SA-3 which is a command-guided system.

Specifically: The search radar of the SA-3 is a long-wavelength radar, which is useless for actual guidance, but it can spot stealth aircraft better (well ... SOME stealth aircraft, anyway).

The missile itself was optically guided, using command-line-of-sight. The missile itself has no seeker, it basically tried to sit 'in the beam', imaginary or real, created by the SACLOS system.

The SA-3 probably did not use its illumination/guidance radar, which would have both alerted the 117 and probably not have worked so well.

Also, several missiles were fired at the F-117 before it was downed. The fuze may have been altered to emit strong radar signals or longer wavelength signals to better sense the F-117, or command detonation may have been used.

The combination of intelligence, knowing where the F-117 would be and the ability of the search radar to provide a target update at a critical time, as well as the warning-less EO CLOS guidance, are the major factors that contributed to that aircraft being shot down.

The search radar is also fairly imprevious to HARM attacks due to its long wavelength.


Whatever 'myth' there was to shoot down, one thing is still for certain: Perfect intelligence was needed to shoot that plane down - in the absence of intelligence, no one would have known it was even there.

That's all there is to that.

quote:

Originally posted by Red_lightning1:
On that day the Sa-3 also shot down the Myth that Stealth=Immortal.

Heh...I wish I knew where that myth was printed, because I have never heard that stealth=immortal. This aircraft was downed because it was not employed properly...oh...and it was flying exactly the same route other 117s were flying day after day.

The f-117 that crashed at the airshow did indeed lose its entire wing. It was later determined that someone forgot to tighten a bolt on it which led to it falling off of the aircraft. There was a better vid of it that i saw on Max-X but i dont know where to find it.

quote:

Originally posted by Deuce420:
I find this ridiculous. The bomber was designed to penetrate heavily defended soviet airspace equiped with the latest in SAM technology, but it's RCS doesn't seem to have been simulated in the game. Tests I ran showed it was being detected and engaged just as easily conventional planes flying the same route.

Without stealth, NATO's greatest strength, superior technology, can't be fully experienced.

I haven't done any tests on this in lockon my self but I have seen r/l footage of how F117's design their flight plans and basically they never fly directly over a sam site... normally choosing to fly around them. The stealth technology reduces the range of a sam system to about 30% (maybe more) of what it's normally capable of.

Have you tried different distances from the sam site and compared to see if a sam was launched against an F16/15 as well as an F117? It may be a good test to see how far you have to fly before it can launch against an F117.

Okay, keep the speculation in what forum now people?

The speculation forum?

quote:

Originally posted by IguanaKing:

quote:

Originally posted by Red_lightning1:
On that day the Sa-3 also shot down the Myth that Stealth=Immortal.

Heh...I wish I knew where that myth was printed, because I have never heard that stealth=immortal. This aircraft was downed because it was not employed properly...oh...and it was flying exactly the same route other 117s were flying day after day.

Now.. how in the hell can you possibly know that?

I'm sure you can get started on finding out how he knows it by looking at the RAND report.

quote:

Originally posted by bflagg:

Now.. how in the hell can you possibly know that?

Yup...what GG said.

What?...Do you think I make this stuff up?

it just took me by surprise in how you could know this...


I went to that site... and you sift thru all this in your spare time?

wow...

If i remember correctly from what was written in several military magazines afterwards, teh F117 was shot down because it was spotted by the mark-1 eyeball, since it was flying during an overcast, and a nearby city (or some other light source) provided some backlighting illumination against the clouds. It seems very plausible, since the SA-3 can be guided manually to target.

THey still have a detectable RCS if the plane is at certain angles, hence the absence of sharp turns etc. (I think).

Stealth doesn't do what it was designed to do, the Americans are B*** S******* the rest of the world. The eronious claims of hundreds and hundreds of safe sorties over heavily defended airspace is not correct. Stealth doesn't work, proven by one shoot down of it over Kosovo.

P.S. Merry Christmas to you infidels.