#PHANTOM BRIGADE AS SIGNATURE CODE#The following year, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) issued Lockheed Skunk Works a contract to build and test two Stealth Strike Fighters, under the code name " Have Blue". The project began in 1975 with a model called the "Hopeless Diamond" (a wordplay on the Hope Diamond because of its appearance). It was a black project, an ultra-secret program for much of its life very few people in the Pentagon knew the program even existed. The heavy losses inflicted by Soviet-made SAMs upon the Israeli air force in the 1973 Yom Kippur war also contributed to a 1974 Defense Science Board assessment that in case of a conflict in Central Europe, air defenses would likely prevent NATO air strikes on targets in Eastern Europe. The F-117 was born after the Vietnam War, where increasingly sophisticated Soviet surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) had downed heavy bombers. į-117A painted in "Gray Dragon" experimental camouflage scheme #PHANTOM BRIGADE AS SIGNATURE SOFTWARE#By the 1970s, when Lockheed analyst Denys Overholser found Ufimtsev's paper, computers and software had advanced significantly, and the stage was set for the development of a stealth airplane. However, the resulting design would make the aircraft aerodynamically unstable, and the state of computer technology in the early 1960s could not provide the kinds of flight computers which would later allow aircraft such as the F-117 and B-2 Spirit to stay airborne. The obvious and logical conclusion was that even a large aircraft could reduce its radar signature by exploiting this principle. Ufimtsev demonstrated that he could calculate the radar cross-section across a wing's surface and along its edge. Ufimtsev was extending theoretical work published by the German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld. In 1964, Pyotr Ufimtsev, a Soviet mathematician, published a seminal paper titled Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction in the journal of the Moscow Institute for Radio Engineering, in which he showed that the strength of the radar return from an object is related to its edge configuration, not its size. Despite the type's official retirement, a portion of the fleet has been kept in airworthy condition, and Nighthawks have been observed flying since 2009. Air Force retired the F-117 in April 2008, primarily due to the fielding of the F-22 Raptor. F-117s took part in the conflict in Yugoslavia, where one was shot down and another damaged by surface-to-air missiles (SAM) in 1999. Although it was commonly referred to as the "Stealth Fighter", it was strictly an attack aircraft. The F-117 was widely publicized for its role in the Persian Gulf War of 1991. Of the 64 F-117s built, 59 were production versions, with the other five being prototypes. The aircraft was shrouded in secrecy until it was revealed to the public in 1988. The Nighthawk's maiden flight took place in 1981 at Groom Lake, Nevada, and the aircraft achieved initial operating capability status in 1983. The F-117 was based on the Have Blue technology demonstrator. It was the first operational aircraft to be designed around stealth technology. The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk is a retired American single-seat, twin-engine stealth surface–attack aircraft developed by Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works division and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF).
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