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They had the potential to perform this mission, but other pilots have said that A2A missiles (AIM-9 Sidewinders) were never equipped. It would have been hard to
by greedo 6y ago
They had the potential to perform this mission, but other pilots have said that A2A missiles (AIM-9 Sidewinders) were never equipped. It would have been hard to launch them from the F-117. If they were mounted on wing rails, it would have messed up their stealth, and launching from a trapeze inside the launch bay would have required some finicky hardware.
Great idea, and definitely considered, but never made it into an actual capability.
- avmich 6y ago> Great idea, and definitely considered, but never made it into an actual capability. Never made? There were quite a few F-117 pilots who flew missions on Soviet North (rather North-West) destroying everything on their way, including airfields and especially, depots, all with airgun only (!), and flew back upside down - for kicks and because apparently it was (way) more fuel-efficient... https://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/f-117a-nighthawk-stealth-fighter-20/ https://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/f-117a-nighthawk-st...
- trhway 6y agoanother option mentioned is to mount the missiles on the bay doors - opening of the door would put the seeker into the air stream as if the missile were on a wing rail. Sounds like a typical quick fix/patch :) Not sure why it is AIM-9, not something more long range. The role of F-117 is just to [stealthily] truck the missile and drop it. The other radars and control would guide it.
- Spooky23 6y agoI recall reading that the AIM9 is/was very easy to integrate into a plane and can almost be improvised in the field to work.
- sandworm101 6y agoOnly if the missile's seeker head had a clear view of the target. The missile is blind if tucked inside a weapons bay. So integrating it into the f-117 would not have been as simple as bolting a rail to the wing.
- wuunderbar 6y agoWhy can't it seek just seconds after dropping out from inside?
- kitteh 6y agoYou have to uncage the seeker head in order for it to track. You would be just dropping it with the seeker pointing forward and hoping that the missile locks onto it with a limited view. The seeker is uncaged normally when you are tracking a target before you fire it. The pilot would have no idea if the missile would track when dropped.
- alkonaut 6y agoCan't this be solved (for a new aircraft) by having a similar seeker on the aircraft (IRST) and letting the missiles tap into that, so that it can sort of "see" while in the bay, and you can be more or less sure that once deployed it will actually track? Perhaps that's exactly what IRST does...
- virtue3 6y agoI imagine the likeliness of hitting yourself with it would go up dramatically if that was the case.
- greedo 6y agoIf the launching aircraft has an A2A radar, newer versions of the Sidewinder can use LOAL (lock on after launch) because their sensors are so sensitive. The radar cues the seeker head prior to launch, so it knows where to search. Missile is launched, seeker head acquires target, boom.
- TylerE 6y agoA longer range missle would require an active radar to lock onto a target. That sort of negates the whole thing. The AIM-9 is a passive IR seeker that can aquire it's own target.
- sien 6y agoHARM missiles don't seem to be active and a special HARM derivative might be suitable. Something that may not have been made public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM Normal HARMs have hit radar emitting aircraft : During the Gulf War, the HARM was involved in a friendly fire incident when the pilot of an F-4G Wild Weasel escorting a B-52 bomber mistook the latter's tail gun radar for an Iraqi AAA site. (This was after the tail gunner of the B-52 had targeted the F-4G, mistaking it for an Iraqi MiG.) The F-4 pilot launched the missile and then saw that the target was the B-52, which was hit. It survived with shrapnel damage to the tail and no casualties. The B-52 was subsequently renamed In HARM's Way.[4]
- TylerE 6y agoHard to fit, probably. 5ft longer and 4x as heavy
- kitteh 6y agoFrom what I read the HARM (and all anti radiation missiles) wasnt particularly good at tracking a moving target. Especially another aircraft closing in fast that is manuverable. As for IR missile options beyond the Sidewinder the US never really invested in any longer range IR missiles like the Soviets did as part of their overall effort to go big in IRST (which didn't seem to pan out all that well to my knowledge).
- GarvielLoken 6y agoI think it did, if not otherwise because modern jets simply have stopped relying on their own radars, making long range IRST more important.
- 6y ago
- greedo 6y agoMounts on the bay doors might have infringed on space requirements for other weapons that would be used more frequently. IIRC, the F-117's primary payload was 2 2000lb bombs, so cutting that in half for a mission that might not be very common would be a hard to sell tradeoff.
- irjustin 6y agoThere's an update to the article at the bottom which confirms this. > “It turns out that this was never an actual capability in any operational form whatsoever, but it was experimented with over the years in unique and intriguing ways, something we are detailing in a soon to be released special feature.”
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y agoWere they never equipped because we were never at war with Russia?
- cbm-vic-20 6y agoPerhaps they were never equipped because it just wouldn't work well. It's possible that this was used as misleading information to deceive Russian intelligence as a deterrent against Russian AWACS flights.
- aerostable_slug 6y agoNothing would deter the Soviets from flying SUAWACS on likely ingress routes. They lacked a comparable system to the comprehensive early warning radar network enjoyed by the United States since the DEW line in the late 1950s. Fun fact: the Advanced Strategic Air-Launched Missile (ASALM) had a secondary anti-SUAWACS mission. With a 200kt warhead, depending upon the location of the launching aircraft, the Pk could be 2...