First Stealth jets disappear as invisibly as they flew

They were born shrouded in mystery in a windowless building in Burbank, California. They flew combat missions over Serbia and Iraq virtually invisible to enemy radar.

They were born shrouded in mystery in a windowless building in Burbank, California. They flew combat missions over Serbia and Iraq virtually invisible to enemy radar. And on Tuesday, the black, bat-like F-117A Night Hawks flew quietly into the night as stealthily as they came.

The last four of the world’s first stealth fighter jets made their final flights from Palmdale, California, to a secretive desert base in Nevada where they will be locked up indefinitely in a secure concrete hangar.

But unlike the passing of other notable planes, there was no public fanfare or farewell for these mysterious aircraft that revolutionised aerial warfare. The F-177A is still so cloaked in secrecy that only employees and retirees who worked on the programme could attend its retirement ceremony at Lockheed Martin Corp’s Skunk Works plant in Palmdale. A few aerospace reporters have been invited, but they had to be US citizens. Guards with M-16 rifles kept people at least 20 ft from the planes, next to “Restricted Area—Deadly Force Authorized” warning signs.

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“Some aspects of the plane are still classified,” said Dianne Knippel, spokeswoman for Lockheed, whose legendary Skunk Works design house, formerly in Burbank and now in Palmdale, developed and built the aircraft.

The hushed send-off is no surprise to aviation buffs and historians who have followed one of the nation’s most secretive aircraft programs since the Pentagon covertly launched it more than 30 years ago. “It reflects a hyper-security culture that has accompanied this thing since the beginning,” said John Pike, a defense policy analyst with Globalsecurity.org. “It’s the nation’s first stealth technology, and as a result you might imagine all the caution with security.”

The single-seat F-117A was the first plane that could evade radar detection; it was designed to fly into heavily defended areas to knock out radar installations and anti-aircraft missile batteries, clearing the way for other fighter jets and bombers. It was also used to destroy military command and communication centers.

The planes, which cost $45 million each, first flew a combat mission in the invasion of Panama in 1989 that led to the capture of dictator Manuel Noriega. It was the first aircraft to strike targets in the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and in 2003 in the invasion of Iraq.

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In 2006, with the advent of the F-22 fighter jet—featuring the latest stealth technology—the Pentagon decided to retire all 59 of the F-117As, leading to Tuesday’s final flights.

During its development, the plane flew only at night to avoid prying eyes and Soviet spy satellites, thus its name, Night Hawk.

The project was so secretive that Sherman N. Mullin, the former president of Lockheed’s Skunk Works who led the F-117A programme in the 1980s, didn’t even tell his wife what he did. “She didn’t know for 10 years,” Mullin said, adding that every Friday, the entire complex was locked up for the weekend and no one was allowed to take work off-site. “I don’t think she minded. She liked that I didn’t bring home any work on the weekends.”

Mullin said his fondest memory was a Friday afternoon in 1984 when the Air Force declared that the plane was ready for combat. But it would be four years before the government acknowledged its existence.