THE F‑117 SHOOTDOWN

It did not take long for the problems connected with the air war’s SEAD effort to register their first toll. On the fourth night of air operations, in the first combat loss ever of a stealth aircraft, an F‑117 was downed at approximately 8:45 p.m. over hilly terrain near Budanovici, about 28 miles northwest of Belgrade, by an apparent barrage of SA‑3s. Fortunately, the pilot ejected safely and, against formidable odds, was recovered before dawn the next day by a combat search and rescue team using MH‑53 Pave Low and MH‑60 Pave Hawk helicopters, and directed by a flight of A‑10s.[259]

There was a flurry of speculation afterward as to how such an unexpected event might have taken place. Experts at Lockheed Martin Corporation, the aircraft’s manufacturer, reported that unlike earlier instances of F‑117 combat operations, the missions flown over Yugoslavia had required the aircraft to operate in ways that may have compromised its stealth characteristics. By way of example, they noted that even a standard banking maneuver can increase the aircraft’s radar cross‑section (RCS) by a factor of 100 or more–and such turns were unavoidable in the constricted airspace within which the F‑117s were forced to fly.[260]Another unconfirmed report suggested that the RC‑135 Rivet Joint aircraft monitoring enemy SAM activity may have been unable to locate the SA‑3 battery that was thought to have downed the F‑117 and may additionally have failed to relay to the appropriate command and control authorities timely indications of enemy SAM activity. Lending credence to that interpretation, the commander of Air Combat Command, General Richard Hawley, commented that “when you have a lot of unlocated threats, you are at risk even in a stealth airplane.”[261]

Although the Air Force has remained understandably silent as to what confluence of events it believes occasioned the F‑117’s downing, press reports claimed that Air Force assessors had concluded, after conducting a formal postmortem, that a lucky combination of low‑technology tactics, rapid learning, and astute improvisation had converged in one fleeting instant to enable an SA‑3 not operating in its normal, radar‑guided mode to down the aircraft. Enemy spotters in Italy doubtless reported the aircraft’s takeoff from Aviano, and IADS operators in Serbia, as well as perhaps in Bosnia and along the Montenegran coast, could have assembled from scattered radars enough glimpses of its position en route to its target to cue a SAM battery near Belgrade to fire at the appropriate moment. The aircraft had already dropped one laser‑guided bomb near Belgrade, offering the now‑alerted air defenders yet another clue. (The Air Force is said to have ruled out theories hinging on a stuck weapons bay door, a descent to below 15,000 ft, or a hit by AAA.)[262]

At least three procedural errors were alleged to have contributed to the downing.[263]The first was the reported inability of ELINT collectors to track the changing location of the three or four offending SAM batteries. Three low‑frequency Serb radars that at least theoretically could have detected the F‑117’s presence were reportedly not neutralized because U.S. strike aircraft had earlier bombed the wrong aim points within the radar complexes. Also, F‑16CJs carrying HARMs and operating in adjacent airspace could have deterred the SA‑3 battery from emitting, but those aircraft had been recalled before the F‑117 shootdown.

The second alleged procedural error entailed an EA‑6B support jammer that was said to have been operating not only too far away from the F‑117 (80 to 100 miles) to have been of much protective value, but also out of proper alignment with the offending threat radars, resulting in inefficient jamming.

Last was the reported fact that F‑117s operating out of Aviano had previously flown along more or less the same transit routes for four nights in a row because of a SACEUR ban on overflight of Bosnia to avoid jeopardizing the Dayton accords. That would have made their approach pattern into Yugoslav airspace predictable. Knowing from which direction the F‑117s would be coming, Serb air defenders could have employed low‑frequency radars for the best chance of getting a snap look at the aircraft. Former F‑117 pilots and several industry experts acknowledged that the aircraft is detectable by such radars when viewed from the side or from directly below. U.S. officials also suggested that the Serbs may have been able to get brief nightly radar hits while the aircraft’s weapons bay doors were fleetingly open.

Heated arguments arose in Washington and elsewhere in the immediate aftermath of the shootdown over whether USEUCOM had erred in not aggressively having sought to destroy the wreckage of the downed F‑117 in order to keep its valuable stealth technology out of unfriendly hands and eliminate its propaganda value, which the Serbs bent every effort to exploit.[264]Said a former commander of Tactical Air Command, General John M. Loh: “I’m surprised we didn’t bomb it, because the standing procedure has always been that when you lose something of real or perceived value–in this case real technology, stealth–you destroy it.”[265]The case for at least trying to deny the enemy the wreckage was bolstered by Paul Kaminski, the Pentagon’s former acquisition chief and the Air Force’s first F‑117 program manager during the 1970s. Kaminski noted that although the F‑117 had been operational for 15 years, “there are things in that airplane, while they may not be leading technologies today in the United States, are certainly ahead of what some potential adversaries have.” Kaminski added that the main concern was not that any exploitation of the F‑117’s low‑observable technology would enable an enemy to put the F‑117 at greater risk, but rather that it could help him eventually develop his own stealth technology in due course.[266]Reports indicated that military officials had at first considered attempting to destroy the wreckage but opted in the end not to follow through with the attempt because they could not have located it quickly enough to attack it before it was surrounded by civilians and the media.[267]Those issues aside, whatever the precise explanation for the downing, it meant not merely the loss of a key U.S. combat aircraft but the dimming of the F‑117’s former aura of invincibility, which for years had been of incalculable psychological value to the United States.