History of the F-117 Nighthawk - The F-117 was designed to be virtually invisible to radar, and even difficult to spot with the naked eye. The fighter was so secret that it was in service for six years before the U.S. Air Force even admitted its existence. While designated as a fighter, it really operated as a bomber.

As it was developed to address Soviet threats, as the Cold War wound down it might have seemed as if the billions spent had been for nothing. However, the F-117 was finally used in action in December 1989 during Operation Just Cause in Panama, when a pair of fighters targeted the Panamanian Defense Forces barracks. It was overkill, and really didn't prove whether the aircraft could take on a more prepared enemy.

It would be just over a year before the F-117 truly had a chance to show its potential in delivering utter devastation to the enemy when it was used against Iraqi positions in the early stages of the Gulf War. From the first night of the attacks, the F-117A was employed against critical strategic Iraqi command and control installations as well as key communication centers, research & development, production, and storage facilities for nuclear and chemical weapons. It also was used to target especially hardened aircraft shelters at numerous Iraqi airfields.

F-117: Massive Prep

Because of its advanced features, the F-117 Night Hawk was not an aircraft that could be quickly scrambled and taken to the air. In fact, standard F-117 mission preparation could take six hours, while the flight time from al Udeid Air Base in Qatar to Baghdad was another two hours.

During the Gulf War, there were certainly some nervous officials who wondered if the aircraft would live up to the hype. Unlike in the mission over Panama, the F-117s had to fly deep inside a super-missile engagement zone that also had an anti-aircraft artillery trap that was prepared for an airborne attack. The small "Black Jets" had to sneak past Iraq's border radar defenses and it was timed so that they'd be right over Baghdad when the air war kicked off at 3am.

It couldn't have gone better.

Each of the aircraft carried 2,000 pound GBU-27 laser-guided bombs that hit their targets, essentially cutting out the Iraqi military's eyes in the process. With its stealth capabilities, it was more than up to the job and was the only coalition jet able to strike the targets inside Baghdad's city limits so undetected.

Major Contribution

Only thirty-six of the stealth fighters were deployed in Desert Storm and accounted for just 2.5 percent of the total force of 1,900 fighters and bombers, yet these flew more than a third of the bombing runs on the first day of the war. In total, during the operation, the F-117 conducted more than 1,250 sorties and dropped more than 2,000 tons of bombs during the missions that lasted a combined 6,900 hours.

The aircraft were able to avoid the Iraqi air defenses, which consisted of some 3,000 anti-aircraft guns with sixty surface-to-air missile batteries protecting the capital. The F-117 Night Hawks operated from the skies above with total impunity, and not a single F-117 was shot down during the conflict.

In fact, throughout all of its combat missions during the 1990s, only one F-117 was lost to enemy fire, while a second was damaged. 

About the Author: Peter Suciu 

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He regularly writes about military hardware, and is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes.