
F-117s had an air-to-air capability with secondary mission to shoot Soviet AWACS - joeschmoe83
https://theaviationist.com/2020/06/03/f-117s-had-an-air-to-air-capability-with-secondary-mission-to-shoot-down-soviet-awacs-former-stealth-pilot-says/
======
lagadu
I recall this capability existing in the F117A Nighthawk simulator from
Microprose in the 90s, you could carry sidewinders but they were close to
useless because you needed to open the bay, which made you highly detectable
and slower, and you needed to get close which made you detectable. It was more
of a last resort thing.

I'm surprised a game that old was accurate about this at the time.

~~~
rrauenza
Why don't they make these kinds of flight sims anymore? I miss microprose!

~~~
foxyv
Microprose is coming back soon. They are building a B-17 simulator for VR
where a group of people work together in the bomber.

------
greedo
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.

~~~
trhway
another 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.

~~~
TylerE
A 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.

~~~
cameldrv
Didn't exist at the time, but the AMRAAM doesn't require the launching
aircraft to be using (or presumably even have) a radar. The launching aircraft
just gives the missile the target's state vector before launch, which it could
have gotten from another aircraft. The AMRAAM then flies to intercept the
target, receives course updates if they're available, and then turns on its
own radar when it gets close.

The state vector could even potentially come from an AWACS, although the
angular resolution wouldn't be great. If the launching aircraft had an IRST
system though, that is easily solved.

Incidentally, this basic capability is the present/near future of air combat.
Modern but non-stealth aircraft hang back with their radars on. 50 miles or so
in front of them are the AMRAAM equipped stealth aircraft getting datalinked
targeting from the "quarterback" aircraft behind them. Tracks can be refined
by having multiple radars observe the same target from different angles, and
further augmented by the stealth aircraft's IRST system if it has one. The
(stealth) launching aircraft can then immediately turn tail and run while the
quarterback aircraft continues to provide midcourse updates to the missile.

~~~
kitteh
This sort of datalinked network with aircraft up front with radar off, IRST on
and launch capability feels like the future of BVR combat. Also add in an
awacs to do IFF interrogation and declaring to the launchers as well.

~~~
throw1234651234
There are a number of variations on this play. The simple ones are:

1\. Stealth (F-35/F-22) squadron keeps taking turns "illuminating" using radar
and spot for each other, toggling radar on and off.

2\. AWACS / ground-based radar / MIG-31M provides targets and stealth comes in
close to take them out.

3\. There is a concept that flips #2 - stealth comes in and looks for targets,
a large transport aircraft is converted into a "missile truck" and ripple
fires on target from a distance, WITHOUT having to illuminate - there are
missiles called AWACS killers which are pretty dangerous to #2. Note that
ripple fires implies missiles with multiple means of targeting.

4\. Drones can play the role of finding targets and recon-by-fire too.

------
anovikov
Tom Clancy mentioned it in "Red Storm Rising"! No one believed then.

It may not have been a very debugged capability, but neither were Soviet
AWACS. To this day, A50s are hardly too useful, and in the Soviet times, they
were a joke.

~~~
arethuza
The problem I had with _Red Storm Rising_ was that the scenario leading to the
war was pretty weak - I much prefer _Arc Light_.

~~~
anovikov
Exactly. An Azeri muslim radical couldn't probably do what he did to help his
"brothers" in Tatarstan, because Clancy overlooked that Azeri, unlike all
other Soviet muslims, are Shia, others being Sunni... They'd much rather kill
one another than a Commie.

------
sandworm101
I don't get it. I don't see how this mission would work. The f-117 was/is
slow. Getting one within sidewinder range of a russian mainstay would not have
been easy. Mainstays loiter well behind enemy lines. With the F-117's range
(1000miles) just getting in and out would not have been easy. And mainstays
are moving targets.

~~~
moron4hire
"Secondary Mission" means that it would only perform the action on its way
to/from its primary mission. So if--on the way to or from bombing a target--
the pilot saw a Soviet AWACS aircraft, it would then attack. It wouldn't have
been sent out specifically for that mission.

~~~
throwanem
Which is another way of saying, this would spend munitions load on the forlorn
hope of maybe backshooting a Mainstay out of pure luck and happenstance,
instead of spending that mass and volume on ordnance that actually made sense
for the mission.

Which is another way of saying, this is something some engineers at Lockheed
blue-skyed around a table one day, and the PMO liked it enough to throw it
into a stack of viewgraphs as "planned future capability", thus promising
absolutely nothing, in case it might help sell the aircraft.

~~~
na85
I see you have also worked with government procurement.

~~~
throwanem
Never directly, but I've spent 20 years adjacent to the defense industry,
almost half of that working directly under a salty old engineer of Lockheed
pedigree.

Something like that should be a minimum job requirement for covering the
defense industry, imo. Without it, they're far too credulous.

------
madengr
In the Radar Man book I read, he said it’s primary mission was to take out a
Soviet, radar controlled anti-aircraft gun, which I believe was called the
Buzz Saw.

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07932Z7WV/ref=nodl_?tag=duckduckg...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07932Z7WV/ref=nodl_?tag=duckduckgo-
iphone-20&linkCode=osi&th=1&psc=1)

Maybe it was this:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZSU-23-4_Shilka](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZSU-23-4_Shilka)

~~~
throw1234651234
That is definitely "the Buzz Saw" \- it's also no longer relevant against
anything besides helicopters due to low run on gun-based AA (nor is its
updated version, the Tunguska, or derivative, The Pantsir).

------
rstupek
This was exactly what they did in the novel Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy.

~~~
packetslave
yep, except Clancy used the (theoretical) F-19A "Frisbee" stealth attack
fighter.

------
alexchantavy
Kinda off topic but I miss those days when you could go to a drug store and
buy fighter plane model kits with all the paints and other supplies. As a kid
the one I always wanted was the F-117. This kind of thing got me interested in
studying history and building things with my hands.

------
galacticaactual
Explains the mysterious “Just like an AMRAAM launchpad on a stealth” line from
Independence Day.

~~~
packetslave
could have also been referring to the F-22 Raptor.

------
adamsea
I totally get the appeal of the technology involve in sophisticated weapons,
and find it appealing myself (and especially did in my teens), but I wish we
would read less about it.

So many cool technologies out there to choose from.

------
jki275
So F-19 stealth fighter wasn't totally off base!

------
exabrial
Did we not have an air-to-air passive anti-radiation missile?

~~~
justin66
The air-to-ground ARM missiles were designed to remember where radar stations
were with some precision so when they saw the missile coming and shut down,
the missile could still hit them. The concept doesn't apply with an airplane
that can shut down its radar and maneuver.

If you design an ARM that also has a backup sensor (IR or radar) to follow the
maneuvering aircraft, why not just make that the primary sensor? At which
point you've got a standard air-to-air missile, except with some superfluous
stuff on it?

~~~
ckozlowski
The benefit to having "home on jam" in this case is that it's passive, (no
warning to the target aircraft) and generally has a larger detection range
than IR. AMRAAM has this capability now, which would allow for, in theory,
long-range shots without the launching aircraft even having to illuminate. The
AMRAAM's radar is short range, so you can use a combination of "home on jam"
to guide to a range where the jamming is no longer effective, then go active
and potentially make the kill.

This is a simplistic example of course; EW being a very complicated subject.
But overall, having multiple sensors that you can either correlate or fall
back on is the trend in smart weapons right now, and we'll be seeing more of
those sorts of combinations.

~~~
LorenPechtel
Home on jam also has the benefit that it works when the enemy can jam your
radar. You have an incoming enemy raid with heavy jammer support, you lob some
missiles at it set for home on jam and their jammers are now calling them in.

------
xmars
Пососете

~~~
blaser-waffle
"Squeeze"

