Stealth Aircraft Lost
The first time that a stealth aircraft was shot down was on March 27, 1999, during Operation Allied Force when an American F-117 Nighthawk was brought down by a Isayev S-125 'Neva-M' missile launched by a Serbian Air Defense crew who were operating their radars on unusually long wavelengths. The pilot ejected and was rescued and the aircraft remained relatively intact due to slowly striking the ground, inverted.
In December 2011, Iranian sources showed videos of a captured US RQ-170 stealth drone in a good shape with intact central controlling unit. The information was later confirmed by US sources. The analysts say that the drone might have been captured by electronic cyber attack or jamming. There are reports that China and Russia asked Iran to inspect the drone less than a week after the Iranian video was released.
A B-2 crashed on February 23, 2008 shortly after takeoff from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. The investigation stated the B-2 crashed after "heavy, lashing rains" caused water to enter skin-flush air-data sensors, which feed angle of attack and yaw data to the computerized flight-control system. The water distorted pre-flight readings in three of the plane's 24 sensors, causing the flight-control system to send an erroneous correction to the B-2 on takeoff. The B-2 quickly stalled, became unrecoverable, and crashed. The sensors measure environmental factors including air pressure and density, for data to calculate airspeed, altitude and attitude. Because of the faulty readings, the flight computers determined inaccurate airspeed readings and incorrectly indicated a downward angle for the aircraft, which contributed to an early rotation and an un-commanded 30-degree pitch up and left yaw, resulting in the stall.
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Famous quotes containing the words stealth and/or lost:
“Our job is now clear. All Americans must be prepared to make, on a 24 hour schedule, every war weapon possible and the war factory line will use men and materials which will bring, the war effort to every man, woman, and child in America. All one hundred thirty million of us will be needed to answer the sunrise stealth of the Sabbath Day Assassins.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“We thought it would be worth the while to read the epitaphs where so many were lost at sea; however, as not only their lives, but commonly their bodies also, were lost or not identified, there were fewer epitaphs of this sort than we expected, though there were not a few. Their graveyard is the ocean.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)