Why Is America's Lethal F-117 Stealth Fighter Back in the Sky? ( Source- The National Interest / Author- David Axe)
USAF F-117 Night Hawk ( Source- Wikimedia Commons / Author- Staff Sgt Aaron Allmon II) Source- The National Interest Author- David Axe The U.S. Air Force officially retired its 52 surviving F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters in 2008, transferring their radar-evading attack mission to B-2 bombers, F-22s and — eventually — F-35s. The Air Force claimed it would preserve the F-117s for future use, but it’s possible most of the Nighthawks actually wound up in a landfill inside the Air Force’s highly secure Tonopah Test Range in Nevada. But the flying branch has held on to at least two of the sensor-dodging F-117s, which first entered service in the early 1980s. Amateur plane-spotters packing powerful cameras have photographed and videotaped F-117s flying over the desert test range and taxiing on a remote runway, sometimes singly and sometimes in pairs. The most recent snapshot of F-117s in flight are dated July 22 and can be found here. Why would the Air Force wa