F-117 Stealth Fighter-Bomber Challenge Coin-United States AIR FORCE USAF

Description: Brand New! USAF UNITED STATES AIR FORCE F-117 Stealth Fighter-Bomber Challenge Coin High Quality Vintage Gold Tone Finish and Deep Blue Coloring.You will receive one Challenge Coin. Photo depicts front and rear of coin.Fast shipping from USA...High Quality items. 40mm with protective case.USPS First Class Shipping with Tracking.Ships within 24 hours from ordering.Perfect gift! The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk is a retired American single-seat, twin-engine stealth attack aircraft that was developed by Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works division and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF). The F-117 was based on the Have Blue technology demonstrator. The Nighthawk was the first operational aircraft to be designed around stealth technology. Its maiden flight took place in 1981 at Groom Lake, Nevada, and the aircraft achieved initial operating capability status in 1983. The Nighthawk was shrouded in secrecy until it was revealed to the public in 1988. Of the 64 F-117s built, 59 were production versions, with the other five being prototypes. The F-117 was widely publicized for its role in the Persian Gulf War of 1991. Although it was commonly referred to as the "Stealth Fighter", it was strictly a ground-attack aircraft. F-117s took part in the conflict in Yugoslavia, where one was shot down by a surface-to-air missile (SAM) in 1999; it was the only Nighthawk to be lost in combat. The U.S. Air Force retired the F-117 in 2008, primarily due to the fielding of the F-22 Raptor. In 1964, Pyotr Ufimtsev, a Soviet mathematician, published a seminal paper titled Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction in the journal of the Moscow Institute for Radio Engineering, in which he showed that the strength of the radar return from an object is related to its edge configuration, not its size.[5] Ufimtsev was extending theoretical work published by the German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld.[6][7][8] Ufimtsev demonstrated that he could calculate the radar cross-section across a wing's surface and along its edge. The obvious and logical conclusion was that even a large aircraft could reduce its radar signature by exploiting this principle. However, the resulting design would make the aircraft aerodynamically unstable, and the state of computer technology in the early 1960s could not provide the kinds of flight computers which would later allow aircraft such as the F-117 and B-2 Spirit to stay airborne. By the 1970s, when Lockheed analyst Denys Overholser found Ufimtsev's paper, computers and software had advanced significantly, and the stage was set for the development of a stealth airplane.[9] Aircraft parked inside an open hangarF-117A painted in "Gray Dragon" experimental camouflage schemeThe F-117 was born after combat experience in the Vietnam War when increasingly sophisticated Soviet surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) downed heavy bombers.[10] It was a black project, an ultra-secret program for much of its life: very few people in the Pentagon knew the program even existed, until the F-117s were revealed to the public in 1988.[11][12] The project began in 1975 with a model called the "Hopeless Diamond"[13][14] (a wordplay on the Hope Diamond because of its appearance). The following year, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) issued Lockheed Skunk Works a contract to build and test two Stealth Strike Fighters, under the code name "Have Blue".[15] These subscale aircraft incorporated jet engines of the Northrop T-38A, fly-by-wire systems of the F-16, landing gear of the A-10, and environmental systems of the C-130.[15] By bringing together existing technology and components, Lockheed built two demonstrators under budget, at $35 million for both aircraft, and in record time.[15] The maiden flight of the demonstrators occurred on 1 December 1977.[16] Although both aircraft were lost during the demonstration program, test data proved positive. The success of Have Blue led the government to increase funding for stealth technology. Much of that increase was allocated towards the production of an operational stealth aircraft, the Lockheed F-117A, under the program code name "Senior Trend"

Price: 10.97 USD

Location: Warwick, Rhode Island

End Time: 2023-12-11T17:59:28.000Z

Shipping Cost: 5.15 USD