When Lockheed's F-117 Nighthawk entered service in 1983, it revolutionized military aviation by using stealth over speed to evade detection. This breakthrough stemmed from Denys Overholser at Lockheed's Skunk Works, who discovered Soviet physicist Pyotr Ufimtsev's work on radar wave diffraction.
Flying the F-117 remained top secret for more than a decade. Like a vampire, it came out only at night so it wouldn’t be seen. Flights were canceled if the moon was too bright. Pilots were forbidden to tell even their families what they were doing.