On March 27, 1999, during NATO's Operation Allied Force, an F-117 Nighthawk, known as "Something Wicked" and piloted by Lt. Col. Dale Zelko, was shot down over Serbia by a surface-to-air missile (SAM) system commanded by Serbian Col. Zoltán Dani.
How had a dated Serbian missile system shot down a sophisticated (though no longer state-of-the-art) stealth fighter?
Here s What You Need To Remember: The takeaway, ultimately, is that stealth aircraft are not truly ‘invisible’ to detection, and that sufficiently cunning adversary may find ways to ambush or corner them. However, while Col. Dani’s leadership did exemplify many best practices of air defense warfare, his ambush of Vega-31 does not offer a ‘cookie-cutter’ solution to combating stealth aircraft, particularly as both low-observable airplanes and the SAM systems and fighters hunting them improve in capability.
At 8 p.m. on March 27, 1999, a bizarre-looking black painted airplane cut through the night sky over Serbia. This particular F-117 Nighthawk a subsonic attack plane that was the world’s first operational stealth aircraft flew by the call sign of Vega-31 and was named “Something Wicked.” Moments earlier, it had released its two Paveway laser-guided
In 1999, one small country found out.
Here s What You Need to Know: Stealth aircraft are not truly ‘invisible’ to detection.
At 8 p.m. on March 27, 1999, a bizarre-looking black painted airplane cut through the night sky over Serbia. This particular F-117 Nighthawk a subsonic attack plane that was the world’s first operational stealth aircraft flew by the call sign of Vega-31 and was named “Something Wicked.” Moments earlier, it had released its two Paveway laser-guided bombs on targets near the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade. Its pilot, Lt. Col. Dale Zelko, was a veteran with experience in the 1991 Gulf War.A dozen Nighthawks had deployed to Aviano, Italy on February 21 to participate in Operation Allied Force a NATO bombing campaign intended to pressure Belgrade into withdrawing its troops from the province of Kosovo after President Slobodan Milosevic initiated a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign seeking to expel the Kosovar Albanian population.
The story has become legendary as a cautionary tale.
Key point: Stealth does not mean unfindable and undestructible. Here is how things went wrong for one F-117 on a fateful day in 1999.
At 8 p.m. on March 27, 1999, a bizarre-looking black painted airplane cut through the night sky over Serbia. This particular F-117 Nighthawk a subsonic attack plane that was the world’s first operational stealth aircraft flew by the call sign of Vega-31 and was named “Something Wicked.” Moments earlier, it had released its two Paveway laser-guided bombs on targets near the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade. Its pilot, Lt. Col. Dale Zelko, was a veteran with experience in the 1991 Gulf War.A dozen Nighthawks had deployed to Aviano, Italy on February 21 to participate in Operation Allied Force a NATO bombing campaign intended to pressure Belgrade into withdrawing its troops from the province of Kosovo after President Slobodan Milosevic initiated a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign seeking to expel t