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tom burnside
P1 Joined: 31 Oct 2008 Location: portsmouth,UK Points: 868 |
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Posted: 15 Nov 2013 at 1:02am |
I read an artical last week and theres even a video of an F-117 flying in 2010 2 years of retirement. Is the US Air Force still flying them or have they all been grounded now.
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Dont Let Her Die She Wants To Fly
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allardjd
Moderator in Command Joined: 02 Apr 2008 Location: Florida - USA Points: 4506 |
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Per Wikipedia: Although officially retired, the F-117 fleet remains intact, and photos show the aircraft carefully mothballed. F-117s have been spotted flying in the Nellis Bombing Range as recently as 2010.
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John Allard
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tom burnside
P1 Joined: 31 Oct 2008 Location: portsmouth,UK Points: 868 |
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What about now though are they still in the air.
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Dont Let Her Die She Wants To Fly
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allardjd
Moderator in Command Joined: 02 Apr 2008 Location: Florida - USA Points: 4506 |
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You'd have to ask the USAF, but I doubt they'd tell you.
My guess is they are CAPABLE of being reactivated if deemed needed. Long term storage can be an expensive proposition, however, and periodic preventive maintenance activities need to be carried out to stave off corrosion, moisture intrusion and the effects of dormancy and aging. If not done, or done poorly for a long enough time, re-activation becomes increasingly difficult, time-consuming and expensive. US military budgets are under pressure from an unfriendly administration and the various branches of the military are continuously trying to stretch the money made available to them far enough to meet everything they must do, ought to do and want to do (hopefully in that order). Periodically, some things fall off the list because they cannot be funded any longer. At some point in the budget shrinkage process, the care and feeding of the F-117 fleet has/will become too expensive to be maintained and it will be cut back or abandoned completely. I would not look for a press release when that happens. It MAY have already happened. Not letting your potential adversaries know things like that can sometimes maintain the threat even after it no longer exists. |
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John Allard
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Hot_Charlie
Chief Pilot Joined: 02 Apr 2008 Points: 1839 |
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I suspect the answer could be simple: even with the type out of operational USAF service, examples could still be flying for other uses, such as test and evaluation (in a similar fashion to types such the Hunter, Jaguar, Tornado F3, Andover etc etc being used at Boscombe Down after their operational retirement for purposes various).
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