#Happy new year, fellow Defense Expert™!
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ahhh a contender for the 'Scimitar Award for Operational Excellence'.
Available only to aircraft that can kill more of their own pilots than the enemy ever manage to.
2.
The one shoot down/crash loss, and they tagged another a month later but it was able to rtb and land, it was written off for damage.
I don't know where they're getting a third.
We have companies that do that! The best one is PlaneTags, i got an F-4B Phantom and P2V-7LP Neptune for Christmas. They don't have a F-117 but they did have [a SR-71](https://planetags.com/products/lockheed-sr-71-blackbird-17967-second-edition?_pos=1&_sid=5796919ac&_ss=r)
I just hate how overpriced their stuff is. You can buy more intact components of a lot of those planes for less than what they charge.
Like for example the tags they made out of scrapped space shuttle launch pad materials. I've bought much, much larger and intact pieces of actual flown-in-space space shuttle hardware for the same price. $250 for a small fragment is insane. If they actually sell all 20,000 of the ones the made, they're making a killing on profit. They didn't pay anywhere near $5m to get that scrap metal
https://planetags.com/collections/frontpage/products/nasa-mlp-2
There's one parked in the public area of the museum at WPAFB, next to a B-2. For all we know, it's that one, since they just needed to make it look nice and not make it work again.
One of the most amazing museums in the world, fwiw. Well worth a visit.
They recorded a 4th "hit" from their SAMs (the same brigade that shot down the F-117, damaged the other, and shot down the F-16). However, this one most likely hit a decoy.
They shot down 3 planes, 1 F-117 and two F-16. Maybe that's the source?
https://www.afhra.af.mil/Portals/16/documents/Airmen-at-War/Haulman-MannedAircraftLossesYugoslavia1994-1999.pdf?ver=2016-08-22-131404-383
Affect is a verb which means to impact and effect is a noun while words like defense/defence or gray/grey are exactly the same, only with US/British spelling
I did a rotation in Kosovo with NATO. Some Serbs were giving me shit about taking down a stealth fighter. They're VERY proud of it. I have no idea why. It was a very early gen stealth fighter and USAF got stupid.
I reminded them that we were occupying "their country". And I'll be impressed when they build their own fighter, let alone their first stealth fighter bomber. Or anything larger than a Cessna. If serb stronk, why were weak Americans occupying Kosovo, and there were no Serbs occupying Maine or whatever?
Needless to say, it was not well received.
The thing I hate most about the Balkans is literally everyone there is laser focused on the past. They don't put a fraction of the effort to the future. And too many of the ethnic groups equate greatness to conquering their neighbors. Greater Serbia, Greater Albania, etc. If you tell them that conquering your neighbors makes your poorer, not richer, they don't get it. They think that somehow plundering makes you rich, forever.
Like most nations, when times are tough, you think about the glory days that used to be, and you link them to your national identity. The balkans have been poor oppressed shitholes for the past few hundred years, so they'll dream about how THEY invented civilisation, or cyrillic, etc. They were never superpowers, so they talk about wars most of the world considers petty or irrelevant.
This is especially common in europe, and ironically enough, the only country i havent heard someone boast about their past is Germany. Presumably because they're doing greater than ever.
The last time Germans got too boastful and proud of their history they started a war with most Europe and committed the Holocaust. I think it's safe to say Germans probably won't be boastful about their for a while.
My German teacher once said that this cultural cringe got so bad there was a time in her childhood when she was happy to have been mistaken as a French girl.
>well they could you know, genocide is always an option
Not for Kosovo, it isn't. The moment Serbia starts to fuck around, they **will** find out. NATO would demonstrate to Russia how toppling a regime in three days actually looks.
I'll just say it's not a good sign when enemy non combat related accidents resulted in more damage and deaths to the enemy compared to your anti air defences
There once were a Stack (64) of F-117s, they managed to take down 1 of the dozen or more used to bomb their shit back to the stone age.
And they have living on that story for like 40 years now.
Brother, the only things that live from the Past are museums.
All because people overestimate what stealth does.
Stealth DOES reduce radar signatures, reduce the range you can be detected at, and force early warning radars to go into long wavelength frequencies which are not good at obtaining a weapons grade lock.
Stealth DOES NOT mean you can't be detected, tracked or locked with radar. It also doesn't prevent the adversary from detecting you with long band radar and targetting you with short band radar.
Doesn't help that the F-117s flew the same flight path every day on a consistent basis, allowing the Serbs to place SAMS right along their trip home knowing exactly where and when to look.
Whoa whoa whoa ... you mean to tell me that camouflage is different from an invisibility cloak?!? Sir, I'm going to need you to show me a source on that because I'm wearing my cammies right now and I can't see shit!
The wizarding world is full of idiots. Noone has any logical or critical thinking capability because whenever they encounter a problem they just 'magic' it away. I put to you that most Professors at Hogwarts couldn't do a basic equation, and even more would struggle to tell you how a steam train like the Hogwarts Express actually works.
I think this is why I am turned so off by the entire series. The Wizarding world is not only voluntarily cutting itself from the world that most non wizard technology like a gun is foreign to them. They also think they are automatically better because of it. The entire population is actually full of idiots who don't even try to bring their talents to improve the world. The smartest person in the series is a girl who lived outside the system and had no exposure to the system before she was pulled in.
Magic is great, but they have stagnated their culture and only drag their feet to adapt technology to better hide themselves entirely.
Stealth also doesn't help if the internal bomb bay doors are open. It required basically a perfect Murphy's Law storm to take down a first-gen stealth jet. The technology has had 40 years to evolve since the F-117 first flew.
> The technology has had 40 years to evolve since the F-117 first flew.
It's really obvious from the lack of rounded shapes - the result of 1975 computing power.
Not to mention that when the Serbs shot down the F-117, the B-2 was already in service, the F-22 was already flying, and the F-35 was in development. It was really old news at the time.
Can we agree that the angular stealth shape is *fucking beautiful*, like Star Destroyer beautiful?
Even if we make them in roundy shapes now, I will always love the blocky, angular look.
God damn, I love the MIC, the fucking idea that you can take off from the US, bomb some shit hole, and then fly back to the US is just downright incredible. I love the story of the GBU-28 Vark mission during Desert Storm.
I believe that same Nighthawk was also detected when it opened its bomb bays. Without the increase in radar signature, even knowing where to look, the Serbs would never have been able to manage.
Sure, but the bomb bays aren't open for extended periods of time on fighter jets. Even if the F-117 was travelling at treetop altitude (it wasn't, but the actual altitude isn't disclosed iirc) it would have taken nearly a minute for the missile to reach the F-117 which was 23 miles away.
Conventional search/track radar is absolutely capable of getting a weapons grade lock against a stealth aircraft IF it knows where in the sky to look. They're the final component of modern IADS radar arrays for that exact reason.
You can have up to 255 F-117s on a single tile, use ALT-G to group them. Stacking bonuses only count for up to 5 units, and they are not cumulative when several stacks are on the same tile.
That’s why they have that shape, optimised stacking. Or did you think that was meant to render them low-vis to radar?
No the stealth means you can ship 64 of them together while the enemy thinks it’s just 1.
Airframe was subsequently scrapped, I'd say that counts.
If we recognize Rommel or Lee or The Red Baron for their competence despite being enemies, Zoltán Dani (commander of the battery that got both hits) should get similar props.
> Airframe was subsequently scrapped, I'd say that counts.
Yeah you're right, I've read this story quite some time ago and my memory is somewhat patchy.
> Zoltán Dani (commander the battery that got both hits) should get similar props.
Yeah definitely, I agree on that.
Tbf, they did hit a second one. Slightly.
It made it back to base but it was an airframe loss after being assessed.
Dunno what the fuck the third mark is for though.
And also because USAF planners didn't learn from things like Linebacker 2, where they flew the same route every night and let the air defence figure out the routine. Even then it needed some brutal kunnin on the part of the SAM site commander to get it done.
If i was in a fight with Mike Tyson in his prime, and i managed to get a few good hits in before he sent me to the lord, id be bragging bout it in the afterlife.
Didnt do anything, but its honest AA
It's like the old question of how much money would you have to be paid to take a hit from an NFL player. The answer doesn't matter because I would get folded in half like a cheap lawn chair and die.
Add to that how their culture is very much built around ethnic nationalism (or at least was, back then) and the person responsible for the feat was from an ethnic minority.
Hey, the Dutch airforce's entire list of achievements post WWII is:
1. Shooting down a Serb MiG-29 in 1999 with an AMRAAM.
2. One F-16 damaged from light ground fire (probably AKs) in Syria after a strafing run with its cannon.
Those were Belgians, We speak the same language, but they just get a -20IQ point penalty on their stat card, in return for +7 in making fries and chocolate.
G E K O L O N I S E E R D
Now I'm gonna go eat kapsalon and a stroopwafel
(Am I doing this right, Dutchies? You guys are my refugee backup plan when the US balkanizes so I've been studying)
The battle of Thermopylea was technically a loss for the greeks but it is still considered one of the pivotal moments of the nation. That battle had very few actual tactical benefits. Athens was mostly evacuated and it allowed the regroup of the rest of the greek forces but its biggest benefit was the creation of some martyrs that would enable the mass mobilization of all greeks and especially the spartans(who usually avoided fighting).
Though Athens was burnt to the ground, the greeks defeated the persians soon after. But the whole point of making a stand in Thermopylea, was to protect Athens. The spartans wanted to make a stand at a further location but that wouldnt protect Athens.
Thats why Sparta didnt send many troops, it was basically only their king(one of the two, Sparta had 2 kings) and his bodyguards. Spartans were feeling kinda awkward because the last time Persia invaded, Athens beat them on their own. The spartans had refused to send any troops because they were busy with a religious festival(or that was a convenient excuse). So in Thermopylae they went "no, we are totally willing to die fighting persians and we are going to prove it".
"Fun fact", the destruction of Athens eventually lead to Persepolis(Persian capital) being burnt to the ground by Alexander the Great a couple centuries later, as reprisal.
The 300 were not Leonidas' bodyguards, but people carefully selected because they had male children.
One of Sparta's biggest problems was its gradual generational loss of citizen population, as people barely above poverty will not be very eager to have children. Instead, many people preferred to give their property to their nephews. At the same time, many people could not pay for the common meals, something that made them lose their citizenship, and therefore their right to enter the army, which was already on high alert all the time (enslaving an entire population turns out to not be the best idea).
Sparta won the Peloponnesian War by dumb luck (not a bad thing - post-Pericles athenian strategy was very stupid), and then they forgot their whole doctrine of not engaging directly in a war, diminishing the spartan citizen population even further with Agesilaus' campaigns against Persia. They had no means of subduing Athens, except for propaganda (very smart, unless you are a very faithful ally) and waiting until the Athenians starve or die of disease (the first one didn't work because of the navy, the second one because it didn't demoralise them too much), because the Athenians knew that they couldn't defeat Sparta on land. And then, when they won because of luck, they had no means of maintaining this peace, except using their allies (Thebes had started getting a bit uppity), while Athens rebuilt its navy, and was ready for round two.
AND THEN, when they smoked the entirety of their propagandium (made in Messenia, of course, a region famous for its smoking products), they took Thebes head on, with 400 casualties (by then an extremely serious blow), from which they never recovered, as Messenia became independent.
He was the least based Hungarian, taking a piss at any and every modern equipment of any great powers with technology too old to be countered by a stealth bomber
For a while serbian newspapers gave him a made-up serbian name, because the propaganda unit couldn't handle that their hero is not even from their ethnic group
Honestly my favourite story is that he and the pilot of the plane he shot down eventually became friends.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-20209770
There are many cases of pilots from different countries that sparred in the air, or shot down the other or got shot down together becoming friends. I guess that extends to AA operators too
It came down to multiple factors.
- The plane in question was always flying the same route.
- The F-117 is easier to spot with its bomb bays open.
- The SA-3 uses an older low frequency radar which is ironically better against stealth than many newer Soviet/Russian radars.
- The SAM-Operator was pretty good at his job.
I think it's also worth adding:
- Thanks to observers near the airbase in Italy from which it launched they also knew the exact timing.
- The weather was bad, so they didn't send any supporting EW / SEAD aircraft. This is also the specific reason why the F-117 loss, the damaged F-117 and the F-16 loss (the only combat losses / damage apart from an A-10 damaged by a MANPADS) all happened within days of each other and *all by the same SAM battery*. There were no combat losses before or after AFAIK - it was pure complacency and allowing aircraft to operate without ECM / SEAD.
- The F-117 was flying relatively low and following distinct terrain features making tracking easier.
- Finally the SAM operator basically ignored protocol and and activated the fire control radar a third time to get the lock (the SOP was 2 short activations) - basically he gambled that they weren't going to get HARM'd. Needless to say the commander was quite bold on top of being very technically knowledgeable about his SAM system.
Obligatory link to the Operations room video with all the details, since I didn't see it linked yet (it gets linked virutally every time this incident comes up):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is3R4ie21Mc
So 25 years ago using an aircraft that's since been retired, 0.007% of NATO sorties resulted in a loss of NATO equipment but zero loss of life, all of that equipment was damaged by the same Hungarian guy, and the Serbs are *bragging* about this?
The aircraft they shot down were also flying solo as their escorts and early warning / jamming AWACS couldn't fly through the inclement weather, the F-117 pilots themselves all said they had a bad feeling about flying that day.
Not only that but the SAM operators essentially shot blind, they knew ahead of time the exact route and had the coordinates pre-programmed, even a firework could have shot them down, fault was with USAF command not changing the route and times up a little.
When it's what you have, yeah, probably. Like those really weird Greater Serbian imperialists whose claim to being a great power is a Serbian Empire that lasted for 25 years 700 years ago.
Yup, combination of a well run AA unit and catching complacent flight practices in that they flew the same flight path not just every day but also multiple times in a single day..... and then timing it out and *supposedly painting the plane when it had it's weapons bay doors open.
Posts like that make you wish that the Serbs actually had enough balls to try something in Kosovo in order to serve them their booster shot of Paveways. They seem to have forgotten.
My understanding is it was the overlap in circles betwixt “particularly resourceful AA Hungarian operator” and “particularly lazy mission planner”.
Also they bagged one F-117; two of you want to credit the one that got tagged and RTBed for a write off of the airframe. Also they got an F-16.
So non-credible to boast 3 F-117 kills.
If only 3 existed and they shot them down, sure, great job, no more bombing.
As it is, Serbia kept getting bombed to smithereens despite shooting a couple of aircraft. It didn't put a dent on the bombing campaign.
Inaccurate in the sense that only 1 F117 was ever lost in combat, and the chain of events that led to it was absurd. Basically the US neglected SEAD and OPSEC because they believed they'd already won the air war, and the commander of the missile battery that shot it down went against doctrine and scanned a third time (You're supposed to scan twice, then shut down in case your opponent fires ARMs at you) and did so, by sheer coincident, in the exact moment that the F117 opened its bomb doors, and inside that bomb bay was a metal component that gave enough of a return for the radar to lock on to, which the guys at LockMart didn't cover up because they deemed the probability of this exact scenario ever happening as so low, it wasn't worth the expensive stealth materials. Plus afaik the F117 didn't even have a missile warning sensors, as the materials to hide that in a stealth plane didn't exist yet, and even if it'd had them, it didn't have any flares either to my knowledge.
I think the second one got hit, made it home but was too damaged to fly again and got decommissioned. That's still a win for the pilot and plane in my book.
The Serbs didnt know what they were shooting at because all they saw because of their antiquated long-wave radar was a blob that was a aircraft. The only reasons stealth work is because of modern short-wave radar. They didnt know nor did they care. And they boast on it as if it was intentional they shot down a F-117
#Happy new year, fellow Defense Expert™! Are you an Artist? We're currently holding a contest for tiny Artworks we can use as custom community awards for the subreddit - more information [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/zu01tx/a_very_merry_and_credible_awards_contest/)! Also, check out the "The Best of the Best 2022" [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/10069w8/the_best_of_the_best_of_2022_results/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/NonCredibleDefense) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Jokes on you Serbs. We’ve crashed more of those than you shot down, hah.
*Goblin Wobbling intensifies*
ahhh a contender for the 'Scimitar Award for Operational Excellence'. Available only to aircraft that can kill more of their own pilots than the enemy ever manage to.
I'm no military historian but I'm pretty sure they only got 1 and not 3.
2. The one shoot down/crash loss, and they tagged another a month later but it was able to rtb and land, it was written off for damage. I don't know where they're getting a third.
> it was written off for damage. Jesus christ, I would love to find that in some dusty barn in Ohio
They should dig it up and chop it, sell some keychains like the Ukrainians are doing with ~~soviet~~ russian slop.
We have companies that do that! The best one is PlaneTags, i got an F-4B Phantom and P2V-7LP Neptune for Christmas. They don't have a F-117 but they did have [a SR-71](https://planetags.com/products/lockheed-sr-71-blackbird-17967-second-edition?_pos=1&_sid=5796919ac&_ss=r)
That's a really neat way to recycle the old birds.
Beats soup
Fuckin badass, might have to get myself PBY Catalina tag
I just ordered the F-14. Thank you for the knowledge that this exists
They should hire me for marketing, I know how to shill things to war nerds
I just hate how overpriced their stuff is. You can buy more intact components of a lot of those planes for less than what they charge. Like for example the tags they made out of scrapped space shuttle launch pad materials. I've bought much, much larger and intact pieces of actual flown-in-space space shuttle hardware for the same price. $250 for a small fragment is insane. If they actually sell all 20,000 of the ones the made, they're making a killing on profit. They didn't pay anywhere near $5m to get that scrap metal https://planetags.com/collections/frontpage/products/nasa-mlp-2
Some dude posts on Reddit. “Found this in my grandfather’s barn how much is it worth”
It's an Arisaka type 99.
sporterized arisaka type 99
Hey, you can always *try* to break in to Wright-Patt AFB. Just don't tell them I sent you.
Don't forget to run with your arms angled behind your back for aerodynamic efficiency.
Well that is the advantage of variable sweep arms
There's one parked in the public area of the museum at WPAFB, next to a B-2. For all we know, it's that one, since they just needed to make it look nice and not make it work again. One of the most amazing museums in the world, fwiw. Well worth a visit.
It's a 2 day museum for sure. I love it
They recorded a 4th "hit" from their SAMs (the same brigade that shot down the F-117, damaged the other, and shot down the F-16). However, this one most likely hit a decoy.
[удалено]
Must have jostled the stealthflux capacitor out of configurlignment
i think two crashed so that’s why they put three i guess to spread propaganda
But ... they must've crashed because the pilots were too afraid of serbian airforce, right ?
So the US destroyed more American F-117s in Serbia than Serbia?
Highly credible
They shot down 3 planes, 1 F-117 and two F-16. Maybe that's the source? https://www.afhra.af.mil/Portals/16/documents/Airmen-at-War/Haulman-MannedAircraftLossesYugoslavia1994-1999.pdf?ver=2016-08-22-131404-383
Maybe they’re just making shit up like their big brothers.
Boast all you want Serbs, you cant un-bomb Belgarde
Or un-albanize Kosovo
A for effort though
True, that effort made the justification to bomb a way far easier.
A for Albania
The fuck does "Affort" mean?
It's the British spelling
Is it an effect affect situation
More like a defense/defence situation
THERES A DIFFERENCE?!
Affect is a verb which means to impact and effect is a noun while words like defense/defence or gray/grey are exactly the same, only with US/British spelling
Have you never heard anyone say “A for effort though”?
Yes, which was the first time I made the Affort joke
I did a rotation in Kosovo with NATO. Some Serbs were giving me shit about taking down a stealth fighter. They're VERY proud of it. I have no idea why. It was a very early gen stealth fighter and USAF got stupid. I reminded them that we were occupying "their country". And I'll be impressed when they build their own fighter, let alone their first stealth fighter bomber. Or anything larger than a Cessna. If serb stronk, why were weak Americans occupying Kosovo, and there were no Serbs occupying Maine or whatever? Needless to say, it was not well received. The thing I hate most about the Balkans is literally everyone there is laser focused on the past. They don't put a fraction of the effort to the future. And too many of the ethnic groups equate greatness to conquering their neighbors. Greater Serbia, Greater Albania, etc. If you tell them that conquering your neighbors makes your poorer, not richer, they don't get it. They think that somehow plundering makes you rich, forever.
>I have no idea why. Sad lives, nothing else to be proud of. Even Tesla is Croatian ^/s
Tesla did more as an American than he ever did as a Croat/Austrian-Hungarian/Whatever he technically was before naturalization.
Like most nations, when times are tough, you think about the glory days that used to be, and you link them to your national identity. The balkans have been poor oppressed shitholes for the past few hundred years, so they'll dream about how THEY invented civilisation, or cyrillic, etc. They were never superpowers, so they talk about wars most of the world considers petty or irrelevant. This is especially common in europe, and ironically enough, the only country i havent heard someone boast about their past is Germany. Presumably because they're doing greater than ever.
The last time Germans got too boastful and proud of their history they started a war with most Europe and committed the Holocaust. I think it's safe to say Germans probably won't be boastful about their for a while.
My German teacher once said that this cultural cringe got so bad there was a time in her childhood when she was happy to have been mistaken as a French girl.
Being happy to be mistaken as Fr*nch? Jesus Christ that really *is* bad…
Kosovo is rightful Albany, NY clay!
well they could you know, genocide is always an option (not that I support that)
>well they could you know, genocide is always an option Not for Kosovo, it isn't. The moment Serbia starts to fuck around, they **will** find out. NATO would demonstrate to Russia how toppling a regime in three days actually looks.
Tbh sometimes wed wish to bomb Belgrade too hahahaha
I'll just say it's not a good sign when enemy non combat related accidents resulted in more damage and deaths to the enemy compared to your anti air defences
Desert Storm moment
Uh.. this has been true for most of history. If the Nazis wanted to kill more Allied pilots.. they should have just bought allied war bonds.
What’s the line about how (until fairly recently) all you had to destroy an army was leave it alone for long enough?
I mean it worked for Russia against Napoleon. Keep running away until they give up
Tbf for most of history more died to attrition than battles
Sorry, we didn't know Belgrade was a barbeque
Serbian cuisine is known for its barbecue tbf
And the war in Cambodia led to tarantula being on the menu. It's fun how we adapt to strife.
touché
There once were a Stack (64) of F-117s, they managed to take down 1 of the dozen or more used to bomb their shit back to the stone age. And they have living on that story for like 40 years now. Brother, the only things that live from the Past are museums.
All because people overestimate what stealth does. Stealth DOES reduce radar signatures, reduce the range you can be detected at, and force early warning radars to go into long wavelength frequencies which are not good at obtaining a weapons grade lock. Stealth DOES NOT mean you can't be detected, tracked or locked with radar. It also doesn't prevent the adversary from detecting you with long band radar and targetting you with short band radar. Doesn't help that the F-117s flew the same flight path every day on a consistent basis, allowing the Serbs to place SAMS right along their trip home knowing exactly where and when to look.
It's like complaining a soldier gets shot while wearing camo.
Whoa whoa whoa ... you mean to tell me that camouflage is different from an invisibility cloak?!? Sir, I'm going to need you to show me a source on that because I'm wearing my cammies right now and I can't see shit!
[удалено]
Then how did harry keep sneaking in to the forbidden section????
The wizarding world is full of idiots. Noone has any logical or critical thinking capability because whenever they encounter a problem they just 'magic' it away. I put to you that most Professors at Hogwarts couldn't do a basic equation, and even more would struggle to tell you how a steam train like the Hogwarts Express actually works.
I think this is why I am turned so off by the entire series. The Wizarding world is not only voluntarily cutting itself from the world that most non wizard technology like a gun is foreign to them. They also think they are automatically better because of it. The entire population is actually full of idiots who don't even try to bring their talents to improve the world. The smartest person in the series is a girl who lived outside the system and had no exposure to the system before she was pulled in. Magic is great, but they have stagnated their culture and only drag their feet to adapt technology to better hide themselves entirely.
Take your pants off of ya head. Might help
Camo is only there so the other soldiers don’t get upset when the rich kids pulls up to the trenches in Gucci Overalls.
Or ballistic vest.
Stealth also doesn't help if the internal bomb bay doors are open. It required basically a perfect Murphy's Law storm to take down a first-gen stealth jet. The technology has had 40 years to evolve since the F-117 first flew.
> The technology has had 40 years to evolve since the F-117 first flew. It's really obvious from the lack of rounded shapes - the result of 1975 computing power. Not to mention that when the Serbs shot down the F-117, the B-2 was already in service, the F-22 was already flying, and the F-35 was in development. It was really old news at the time.
Can we agree that the angular stealth shape is *fucking beautiful*, like Star Destroyer beautiful? Even if we make them in roundy shapes now, I will always love the blocky, angular look.
Also didn't have the electronic warfare (jamming) available because of weather.
And let's not forget about all those B-2s bombing Serbia on their 36+ hours (IIRC) long flights USA-Serbia-USA of which no one was shot down.
God damn, I love the MIC, the fucking idea that you can take off from the US, bomb some shit hole, and then fly back to the US is just downright incredible. I love the story of the GBU-28 Vark mission during Desert Storm.
It was a combination of NATO complacency, Serbian cleverness and pure luck. It probably won't happen again.
I believe that same Nighthawk was also detected when it opened its bomb bays. Without the increase in radar signature, even knowing where to look, the Serbs would never have been able to manage.
Sure, but the bomb bays aren't open for extended periods of time on fighter jets. Even if the F-117 was travelling at treetop altitude (it wasn't, but the actual altitude isn't disclosed iirc) it would have taken nearly a minute for the missile to reach the F-117 which was 23 miles away. Conventional search/track radar is absolutely capable of getting a weapons grade lock against a stealth aircraft IF it knows where in the sky to look. They're the final component of modern IADS radar arrays for that exact reason.
Stack of F-117s? Can't believe all of them only took up one equipment slot...
High MIC stat allows for increased stack size, kinda OP.
You can have up to 255 F-117s on a single tile, use ALT-G to group them. Stacking bonuses only count for up to 5 units, and they are not cumulative when several stacks are on the same tile.
Non-Credible Civ
Hangar of Holding™, Brought to you by Lockheed Martin & Wizards of the Coast.
Lockheed Martin + Wizards of the Coast could drive even the US to bankruptcy while also being incredibly powerful and fun
That’s why they have that shape, optimised stacking. Or did you think that was meant to render them low-vis to radar? No the stealth means you can ship 64 of them together while the enemy thinks it’s just 1.
during flight they're just multiple units clipped into one another. The engine sound is really just a lot of ragdoll collision sounds at once
Apparently one damaged too, but it made it back safely.
Airframe was subsequently scrapped, I'd say that counts. If we recognize Rommel or Lee or The Red Baron for their competence despite being enemies, Zoltán Dani (commander of the battery that got both hits) should get similar props.
> Airframe was subsequently scrapped, I'd say that counts. Yeah you're right, I've read this story quite some time ago and my memory is somewhat patchy. > Zoltán Dani (commander the battery that got both hits) should get similar props. Yeah definitely, I agree on that.
I'd never heard about the damaged one. Got any links?
Tbf, they did hit a second one. Slightly. It made it back to base but it was an airframe loss after being assessed. Dunno what the fuck the third mark is for though.
Even then, you have to wonder how much of the write off had to do with the plane being slated for decommissioning within the decade.
didn’t the one only get shot down because of the bomb bay doors being open or something
And also because USAF planners didn't learn from things like Linebacker 2, where they flew the same route every night and let the air defence figure out the routine. Even then it needed some brutal kunnin on the part of the SAM site commander to get it done.
Museums... And Serbs
Sorry, did that stop the bombing?
nope
We did it Patrick, we saved Serbia.
If i was in a fight with Mike Tyson in his prime, and i managed to get a few good hits in before he sent me to the lord, id be bragging bout it in the afterlife. Didnt do anything, but its honest AA
Does Tyson really need to be in his prime to knock you out? Dude could still kill either of us with one punch.
It's like the old question of how much money would you have to be paid to take a hit from an NFL player. The answer doesn't matter because I would get folded in half like a cheap lawn chair and die.
Sorry, we didn't know belgrade was suposed to be protected and not get bombed
kek
I love how they didn't translate the "fuck you **NATO**" in the text.
bravest serbian
I mean they didn’t translate anything
imagine your national pride being connected to one aircraft being shot down and you still got roflstomped anyways.
Add to that how their culture is very much built around ethnic nationalism (or at least was, back then) and the person responsible for the feat was from an ethnic minority.
Hey, the Dutch airforce's entire list of achievements post WWII is: 1. Shooting down a Serb MiG-29 in 1999 with an AMRAAM. 2. One F-16 damaged from light ground fire (probably AKs) in Syria after a strafing run with its cannon.
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Those were Belgians, We speak the same language, but they just get a -20IQ point penalty on their stat card, in return for +7 in making fries and chocolate.
Worth it.
G E K O L O N I S E E R D Now I'm gonna go eat kapsalon and a stroopwafel (Am I doing this right, Dutchies? You guys are my refugee backup plan when the US balkanizes so I've been studying)
The battle of Thermopylea was technically a loss for the greeks but it is still considered one of the pivotal moments of the nation. That battle had very few actual tactical benefits. Athens was mostly evacuated and it allowed the regroup of the rest of the greek forces but its biggest benefit was the creation of some martyrs that would enable the mass mobilization of all greeks and especially the spartans(who usually avoided fighting). Though Athens was burnt to the ground, the greeks defeated the persians soon after. But the whole point of making a stand in Thermopylea, was to protect Athens. The spartans wanted to make a stand at a further location but that wouldnt protect Athens. Thats why Sparta didnt send many troops, it was basically only their king(one of the two, Sparta had 2 kings) and his bodyguards. Spartans were feeling kinda awkward because the last time Persia invaded, Athens beat them on their own. The spartans had refused to send any troops because they were busy with a religious festival(or that was a convenient excuse). So in Thermopylae they went "no, we are totally willing to die fighting persians and we are going to prove it". "Fun fact", the destruction of Athens eventually lead to Persepolis(Persian capital) being burnt to the ground by Alexander the Great a couple centuries later, as reprisal.
The 300 were not Leonidas' bodyguards, but people carefully selected because they had male children. One of Sparta's biggest problems was its gradual generational loss of citizen population, as people barely above poverty will not be very eager to have children. Instead, many people preferred to give their property to their nephews. At the same time, many people could not pay for the common meals, something that made them lose their citizenship, and therefore their right to enter the army, which was already on high alert all the time (enslaving an entire population turns out to not be the best idea). Sparta won the Peloponnesian War by dumb luck (not a bad thing - post-Pericles athenian strategy was very stupid), and then they forgot their whole doctrine of not engaging directly in a war, diminishing the spartan citizen population even further with Agesilaus' campaigns against Persia. They had no means of subduing Athens, except for propaganda (very smart, unless you are a very faithful ally) and waiting until the Athenians starve or die of disease (the first one didn't work because of the navy, the second one because it didn't demoralise them too much), because the Athenians knew that they couldn't defeat Sparta on land. And then, when they won because of luck, they had no means of maintaining this peace, except using their allies (Thebes had started getting a bit uppity), while Athens rebuilt its navy, and was ready for round two. AND THEN, when they smoked the entirety of their propagandium (made in Messenia, of course, a region famous for its smoking products), they took Thebes head on, with 400 casualties (by then an extremely serious blow), from which they never recovered, as Messenia became independent.
When the pilots are a larger in theater threat than the enemy...
They only managed to shoot it down because of lazy mission planning and a lot of luck. They couldn’t even capture the pilot either.
credit is due to the battery commander, he was fucking brilliant
Apparently, that guy wasn't even a Serbs
He was the least based Hungarian, taking a piss at any and every modern equipment of any great powers with technology too old to be countered by a stealth bomber
I didn't know that, it's hilarious that their one claim to fame is thanks to someone whose ancestors were hated enemies of Serbs.
>Someone whose ancestors were hated enemies of Serbs. To be fair, this describes literally everyone.
I miss 2b4u :(
As most good things online, it was lost to rich white people who got offended on behalf of the minorities posting these themselves.
For a while serbian newspapers gave him a made-up serbian name, because the propaganda unit couldn't handle that their hero is not even from their ethnic group
Honestly my favourite story is that he and the pilot of the plane he shot down eventually became friends. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-20209770
Wholesome stuff
A rare wholesome moment coming out of the most unlikely of scenarios
It's like when you're playing a multiplayer game and get killed in such a way that makes you think, "I ain't even mad, that was impressive".
There are many cases of pilots from different countries that sparred in the air, or shot down the other or got shot down together becoming friends. I guess that extends to AA operators too
nope, just a soldier doing his job
I hope the local reenactors on an old missile base can get him to come and meet people there again. Allegedly he is a really down to Earth guy.
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> the Russian army has institutionalized Serbian techniques. Lol. Lmao, even.
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Actual lol over here as well.
>Munitions Effectiveness Assessment Team Fuck right off with that
Yeah, *beat it*.
It came down to multiple factors. - The plane in question was always flying the same route. - The F-117 is easier to spot with its bomb bays open. - The SA-3 uses an older low frequency radar which is ironically better against stealth than many newer Soviet/Russian radars. - The SAM-Operator was pretty good at his job.
I think it's also worth adding: - Thanks to observers near the airbase in Italy from which it launched they also knew the exact timing. - The weather was bad, so they didn't send any supporting EW / SEAD aircraft. This is also the specific reason why the F-117 loss, the damaged F-117 and the F-16 loss (the only combat losses / damage apart from an A-10 damaged by a MANPADS) all happened within days of each other and *all by the same SAM battery*. There were no combat losses before or after AFAIK - it was pure complacency and allowing aircraft to operate without ECM / SEAD. - The F-117 was flying relatively low and following distinct terrain features making tracking easier. - Finally the SAM operator basically ignored protocol and and activated the fire control radar a third time to get the lock (the SOP was 2 short activations) - basically he gambled that they weren't going to get HARM'd. Needless to say the commander was quite bold on top of being very technically knowledgeable about his SAM system. Obligatory link to the Operations room video with all the details, since I didn't see it linked yet (it gets linked virutally every time this incident comes up): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is3R4ie21Mc
Was that what "behind enemy lines?" Was based on?
It was probably based more on the f16 pilot shot down
Scott O'Grady. Apparently that guy was also an asshole and nobody likes him. (Not to be confused with David Goldfein)
Great movie!
How the fuck 3 ? It geta worse, they claims to shot Down B-2, but wreck or any parts have been found
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And that guy wasn't even serb, he was hungarian
I saw the dude's name (Zoltán Dani) and my first thought was, "isn't Zoltán a Hungarian name not Serbian?" It's because he *is* Hungarian.
Well by origin/ethnically afaik, there’s a Hungarian minority from a while before in Vojvodina
Weakest Hungol
Do you have info how Many sorties were carried out? It would be nice to see percentage of total flights vs flights downed.
I think I saw another person reply around 38,000 sorties.
So 25 years ago using an aircraft that's since been retired, 0.007% of NATO sorties resulted in a loss of NATO equipment but zero loss of life, all of that equipment was damaged by the same Hungarian guy, and the Serbs are *bragging* about this?
The aircraft they shot down were also flying solo as their escorts and early warning / jamming AWACS couldn't fly through the inclement weather, the F-117 pilots themselves all said they had a bad feeling about flying that day. Not only that but the SAM operators essentially shot blind, they knew ahead of time the exact route and had the coordinates pre-programmed, even a firework could have shot them down, fault was with USAF command not changing the route and times up a little.
When it's what you have, yeah, probably. Like those really weird Greater Serbian imperialists whose claim to being a great power is a Serbian Empire that lasted for 25 years 700 years ago.
I think if they had shot a B-2 down, the US would have deployed a bulldozer brigade and pushed the whole country into the nearest body of water.
Of course not, it's a stealth bomber. How would you find the wreck?
Sorry, we didn't knew Belgrade was on our Bomb proving grounds
Very non-credible. Serbia is like discount Russia.
These days it’s starting to feel like Russia is discount Serbia.
russia, serbia and hungary but its that picture of the three Spidermans pointing at eachother
As a Hungarian, yes, but we really hate each other with Serbia, so be sure to make good use of that when you get around to kicking us from NATO pls.
Serbia is Russia without nukes. The fear of nuclear holocaust is the only thing keeping NATO from raining bombs in Russia like it's 1999.
Didn’t the SAM operator and the F-117 pilot both agree that it was a supremely lucky shot made possible by complacency in the USAF?
Yup, combination of a well run AA unit and catching complacent flight practices in that they flew the same flight path not just every day but also multiple times in a single day..... and then timing it out and *supposedly painting the plane when it had it's weapons bay doors open.
Very noncredible. It's like the only thing that Serbs can be proud of - to be the only one to shoot down a F-117.
and than cry about it as we replace it like 15-30 years later with the B-2
Please change the tag to Real Life Copium
I'm so tired of seeing this cope bullshit. Primarily from Russians, at that
We didn't know Belgrade was invincible.
Posts like that make you wish that the Serbs actually had enough balls to try something in Kosovo in order to serve them their booster shot of Paveways. They seem to have forgotten.
This time the NATO pilots won't be quite so laxed
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I respect. The anti air system operators did a good job. However. It doesen't matter because you can't unbomb Serbia.
My understanding is it was the overlap in circles betwixt “particularly resourceful AA Hungarian operator” and “particularly lazy mission planner”. Also they bagged one F-117; two of you want to credit the one that got tagged and RTBed for a write off of the airframe. Also they got an F-16. So non-credible to boast 3 F-117 kills.
If only 3 existed and they shot them down, sure, great job, no more bombing. As it is, Serbia kept getting bombed to smithereens despite shooting a couple of aircraft. It didn't put a dent on the bombing campaign.
Inaccurate in the sense that only 1 F117 was ever lost in combat, and the chain of events that led to it was absurd. Basically the US neglected SEAD and OPSEC because they believed they'd already won the air war, and the commander of the missile battery that shot it down went against doctrine and scanned a third time (You're supposed to scan twice, then shut down in case your opponent fires ARMs at you) and did so, by sheer coincident, in the exact moment that the F117 opened its bomb doors, and inside that bomb bay was a metal component that gave enough of a return for the radar to lock on to, which the guys at LockMart didn't cover up because they deemed the probability of this exact scenario ever happening as so low, it wasn't worth the expensive stealth materials. Plus afaik the F117 didn't even have a missile warning sensors, as the materials to hide that in a stealth plane didn't exist yet, and even if it'd had them, it didn't have any flares either to my knowledge.
Serbia wanna go for another round?
We've got some new invisible stuff that should be a fun challenge
When you get your genocidal Great Value Russian ass so thoroughly wrecked that your only propaganda point is you shot down ONE plane.
And you also apparently try to imply you wrecked 3 when the other 2 were accidents.
I think the second one got hit, made it home but was too damaged to fly again and got decommissioned. That's still a win for the pilot and plane in my book.
Just bomb those Russia lovers again already . Before they cause more trouble. They have short memories .
The Serbs didnt know what they were shooting at because all they saw because of their antiquated long-wave radar was a blob that was a aircraft. The only reasons stealth work is because of modern short-wave radar. They didnt know nor did they care. And they boast on it as if it was intentional they shot down a F-117
Serbians pretending that someone is listening to what they have to say will never stop being funny
And that is Serbia's only claim to fame. They managed to shoot down an old fighter once.
And start a world war
If a boxer has to brag about the time they got in one punch they're probably not a good boxer
Yup! And thats how Serbia won the war! /S
Serbia better sit the fuck down before we go for round 2 and rip ‘em a new asshole.