Sunday, March 28th, 1999.

The fall of the F-117A

    Q: So, experts...let's speculate a bit. How was this F-117A shot down? The RTS stated simply that our pilots were better, but that seems a little unbelievable to me (I know that it isn't very maneuverable, but doesn't it have some protection?). Even a lesser chance, in my opinion, has a anti - aircraft cannon. So that leaves SAM? Does it mean that the mobile launchers truly weren't used until now, so that, the first really clouded night they mislead the NATO strategy wizards to relax a little too much, by sounding the air raid sirens late (as if they couldn't see the oncoming danger)? 

    A: The F-117A really has no defense systems - although it carries the "F" mark (fighter/hunter), it is actually a bomber plane. It's only protection is it's minimum radar reflection.

    Now, ReflectionB92 speculates that it was shot somewhere in the vicinity of Batajnica, so the question of the means our :) troops are using to defend the Batajnica airport is imposed. It could be an ordinary PAT (anti aircraft cannon?) which was aiming at random, but the 20mm cannons have a rather small range, and the 40mm L\70 bofors are radar - guided, which automatically eliminates them. There are also Russian 57\2 ZIS cannons, on the chassis of the T-55 tank, but I really don't know if there are any around Batajnica.

    The second option are missiles. Here I would eliminate the SAM-2 and the SAM-3 (as they are, to my knowledge, retired) which form the Belgrade's ring of defense, for they have been partially destroyed (being hardly mobile), they are outdated, the emission of their radars would have been spotted instantly, their radars interfered, and, very likely, destroyed, since the NATO planes are very prudent for they are well aware that our AAD is still alive and quite capable of kicking; it is also possible that NATO is provoking the activation of the SAM systems in order to eliminate them as soon as possible. In addition to all this, one must remember that F-117A is a stealth, i.e.practically invisible for the radars. Similar goes for SAM-6, although they are somewhat more updated (they are 30 years old, but have been upgraded several times).

    A serious option are light rocket AAD systems, SAM-7, 8, 9, 13, 14, and 16, which there were plenty of at the Batanga. I would eliminate the older models, which are IR guided (they are easily avoided by using baits), and can only be used against targets that are flying away, and I would give a chance to the newer models, which can lock a target that is both leaving and arriving, and have a combined IR/UV guidance. However, these systems have a small range, like the LPAT systems, they lock only low flying targets, and I seriously doubt that a F-117A would fly at altitudes lower than 3000m. OK, maybe the clouds had forced him to, but to support this theory we would have to know the altitude of the lower basis of the clouds. In addition, maybe the pilot felt so secure that he lowered the aircraft bellow the range of these machines (we have a similar example recently described by mire).

    The last option is that the F-117A was shut down by our fighter planes, where the MiG 29 stands a better chance than the MiG 2, since it is far more capable of acting on it's own, while the MiG 21 is radar guided from the ground (which brings us back to the matter of destruction of ground radars and the fact of radar invisibility of the F-117A). It is highly unlikely that it was the MiG 21, since it would have to rely largely on the eyesight of the pilot, and it was at night. There is also a question of other NATO planes flying around, since they seldom fly alone. The AWACS in Hungary would surely have spotted the air activity of our planes, and there would immediately have been one of the following defense fighters such as F-15, or F-16. On the other hand, in the conditions of a close range air combat, even those pathetic radars that MiG 21 have could have been of some use. And another thing to support the chances that it was MiG 21 is the question of how many MiG 29s we have left, and since the 21s have rarely flown and rarely downed, there are enough of them. I would also like to say that, though the stealth bombers are invisible for the ground radars (they are designed to absorb and inconveniently reflect their waves), they are quite visible for the plane radars (their angle is different, since they are in the air :)).

    And, at last, there is a possibility of the F-117A crashing of it's own - if they can fall apart at aero meetings, they can fall apart at combat flights as well :).

    Anyway, we will soon know the details.

Bojan,
student