Posted on 01/24/2011 9:08:03 PM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld
March 27, 1999: it was the fourth night of Operation Allied Force, the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia. The effort's initial phase had gone remarkably well; U.S. and allied aircraft had inflicted heavy damaged on Serb air defenses and other critical targets, without the loss of a single NATO aircraft. When the Serbs tried to fight back, they generally paid a high price; three of their MiG-29 Fulcrums had been shot down in the early hours of the conflict, and a number of surface-to-air missile (SAM) batterys had been knocked out of action as well.
But the Serbs would soon exact their revenge--and against an unlikely target. The first U.S. aircraft lost in Allied Force was an F-117 stealth fighter. Almost invisible to radar (and largely invulnerable to enemy air defenses), the Nighthawk had made its reputation over Iraq almost a decade earlier and was assigned to high-value Serbian targets.
After dropping his bombs near Belgrade, Lt Col Dale Zelko turned his F-117 towards the northwest, in the general direction of Aviano AB, Italy, where the stealth jets were deployed. It was his second sortie of Allied Force and everything seemed routine--or, as routine as a combat mission could be--until the aircraft's defensive system went off, telling Zelko that his jet (Callsign Vega 31) was being targeted by enemy air defenses.
(Excerpt) Read more at formerspook.blogspot.com ...
fer later
from the article:
As for the event that reportedly gave China access to our early stealth technology (the downing of Vega 31), that “wound” was largely self-inflicted. As we’ve noted previously, planning teams for Allied Force used the same ingress and egress routes for strike aircraft; the Serbs quickly caught on and deployed their air defenses accordingly. They were also aided by spies, parked on public roads near Aviano AB. With cell phones, they reported the departure and arrival of various Allied aircraft—information that was quickly relayed to air defense crews in the field.
There you go. Stealth doesn’t work when you know where and when to look.
That is a true accounting. There are always “observers” at at the perimeter of Air Force Bases.
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