Thought the F-117's were all headed for museums or the boneyard? Well, Think Again...

Thought the F-117's were all headed for museums or the boneyard?
Well, think again...

Last week I was told that between 12 to 18 F-117's from Holloman AFB's 49th Fighter Wing along with 300+ support personnel have been deployed to South Korea for a 4 month "exercise". During their stay the Nighthawks will be stationed at Kunsan AFB about 160 miles south of Seoul.

Although no one is officially drawing a connection, you can rest assured that this is a US show of displeasure with North Korea's plans to test another nuclear device - possibly as soon as next week (week of Jan 8th).

Source: I held onto this info until I was sure it was ok to tell it, and I have now been assured that it is by a USAF officer, plus I finally found a link to the info at Spacewar.Com. ("US Stealth Bombers Deployed In South Korea"; Spacewar.Com)


[edit on 1-7-2007 by intelgurl]

Do you think if the test goes ahead that the US will send the F117 in to bomb the testing facility aswell as the whole nuclear complex and infrstructure?

Could be a big warning intended for Iran if this were the case and then sit back and see how Iran reacts to the US attack on North Korea nuclear complex?

I dont think Russia and China will complain as long as it is just that and nothing else.

Then again, they would probably have to take out all Surface to Air and anti aircraft platforms at the same time to eliminate a retaliation.

Or it could all go up with Kim Jon Ill sending his troops over the border to the south.....who knows?

Melbourne_Militia
I seriously doubt that USA will attack NKs nuclear facilities, Kim still has the ability to seriously hurt both Seoul and US-forces in SK with conventional weapons. I doubt USA will risk the lives of 10.000 allied civilians unless there is an immediate threat that Kim is going to use his nuke.

ahhhh so the F-117's are going there for a bit of a pre retirement jolly? A bit of a fly around south korea, then life as ucavs or dust ball stoppers in the mojave desert? some how, I do not think so, because if thats what it is, then its a massive, massive waste of money from all perspectives.

Major wars being fought in iraq and Afghanistan, police actions in the south phillipines, drug wars through out south america... getting the picture? its getting expensive! and this is just a waste of money... as theres plenty of hardware in the south korean airbases to fight a good sized war, but, and heres the but, there are no preemptive stealth aircraft to start the radar knock downs before the main package goes in...till now!

So, if this is a jolly, then the planes need to be pulled back and put to rest, and the crews retrained and put to good use, and if its the start of a major nrth korean war, well we will just have to wait and see.

This is intended to be a show of force toward North Korea and one of reassurance for South Korea and Japan, it is not a preparation to attack North Korea. You're going to need more than fifteen F-117's for that job as you would have to take out all of Kim's forces, otherwise Soul and other South Korean cities would be destroyed.

Erm, would this be the first time a US VLO aircraft has participated in exersizes with other nations?


Or did the F-22 fly alongside the Gripen recently?

Originally posted by kilcoo316
Erm, would this be the first time a US VLO aircraft has participated in exersizes with other nations?

No, both the F-117 and B-2 have deployed to foreign countries, participated in exercises with other nations, and they have both flow combat mission with other nations. The F-22 has done none of that, yet.

Originally posted by WestPoint23

Originally posted by kilcoo316
Erm, would this be the first time a US VLO aircraft has participated in exersizes with other nations?

No, both the F-117 and B-2 have deployed to foreign countries, participated in exercises with other nations, and they have both flow combat mission with other nations. The F-22 has done none of that, yet.

The B-2 has deployed to another country?!? When/Where did that happen?

I know both have done airshows before, but I didn't know of any actual exersizes

And here's the story...

>>
The F-117, equipped with laser-guided bombs and air-to-surface guided missiles, was used in operations in Panama, Kosovo and Iraq.
Seoul (AFP) Jun 07, 2005.
>>

What 'air to surface guided missiles'?

>>
US military authorities said Tuesday it had completed the deployment of 15 US F-117 stealth bombers to South Korea for four months of operations. The radar-evading bombers have been deployed to a US base in Gunsan, 260 kilometers (156 miles) southwest of Seoul, the US military said in a statement.
>>

Why not Misawa or a JASDF base? Do the folks at Kunsan have enough hardened shelters to accomodate them? What is their ground security situation like relative to both anti missile and anti sapper capabilities?

In PGW-1 we put the Stealths many miles south of even Riyadh and paid the operational penalties inherent to specialist tanking and limited sortie counts. Why not now if Kim is 'even more real' as a threat?

Do his No Dong/Taepo Dong also break up on reentry or do they have a decent CEP, even with conventional warheads?

>>
This marked the third time that US stealth bombers had been deployed to South Korea since 2003.
>>

Which tells you how serious they are.

>>
The deployment was part of its "normal air expeditionary forces rotation (AEF) schedule," the statement said.
>>

Were 'the previous deployments' also a part of Team Spirit? I've seen RSOI activities done in the midwinter months but never anything which put forces into pre-WMD dispersal conditions. Not at this time of year.

>>
"This standard AEF deployment... provides F-117 pilots and crews with the opportunity to train alongside F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft and conduct operations in a deployed environment that incorporates a variety of weather conditions," it said.
>>

I remember an AvLeak article brief on this from around 1995 which mentioned the F-117s acting as 'hunter killer' associates with the F-16CJs HTS system. Of course they attributed the ability to use the AGM-88 HARM to the Cockroach too...

>>
The F-117, equipped with laser-guided bombs and air-to-surface guided missiles, was used in operations in Panama, Kosovo and Iraq.
>>

See, here's my problem. I have read at least two sources which state that for a variety of reasons the Black Jet is not nuclear keyed. And if they are not capable of dropping GBU-24I or in fact GBU-31, it seems ridiculous to send that particular asset into Korean Winter Airspace. MASH may have been a deliberate lampooning but the weather DOES GET BAD THERE. And we've already seen what happens when idiots silhouette themselves below a low base to drop SALH weapons.

>>
North Korea has denounced the deployment of the stealth jets as preparations for a preemptive nuclear strike on the communist country.
>>

If I wanted to go to nuclear readiness posture, the bases I would be looking at would be B-xx with KC-xxx not far behind. We don't need the 2,000lb HTMs to go after most of Koreas surface nuclear and launch pad facilities. CALCM and AGM-158 will do just fine. OTOH, we will need a helluva lot MORE to seriously impinge on the Norths truly buried systems, whether that means stratacoupled nukes. Or a GBU-37.

>>
The United States and North Korea remain locked in a tense standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.
>>

Frankly, if I wanted to smack the Koreans around and show them exactly HOW LITTLE of the world 'paid heed' to their ego games, I would do the same thing to them as was done to Vietnam:

1. Mine The Harbors Shut.
2. Cut Every Bridge Into China.

Let the bastards starve completely.

>>
North Korea has boycotted China-hosted nuclear disarmament talks -- which also include the United States, South Korea, Japan and Russia -- since June last year.
>>

China uses NK as her stalking whor-se to get the U.S. to expend money and kindness to build up her own economy. The same with Taiwan, 90% of whose 'fear the godless hordes!' business in construction and banking is in fact done through the mainland.

We have GOT to stop letting these morons (theirs and ours) spike our paranoia up into a shared conceit if not duplicity of terror by which Dumb Things Happen because they are engineered that way.

CONCLUSION:
There are only two reasons to keep the F-117 around:

1. Blk.20 on the Raptor isn't working.
As in the SAR modes especially.

2. Blk.20 on the Raptor IS working.
And the USAF is scared pissless lest their 'just for air supremacy' jet start dropping 3m bombs through the weather on a 700nm radius every 1-3 hours in a fashion fit to embarrass the squeal out of the F-35 pork barrel program.

Either way, the F-117 on it's own means nothing because it will need a carrier group or Marine detachment of Queers and ARM slingers to roll back the defenses from an unexpected axis and probably a wave of cruise to help saturate what's left. That's IF they have the weather to drop for shiite with the IRADS or if they are not reduced to hand-calc on a LARS backup mode for whatever GPS-and-a-Prayer munition they are qualified to.

Since I doubt you can do any real damage to the nuclear facilities now without splattering the landscape with hot material, the question becomes exactly who Mr. POTUS thinks he's fooling.

Korea on it's own would be blasted off the face of the earth even if it was just them and the ROKs, conventionally. If Mr. Ill goes glowy he will have STRATCOM force assets he _cannot touch_ from halfway around the world removing Dear Kimmy's people from the history books. The only real question is not denuking them with carrots (which they will eat and then still refuse). But isolating them completley until they decide they'd rather eat than grow U235. Because Korean nukes in other peoples hands are a bad idea. 'And of course' we can trust the Chinese to lock down their side of the border... If we drop the bridges and seal the harbors to make it impossible for it to be a 'mistake' as legal transport ceases to exist.


KPl.

Some further LINKS that may be helpful-

GLOBAL STRIKE
64.233.161.104...:5E3R3jBfniYJ:www.fas.org/ssp/docs/GlobalStrikeReport.pdf+%22global+storm%22+november+stratcom&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk &cd=3&client=firefox-a

KOREA THE WARGAME
www.theatlantic.com...

RSOI
english.hani.co.kr...

Time Spirit is gone. Cope Thunder and Jade are still here and RSOI (or Reception, Staging and Onward Movement and Integration) as sandbox logistics is the norm for U.S. combined arms exercises on the Peninsula.
Norkia whines about nobody noticing them since their last axe murdering as usual...


KPl.

Originally posted by kilcoo316
The B-2 has deployed to another country?!? When/Where did that happen?

I know both have done airshows before, but I didn't know of any actual exersizes

Ok I got carried away there for a second, while not an independent country per se the B-2 has deployed to Diego Garcia under wartime conditions and have traveled to the UK for RIAT several times.

Except for that all the other things I listed about the two AC are correct.

This is one way to raise the stakes fast! Deploying the F-117 is a powerful show of force on the part of the American government. We've seen form past examples that when the US deploys any of it's stealth aircraft, it's willing to use then if pushed. If Bush is out to get Kim Jung Ill's attention, this is a very god start!

Tim

Originally posted by Ghost01
This is one way to raise the stakes fast! Deploying the F-117 is a powerful show of force on the part of the American government. We've seen form past examples that when the US deploys any of it's stealth aircraft, it's willing to use then if pushed. If Bush is out to get Kim Jung Ill's attention, this is a very god start!

Tim

And some more carriers will help!!
Relocate the B2s as well

"Ok I got carried away there for a second, while not an independent country per se the B-2 has deployed to Diego Garcia "

- and Diego Garcia is NOT a US territory, but a final remnant of another Empire entirely -
en.wikipedia.org...
- so it really is foreign soil.

Pretty old stuff apparently..
Like Ch1466 pointed out : '3rd time since 2003'

Here's a pic with a 2005 copyright:

Drag Chute on landing at Kunsan:

Copyright: Flightchief.com 2005

More Pics:

Another Drag-Chute shot at Kunsan:


Touchdown at Kunsan:


Night-Flying at Kunsan? Nighthawks afterall aye?
Shelters don't seem to be hardened


Flight Line: Again Shelters seem to be simple hangar bays


Lift-off:


Source with captions for pics 2-6

Pics 4 and 5 presumably indicate soft shelters for the F-117s.Infact in the background of Pic 5, one can see how close the fenced wall is to these shelters. One would presume safer measures for a/c of such caliber in esp in sensitive areas like the Koreas.

In all the 9th expeditionary and 49th tactical fighter squadrons have speent some F-117 time at Kunsan with the 49th maintenance squadron.

What would be of interest to us all is the current status ( 'most-recent' if not 'as-of-today' ) of the F-117 deployments at Kunsan and the changes involved therein after the North Korean mushroom of Oct 06. Any info on that intelgirl?
Maybe there have been some posted sightings by S Korean aviation enthusiasts in the region?260 km isn't too far a drive from Seoul IMO.On those highways I'm guessing under 3 hours tops.So if these people have discussed this online, looking for recent updates may provide info on the recent status.
Unfortunately I'm betting even the info exists, it'll be on some korean server/blog/forum
Those guys have enough sites for another internet itself!!!


The nighthawk not N-capable aye? interesting..





[edit on 9-1-2007 by Daedalus3]

Infact a quick peak at the Gunsan AFB(again presuming this is the same as Kunsan) on Google Earth: 35 deg 54' N 126 deg 36' E will reveal aircraft hangar structures very similar(if not the very same) to those in Pics 4 and 5.

Daedalus3,

>>
Shelters don't seem to be hardened
>>

Standard TAB-V 'quonset' design. They are good for 1,000lb near misses but the reality remains that they are intended to be single-unit sacrificial. You blow a hole in one side and the other (plus the internal volume with airframe and crews) contains it so the rest of the dense pack is protected.

>>
Pics 4 and 5 presumably indicate soft shelters for the F-117s.Infact in the background of Pic 5, one can see how close the fenced wall is to these shelters. One would presume safer measures for a/c of such caliber in esp in sensitive areas like the Koreas.
>>

If it's an ex-Victor installation, what you are seeing is the 'inner wire' around the HAS farm and hardstands. I agree that it puts a lot of emphasis on point defense of shelters that look like they are vulnerable to heavy mortar or certainly ATGW standoff attack but then again, I never really agreed with our airbase security system anyway. As is, airfields by their very nature have HUGE area of open-LOS inherent to the ramps and runway/taxiway system and this is probably intended to be a literal long-shot killing ground long before the HAS themselves are 'Sykes Dagger Betwixt Teeth' threatened by Norkian commandos.

>>
The nighthawk not N-capable aye? interesting..
>>

Well, it's one of those 'six of one' deals... WAJ #19 has Robert F. Dorr making some contradictory statements and quotations based on comments by Lunchmeat people-

Page 79.
>>
The F-117 is fully capable of level, loft, dive, dive toss and LADD (Low Altitude Drogue Delivery)...
>>

Page 82
>>
Although warfighters wanted the aircraft to 'decapitate' an enemy's C3I assets no-one ever expected the F-117 to carry nuclear weapons, making it perhaps the only tactical warplane designed to without this capability. Without nuclear capability, the F-117 was never part of the SIOP (singe integrated operational plan) for the intial phase of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union...
>>

My take?

1. LADD implies level and downlook capable views of the aircraft 'hotside' from radars that might find a feature they can exploit through dynamic maneuver especially. It also a heart-of-trashfire option whose very exploitation of the radar horizon effect implies detection vulnerability as a given. I also doubt /seriouslly/ if the 117 over-shoulder lofts well.

2. Between the Composites and the Delivery Profile (most still quote 12-15,000ft for the first night of ODS) I doubt if I would want to be dropping anything which could cook my subsonic jet. Particularly early on when initial IRADS resolution was not as good as it is currently and given the jet has no radar offset bomb options.

3. SIOP and indeed all other 'official' opplans require a declaration unto applicable command that makes the asset visible through a papertrail as well as tactics integration. When the plane was still SAR across the board, this would have been a no-no, especially with the various INF/CFE and START talks still ongoing.

4. They had to redesign the bay, /twice/ to get the kinds of release and munitions performance they were looking for with the trapeze fixed and the doors only opening for a few instants. One of the aforementioned quotes by one Richard Silzer I think it was states to the effect: 'Always, always, test to the configuration you will be dropping with in combat.' As a primary driver on fuzes, mass balancing, shapes, lanyards and all the rest. With nukes _requiring_ superb ballistics-as-CEP predictors to control fallout and proximal friendly/civillian targeting and given the primitive then-state of CFD, I doubt if anyone wanted to risk designing a profile which could not be multiply testflown to confirm the aerodynamics. i.e. With only a few flyable shapes and a bunch of BLU bombs in inventory, the combination of relatively slow speed and medium altitude necessary to use the IRADS as an angle rate bombing system just didn't make sense for all the other associated vulnerability and employment issues involved in the NATO-met environment especially.

ARGUMENT:
If we do defang Korea and I am not necessarily agin' it; I think we should be very open about what it is and how we will get there from here. Rather than use assets as 'actors' whose symbolic presence means more than their actual capabilities can deliver on. The DPRK is not a stable country, politically. You only have to watch their television and see one of Dear Leader's speeches to understand the mental state they operate under. Furthermore, they don't have enough mass-as-gravitasse to be countervalue hostaged to their good behavior compared to what even indirect-sale terror nukes could do in our lands. Finally, on June 25th 1950, they invaded the South without cause. In the 57 years since, neither the cult of personality nor the obvious dogma-as-doctrine (tunnels, tunnels everywhere...) on that offensive act have changed and so their bleeting comes across as wolf-cries-sheep.

On those three elements alone, their 'self-evident right' to possession of a national nuclear arsenal has long since been determined, IMO.

Just DO NOT, make it a function of diplomatic brinksmanship in a continuing aggression-for-politics-and-profits-sake. Give a warning, give a schedule and then simply _do it_ as a fully acknowledged action with sufficient leadup to make the translocation of forces apparent for the stated intent and not a surprise activity to either side.

Be very deliberate as to what you will do and push through to the end until you get what you need. If the UN gives you s**t, remind them that none of the nations which are or have previously SOLD nuclear technology to these pissant states need to fear U.S. as they already /have/ substantial arsenals of their own. Then challenge those sellers to justify their own actions on more than a commercial sales basis.

CONCLUSION:
If there is indeed a 'peace dividend' inherent to the end of the Cold War, it is that we can safely separate the philosophies of Communism and Capitalism from the simple Moralities of what is best-for-the-globe.

North Korea being in possession of nuclear weapons, whether as a means to prop up the current regime indefinitely or to 'leverage reunification' (they have nothing else) with the South before total internal collapse is NOT a good idea. The F-117 alone, in the Peninsula environment, is incapable of ending that capability. It is a rattled saber whose noise is both needlessly alarmist and ultimately pointless. And the Norkians, being paranoid militarist gits, will know it at least as well as anyone whose studies of the proper employment of airpower as a unified force model argues against the Cockroach being anything but an empty political gesture.


KPl.

I have little doubt that it's a political show of force. However from a tactical standpoint it does make some sense.

You see the F-117's aren't completely obselete yet, even if they're getting to be pretty outdated against modern systems. So I figure they could do some damage, but we'd use B-2's if we wanted to launch the first strike. My theory is that in the event that a war did break out the F-117's would be used to launch immediate counter-strikes while the B-2's are getting ready and flying over from their bases in the states. That way we'd have the oppurtunity to strike them right away with a stronger follow up strike from the B-2's on it's way. But on the other hand if the North Koreans somehow annilated Kunsan or it's runways our more crucial B-2's would still be alright.

What ch1466 said intrigued me and so I thought I'd sit down this evening and analyse/share some google earth sat imagery of Gunsan AFB.
Couldn't spot any F117s and I think this footage is of 04 vintage anyways.
Enjoy:

Gunsan AFB


Hangar Area 1: TAB-V?


Hangar Area 2: surrounded well?


Hangar Area 3: out in the fields?


Hangar Area 4: Much safer?

Originally posted by ch1466
Standard TAB-V 'quonset' design. They are good for 1,000lb near misses but the reality remains that they are intended to be single-unit sacrificial. You blow a hole in one side and the other (plus the internal volume with airframe and crews) contains it so the rest of the dense pack is protected.

From the pic I've uploaded, I presume this 'TAB-V' design is the no. 1 hangar area?

If it's an ex-Victor installation, what you are seeing is the 'inner wire' around the HAS farm and hardstands. I agree that it puts a lot of emphasis on point defense of shelters that look like they are vulnerable to heavy mortar or certainly ATGW standoff attack but then again, I never really agreed with our airbase security system anyway. As is, airfields by their very nature have HUGE area of open-LOS inherent to the ramps and runway/taxiway system and this is probably intended to be a literal long-shot killing ground long before the HAS themselves are 'Sykes Dagger Betwixt Teeth' threatened by Norkian commandos.

Pardon my ignorance but this 'ex-victor' installation is a security design concept? Or another hangar formation?
Anyways, the hangars in pic 5 of my earlier post look very much like the ones in the area '1' highlighted in the pics below; theTAB-V formation or whatever..
And this is just a few 100s of metres from a residential complex (The little blue houses). Now even if these houses are for the serving personnel at the AFB, its easy access for (as ch1466 would say) 'Norkian' spec-ops. Mortar and/or ATGWs. I gues the TAB-V design is as Ch1466 explained meant to restrict explosive damage to the directly affected couplets only.

Now the hangars in pic 4 of the earlier post do not seem to be inthis TAB-V config and this leads me to believe that the only two possibilities are highlighted areas '2' and '3' ;presuming that these hangars would also store F-117s(Since there are 25 of them here?).
Now area '2' seems to be decently protected in the sense that it is surrounded by organised buildings that seem to be the airbase command and control itself or a military academy if you will(There's a baseball diamond and a golf course furhter left). Hence this area would have sufficient sentry.
Area '3' is again out in the open like ch1466 said and is lightly fenced(electric?); again open to mortar/ATGW or hidden shoulder RPG attacks. Now again I presume this couplet-hangar fashion is to restrict any blast damage?
I find the couplet fashion to be more sacrificial than say Area '4' where the individual hangars are sprawled out and are safe from any aerial bombardment(obvious primary reason for winding design). I also feel that such a layout would require a much larger and synchronised spec-ops force taht would need to take out indvidual assets hangar by hangar. This would give the sentries more detection time and thus more of a chance of detecting and countering the Norkian spec-ops.

I'm not so picky and analytical usually but from what ch1466 said and what I'd seen on these photos, it seemed like this was something one rarely discusses here(except for planemans indepth airbase analyses) and something worth looking into.
I'm sure the AFB has failsafes in place, but the whole thing still looks a bit flimsy to me for a/c like the F-117; esp with general consensus that Norkians have easy and penetrative access in South Korea in various forms:
field agents,informers,sleepers,kamakazi-style spec-ops? etc etc..

On a separate note, correct me if I'm wrong but the USAF has never really concentrated much on designing a/c(and thus the involved flight tactics)that
serve as N capable fighter-bombers. Its always been more of a cruise/ballistic and pure bomber approach aye?
the F-105 Thunderchief and F-4 are exceptions that come to mind..
Any others?
Notably the AIR-2 Genie 'anti-soviet bomber' nuclear rocket was carried by most air interceptors of the era(F-102,F-104,F-106) but it was a A2A weapon and not a N-bomb per say..

EDIT:

On second thoughts the B-61 has been configured for almost every major USAF fighter as well :F-104,A-4,A-6,A-7,F-15 variants and F 18 variants..

Question though: Was it ever configured for the F 14 Tomcat and is it presumably configured for the F-22 and F-35(internal bays)?
Maybe a problem of it being too large for internal stores and thus a stealth compromise for the F-22 & F-35 ?
Does it fit ok into the bay of the F117?

[edit on 10-1-2007 by Daedalus3]

Check out this news article.

Could the deployment of 12 F-22s to Okinawa have anything to do with the deployment of the F-117s to South Korea?