Stealth aircraft (F-117 Nighthawk)
Avión furtivo (F-117 Nighthawk)
- Date
- 1981 · confidence high
- Place
- Lockheed Skunk Works, Burbank, California, United States; tested at Groom Lake, Nevada
- Credited to
- Ben Rich, Denys Overholser (Lockheed); based on the equations of Pyotr Ufimtsev
- People
- 👤 Ben Rich1925–1995👤 Denys Overholser?–2026
- Field
- Conflict
What it is
The first operational aircraft designed to be almost invisible to radar through computer-calculated facets and absorbent materials. It proved its worth in the 1991 Gulf War.
What it led to
- American air superiority and the B-2, F-22 and F-35
- The race for radar and stealth aircraft in Russia and China
- The computer-aided design of military shapes
Built on
- Radar1935
- Ufimtsev's diffraction theory
- numerical computation
Made possible
- B-2 Spirit
- F-35
- stealth drones