US Offered Britain the F-117 in 1986

originally posted by: Maxatoria
One of the main problems would of been to get it in and out of the UK without being filmed and as zaph says it was a black ops project at the time.

To illustrate this point, the women's camp at Greenham Common was still in place, protesting the arrival of Cruise missiles. Discovery of this project would have given them something more to film and protest about.

a reply to: Maxatoria

if this is the same one that i read years ago , it was because we were not allowed to have the technical information on the planes so we could do our own service and repairs , America insisted that they would do all that but at a price .

a reply to: tom.farnhill

Which is normal for a black program. It was going to be hard enough to keep it black just flying them in the UK. Add in the maintenance requirements, and it would be almost impossible.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: chrismarco

Interesting that the Brits had no interest in buying though. Isn't it?

They didn't see any point? Or what.

Couldn't afford it mate....the image was champagne and Yuppies, but in reality the crash of the late 80's / early 90's was just around the corner..the government knew that well before any of us did.

Not sure how much per unit they were back then, but it was umpteen millions more than we could afford, i assume.

a reply to: MysterX

While that was undoubtedly part of the reason, IMO, I think it's also due to the fact that the F-117 was a highly specialised, single capability aircraft that carried two bombs, subsonically, at great expense. I really believe the RAF just couldn't see the point. G

At that time we had the Tornado in mainstream service in large numbers, with the revelation of its fallibility in the very-low level, high-speed attack role still five years in the future, and were putting everything into developing the highly flexible, multi role, supersonic and agile FEFA, which became Eurofighter, having just flown the EAP demonstrator with great success. This was the sort of aircraft that would make our meagre defence budget go further.

a reply to: waynos

The article speaks of the www.f-117a.com... F-117 "C" or other nomenclature which would have had perhaps more efficient engines and greater range than the 117A which may have been more useful to the RAF. If you increase its combat radius plus the added survivability it may have had a place during WWIII

That being said it perhaps was also a grab at getting to the UK to front development costs for the proposed Naval variant which shared a few of the models characteristics

The Americans had a few RAF pilots fly them and some got medals in the Gulf I think. Also, we probably could have kept them secret as we dont have the land mass the US has, our bases are fairly open to spotters.

But we could not afford a one trick pony anyway, we were always going multi role everything, hence the F-35 and as previously mentioned, we knew stealth or at least we knew the concept of LO and I am sure the Americans and the British knew that the F-117 was a technology demonstrator turned production to fill a gap until blended body became possible.

England has always invested in Interceptors due to the various incursions of Bears over the North Atlantic..Stealth is an offensive weapon but would give a few Bear drivers a suprize though.

The TSR !

Nothing like Government interference to destroy ones own countries industry..

originally posted by: ThePeaceMaker

originally posted by: cavtrooper7
a reply to: crazyewok

The TSR !

Would of loved to have seen that in production

Yes killed by Lord Mountbatten while in Australia on a trade mission, RAAF wanted TSR 2's, Mountbatten persuaded the Australians that as the TSR 2 was not yet in production, why not buy Buccaneers ?

originally posted by: Blackfinger
England has always invested in Interceptors due to the various incursions of Bears over the North Atlantic..Stealth is an offensive weapon but would give a few Bear drivers a suprize though.

The TSR !

Nothing like Government interference to destroy ones own countries industry..

I wouldn't say it's been destroyed, it's just been changed...and for the better in my opinion. BAE is the third largest defence company on the planet now, we still develop world leading technology around stealth, UAS, Avionics, ISR, and Cyber security. OK...we don't build hypersonic invisible super classified bombers but we do build stuff that we can export and that people actually want to buy! BAE are acquiring American businesses all the time, just look at Electronic Systems and all the businesses acquired around Boston. Perhaps the UK plan all along wasn't to buy the products but to buy the businesses that manufacture them ;-)

Having worked in defence my entire career I honestly believe that the UK has the most 'appropriate' defence industry and capability in the world. Not too big, not too small....but bloody effective. Yeah...our troops could do with more support, but that's the same pretty much everywhere.

We didn't get involved in the 117 program because we didn't need f-117s simple. We were already developing stealth technology of our own, we didn't have the budget to buy them and we may have had sight of other programs which would complement our existing and future strike capabilities better.

As for the TSR....it looked pretty at the time but god they look rubbish now. We did build Concorde though!

cheers
Robbie

a reply to: Phage

Not just buying, we're the only Tier 1 partner in it as far as I know.

At the time we had the Buccaneer and Jaguar still doing a similar job as well as the Tornado for the IDS roles. I'd imagine the numbers we'd have been looking at wouldn't have made it worthwhile nor would the changes to the infrastructure needed to support such a specialised aircraft. Added in the spares/logistics requirements and it'd have been a real drain on resources. The US already had planes using the some of the flight systems used on the F117 so had commonality of spares and maintenance while we didn't.

a reply to: FredT

IMO the UK was probably smart in this decision, had they been attacked they would have had support from the stealh assets anyways. Look where they are today, they get their own brand spanking new top of the line birds in the F35's rather than some secondhand outdated models.

a reply to: Zaphod58

The Brits aren't smart enough. They could've took some and build their own aircraft. Imagine the tech given to Chinese instead. They would definitely build something out of it since the J-20. I could imagine China getting their hands on expensive space technology.

You don't rely on the suppliers, you rely on changing or upgrading the tech.

US is shhs right because of greed. Until that stops happening you won't see a single change. Overpay and overworked.

a reply to: makemap

Simply copying an aircraft isn't as easy as you make it out to be. The more high tech it is, the harder it is. Not to mention it would have cost more to do it that way.

Believe me copying a part is easy,figuring out how to make it is a whole new ball game.Been doing it with WW2 aircraft for over 10 years now.
As Robbie says BAE are one of the worlds leading edge technology companies in aeronautics..The company just isnt at the forefront of major aircraft construction like Boeing or Northrup.They always have been built out of cottage industries like Supermarine,Hawker DeHav and Avro...These smaller companies though tend to work closer in their teams and nuture projects a lot better.Seems to breed more highly held employees in ideas and theories.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: makemap

Simply copying an aircraft isn't as easy as you make it out to be. The more high tech it is, the harder it is. Not to mention it would have cost more to do it that way.

You'd think. There are so many different programs like there are different measuring tools from cm -> inches. You don't even need to copy the entire aircraft. I mean the F-117 stealth hull is a great example of new tech back then. They could have disassemble it and figure out what material it was using and start building a different design from scratch.

I mean the Brits was able to build the harrier. If they took F-117 stealth hull and slap that on it would be something different.

a reply to: makemap

It really does not work that way. The Chicoms have hacked data from US defense contractors for decades, yet still struggle to produce acceptable engines for their new "5" gen airframe. Also we have yet to see how well the J-20 is stealth wise.

Take the RQ-170 that Iran captured. If it was as simple as going all milli vanilli on the design they would have had 1000's of the thing flying over the gulf as we speak. Instead we have a so so copy that has limited airtime for propaganda value more than any real combat threat. Its not that Iranian engineers are incompetent its just that these designs are the end result of decades of R&D, design, and experimentation.

The same could be said with the Stealth Blackhawk parts of which was given or at least allowed to examine to the Chinese. Having it is one thing. Making it actually work is another

Its not just the shape ITS:

Metallurgy
Electronics
Avionics (I know that overlaps electronics)
Training
tactics
etc etc etc

a reply to: makemap

The Chinese copied a 727, which was much less complex than an F-117, using other aircraft they had bought. When a Boeing executive visited, they showed it off, and he said it would have taken a gorilla to fly it, because the flight controls were so hard to move.

Even if you figure out what it's made of, you have to figure out the tooling, and many other things. The reason China is able to copy Russian fighter designs so well is because they license built Su-27s at one point. Most of the new Russian fighters are based on that platform.

Maybe if Alan had stayed in his homeland we would of had the stealth here before the USA!
Kidding aside I’m just giving a shout out to my fellow Brit who made it happen amongst others.

www.eaa119.org...