Man who shot down F-117 speaks about it for the first time

Col. Zoltan Dani was the Serbian commander of an anti-aircraft missile battery during the 78-day NATO campaign over Serbia.

The stealth fighter was shot down with a modified SA-3 Goa surface-to-air missile from his battery. They modified the warhead's guidance system that involved 'electromagnetic waves.'

James O'Halloran, editor of Jane's Land-Based Air Defense, said the Serbs could succeed because the stealth fighter was not design to be invisible to old long pulse duration radars.

Article link


Hmm thats interesting that only an older type of radar was capable of locking on to it. They don't say whether or not the B-2, F/A-22, F-35, X-47, and X-45 are invisible to old long pulse radars.

Interesting article

They don't say whether or not the B-2, F/A-22, F-35, X-47, and X-45 are invisible to old long pulse radars.

Then they really would'nt be all that stealth

i wonder where they got the idea about modifying it to detect stealth planes. i dont know if the Serbs are very knowledgeable like thinking hey if we Serbs do dis, it would definitely detect stealth planes and we are bound to shoot one down sooner or later. the Russians maybe? they have been selling the Serbs weaponry.

Must another thread be started on this?


They shot it down because they knew it was coming, and knew almost exactly the path it would be on. If it weren’t for those two bits of data, they couldn’t have shot it down. This was a planning failure, not a technology failure people. Lets move on…

>>
The stealth fighter was shot down with a modified SA-3 Goa surface-to-air missile from his battery. They modified the warhead's guidance system that involved 'electromagnetic waves.'
>>

The question many have is whether or not this 'EM Waves' (which basically references anything from direct current to RF to light based specular specie) is relative to something like PCLS in which you are exploiting ambient background radiation to shadow track the aircraft.

'Super RWR' Tamara in which case it's probably something like an ESM catch from somebody's jam strobe or comint being used to predictively lane out the approach and egress vectors (since the 117 has no active radar and I don't think we're dumb enough to broadcast from it in the mission area).

Or something relative to a secondary seeker capability on the missile itself being able to attack targets with either optical homing (including plume track and UV) or exploitation of longer bandwidths as a function of using the entire missile as a dipole array. Such (IR) homing mods exist on the SA-6 mod for instance.

The basics of Goa are well known as a C-Band RFCG system, IF you can see the threat or it's disruptive presence in the secondary (side lobe) antenna gains, in theory you can command the missile to follow a bearing and then detonate in proximity based on the missile beacon location if nothing else.

The problem then becomes that this is a very crude and EA vulnerable guidance method because while a 'long pulse duration' radar has high average outputs (necessary to overload the RAM's ability to convert to heat before resonating on a secondary frequency harmonic spike). It also has HUGE range gate and inverse bearing gain vulnerabilities in which to open-front-end (no guard channel, an effect which requires very tight bearing:range pulse control) insert errors that show up as false antenna tracking point references (Low Blow) or outright multitarget saturation (Flat Face/Squat Eye).

Given that Flat Face is C-band and Low Blow is I-Band, with just huge antenna sizes and very generic scan controls; it seems unlikely that you could get adequate bearing fineness to make a viable shot happen.

At which point, you are back at the weapon and either salvo launch of a very large number of saturating shots with near-random command detonation. Or a sophisticated (onboard autonomous) 'proximity fuze' system which interacts with the airframe in some other way.

Laser Diodes could replace any RF fuzing and I suppose if the Cockroach was black-on-grey 'highlighted' against an overcast cloudbase, it could become vulnerable to a secondary EOCG backup channel track.

But the F-117 would have to have no MAWS or EXCM decoy options to cue it's own defensive profile and this also seems 'unlikely' given the jet's absurdly poor vision arc and required steady-state runin focus by the pilot during LGB attack into a WARPAC era defensive density built around multiple-tens of these very weapons.

CONCLUSION:
Something still stinks over this. Whether various tales of a 'combined arms operation' pushing a supporting Prowler off station with threatened intercept. Or French espionage giveaway of targets and route tracks. Or Chinese PCLS (supposedly under test to track Tomahawks). There is a missing factor that just doesn't support the survival of these large scale (largely fixed) systems for a period necessary to prolongedly search for and engage a single penetrator without being suppressed, hardkilled, or go-around avoided.



KPl.


LINK-
FAS S-125 Neva/Pechora
www.fas.org...

They shot it down because they knew it was coming, and knew almost exactly the path it would be on. If it weren’t for those two bits of data, they couldn’t have shot it down. This was a planning failure, not a technology failure people. Lets move on…

A yep...

There's a pretty nice thread on this somewhere...one of the aerophiles I'm sure can find it quickly enough....

Look at the pics of the wreckage, that was not a missile that shot it down.

As previously mentioned, they knew the times and route. Once they detected the aircraft, they used AAA to bring it down.

"At times, they acted like amateurs," Dani said, listing some ways the Serbs managed to breach NATO communications security, including eavesdropping on pilots' conversations with AWACS surveillance planes.

"I personally listened to their pilots' conversations, learning about their routes and bombing plans," Dani said.

I think that what he said here kind of shows that he knew the route of the F-117 and shot blindly into the air hoping to hit it. If he knew the bombing plans and routes it would not be too hard to come up with a scheme to shoot down the F-117.


USA Today link

[edit on 27-10-2005 by itmg]

The real 'amateurish' nature of the F-117 employment is threefold:

1. An utter inability by virtue of payload bay and internal fuel allocation, to achieve more than a statistical 570nm radius with P2-mod class LGB. Longer bays would make longer (powered or glide) weapons practical. As would bulged doors. It would also cut down on the number of backup or repeat missioned droppers having to come back the next night.

2. The USAF /persisted/ in a PGM roadmap which gave the CMUP IAM capability first priority for integration on the Bombers so that they wouldn't be the sole 'platform without a mission' as SIOP wound down to nothing. This gave them JDAM and GAM at a time when the tacair ability to generate vastly greater sorties over intra-theater radii that were ten times shorter than even Heyford:Sarajevo could match was being utterly ignored. And it was the latter that SHOULD have been emphasized as a means to put more bombs on target without undue regard for the delivery mode (weathered out and approach for laze constraints on actual weapon ballistic capabilties) for a 60 plane, 'silver bullet', force. Even if only as a further fractional force high-threat area or bad met leveraged option.

3. The F-117 was always intended to have a decent all LPI precision mapping radar system. In fact, I think the cooling and aperture volume are still there today. With the failures of the various Norden (APG-76 on A-6F) and Westinghouse (whatever they were doing for the A-12, APQ-183?) development efforts, this never eventuated as a self-paid upgrade. Which is also silly since you cannot adequately (let alone 'on the fly') target for PTOD munitions without a radar offset and velocity update to compensate for the satellite stereo error and you can't avoid fly-under backlighting effects if your optical gear needs LOS.

Period. Dot.

As far as 'AAA speckles or major missile blast damage' goes, there is no practical way to tell from the limited number of photos available and given the upside down attitude of the majority of the wreckage what the visible damage is or where it was taken. Indeed, the Cockroach has a _known_ departure mode which is basically falling leaf so that if you lose a tail or are otherwise shock bubble departed at certain combinations of airspeed and AOA for roll index, as the canopy comes off, it will 'settle' with little apparent damage. Even though the stall is basically unrecoverable.

If the missile went off over the jet as it was trying to work the fuzing bubble, there is an excellent chance that the airframe will show minimal damage and/or have most of it isolated from view. What is present could readily be related to crash or post crash fragmentation kinetics of the airframe itself or an outside ('bullet holes') secondary attack.

The fact remains that these are very high asset value airframes which should NEVER be brought within 20 miles of a known target approach lane, let alone a sprawled urban center.

Yet the 117 delivery mode had changed little from the initial nights over Baghdad 8 years before when we were flying 10-12,000ft ingresses to get good ballistics on the GBU-10 because it had the steeper fall angle and the period IRADS was a piece of crap for resolution and stabilized image hold.

Is this an example of 'bad tactics' or failed OPSEC? I don't think so. It is failure to apply available technology to change a known vulnerability of the airframe (when the initial DS pilots reported back from their first night raids on January 17th, 1991; they ALL commented how the flak was so thick it was 'only a matter of time and repeated penetration' until statistical averages caught up.)


KPl.

Originally posted by itmg

"At times, they acted like amateurs," Dani said, listing some ways the Serbs managed to breach NATO communications security, including eavesdropping on pilots' conversations with AWACS surveillance planes.

"I personally listened to their pilots' conversations, learning about their routes and bombing plans," Dani said.

I think that what he said here kind of shows that he knew the route of the F-117 and shot blindly into the air hoping to hit it. If he knew the bombing plans and routes it would not be too hard to come up with a scheme to shoot down the F-117.


USA Today link

[edit on 27-10-2005 by itmg]

No planes are invincible. F-117 is not steathly from every possible angle. In order for the F-117 to successfully complete a mission, many collaborations have to be involved. For instance, f-117 has mutiple rador sensors in the front of the plane which detects radar from mutiple sources and ANGLE, thus, it finds the most optimal flight path to penetrate air defenses. Also, before F-117 can even go near the target, the area have to be sweeped for any threat from air or ground. So, it is very possible that someone dropped the ball here, or their modded SAM was indeed effective, or both things occured.

Notice the artical stated that US did not do a good job of hunting down SAM sites.

Also, the design of B-2, F-22, etc is still top secret, and I'm not say such moded SAM will be effective. B-2 cost 1 billion dollars each. yes with a B. SO it better last for a while.

Stealthy is like data encryption in a sense that it only takes time to defeat it.
For instance, any airshows featuring stealthy aircrafts, you can not get near enough so you can actually run up to it and scratch the outer layer so you can get compounds under your finger nails and analyst it later.

Originally posted by SportyMB
Interesting article

They don't say whether or not the B-2, F/A-22, F-35, X-47, and X-45 are invisible to old long pulse radars.

Then they really would'nt be all that stealth

WEll, the F-117 is supp to be a stealth a/c too now, innit?

And whats the deal with your signature sporty?
I bet there's a story behind it which i'm dying to hear

I think it must have been a chance happening I mean has it ever happened since??

Originally posted by Inhotep
No planes are invincible. F-117 is not steathly from every possible angle. In order for the F-117 to successfully complete a mission, many collaborations have to be involved. For instance, f-117 has mutiple rador sensors in the front of the plane which detects radar from mutiple sources and ANGLE, thus, it finds the most optimal flight path to penetrate air defenses. Also, before F-117 can even go near the target, the area have to be sweeped for any threat from air or ground. So, it is very possible that someone dropped the ball here, or their modded SAM was indeed effective, or both things occured.

Notice the artical stated that US did not do a good job of hunting down SAM sites.

The US did an amazingly poor job of destroying SAM sites and AAA. In fact, shortly before the F117 was downed a US military spokesman stated that Serbia's air defences had been crippled. I believe that this wasnt simply media posturing and that the US military were sure that their was little chance of a SAM or AAA treatening their aircraft, and therefore they began to deploy aircraft in more vulnerable positions.

There were (somewhat experimental) modifications done to a number of SAM systems, and also systems in place to confuse radar seeking weaponry in order to increase the possibility that such older longer range radar could be used to target incoming aircraft and cruise missiles (from memory, it had been determined before the air war began that such radar could be successful in particular against stealth aircraft, so it would be natural to propose that targeting systems were modified to suit). Serbian engineers and scientists often think in terms of Tesla and his experiments, so it is not beyond reasonable thought that they would attempt such modifications and indeed by successful.

I believe that the targeting and destruction of such 'false' radar installations (often installed where the 'true' radar units used to be) and other 'false' units is one reason that the US miscalculated the damage done to the Serbian military.

I am not sure of Russian involvement, its a hazy issue. The Russians did smuggle anti-aircraft systems into the country (including S300 systems) but it is not believed that these systems were ever put into successful operation. One S300 was believed to have been destroyed by a US strike as soon as it had been deployed, and any others were therefore not used. The systems appear to have been brought in after the air-war had begun (which is why i do not think there was any major Russian assistance in terms of weapon systems and radar). It is believed that the Russians did help listen in on communications between pilots and air command, as referred to in that article.

After that incident, it appears as though the F117 (and other aircraft) were used rather more carefully to avoid the possibility of further losses.

Neutrino: It hasnt happened since because the F117's havent been used against an enemy with the capability of shooting one down.

Yeah, thats all well and good, but being the most important aspect of this whole incident is being left out and purposely disregarded, where skippytjc and COOL HAND made mention of:

The F-117 shot down had been running a flight path that had been previously run over and over on a number of previous F-117 missions.

How hard is it to anticipate and predictably target an aircraft that is repeatedly flying the same flight path over and over?

zvezdar:

It hasnt happened since because the F117's havent been used against an enemy with the capability of shooting one down.

Your quite sure of this?
Is it because the US Air Force is worried about getting another taken down, or simply the application of adjustment, where lessons learned are re-applied and adapted? Note that air doctrines are not set in stone, and are subject to change via lessons learned from past mistakes.





seekerof

Pictures of the plane being shot down.

[edit on 30-10-2005 by NR]

Not that particular F-117, nope.

However, the thousands of missions flown before and after, sounds like the aircraft lived up to being stealthy and accomplishing its mission(s).

With the inception of UAV's and UCAV's entering service in the coming future, a pilots life won't be at risk anymore if shot down.

But for now, the F-117 and pilot will be seeing combat in any potential hostilities and I, for one, am glad it's on our side.

[edit on 30-10-2005 by Midav]

Nah, NR.
Your play on this incident is befuddling to me, especially to me.
You portray a national pride, yet take offense when others attack your sense of national pride or Iran.

What is more interesting is the hypothetical implications of "if" some took to posting Iranian trashed wreckages and calling it Iranian hyped superiority.
Be assured, I could find loads of such wrackages of Iranian aircraft that have been downed by Iraqi pilots and a variety of AA systems, all the while, making fun about how superior the stuff is.....like your trying to do now, by chanting "Not so stealthy now is it?"

Remember, there is an old saying that what comes around, goes around.
Your honor dictates otherwise.




seekerof

[edit on 30-10-2005 by Seekerof]

Ok look at it this way, theres 2 Iranians in here, and like over 200 americans in this forum that have something against me and always say trash in my threads, u know how many u2us i got that are all racist comments coming from members? mabey i over reacted but how cant i when i got everybody against me because i'm persian.

Originally posted by NR
...u know how many u2us i got that are all racist comments coming from members? mabey i over reacted but how cant i when i got everybody against me because i'm persian.

With perseverance, NR.

I am not against you, never have been.
I have always portrayed my comments to your topics and postings with respect, never intentionally seeking to incite you.
We are both patriotic, thus, we are inherently prideful, probably to a fault.

I can remember a time when I was one of but a very small minority on this board that backed this current war on Iraq. Can you imagine the amount of rhetoric filled hateful u2us I received over this?

Perseverance, NR.



But back to the topic at hand, those were nice pictures.
Though I had seen them before, thanks for providing them.
They only lend to the importance of lessons learned.




seekerof

[edit on 30-10-2005 by Seekerof]