http://aroundtherange.blogspot.com/

Images and video taken less then a month ago down in southern Nevada where these are supposed to be mothballed. They have been sighted over the past couple years at Nellis Air Force Base and flying all over southern Nevada and California.

I also know Lockheed Martin has been flying one out of their Palmdale plant painted all grey since about 2009-2010.

I highly doubt they are retired.......

Mothballing does necessarily mean 100% of the planes get retired. Sometimes a few are necessary to test radar, a/c, etc.

The really big loss is the constant attempt to can the A-10s. We have no similar aircraft and it shined it's brightest in the Middle Eastern desert.

I bet the US embassy in Baghdad wishes it had a small fleet of A-10s right now!

But in all the pictures the F-117 is stripped down in the hangar with the wings removed and all taped up...... Now they are flying again? Besides why would they have to Mothball them in the most secure military instillation in the world? Our enemies already know all about them and have parts, schematics and samples thanks to the shoot down and espionage.

The Government said they were all retired........

The government retires them as a matter of policy. If a better plane is being built that does the same job, the older plane is retired. The F22 Raptor, I believe, is supposed to do everything the F117 did but better. They retire planes to stop the parts and maintenance contracts.

The reason I brought up the A-10 is that there is NO OTHER plane that can match it in any way for close air support. The air force wants to retire it anyway to shift funds to more glamorous fast aircraft. We need it badly in the desert now.

It's all about egos and contracts, not what is best for the fighting forces.

Yea, but if we have a plane that will do the job already and is intimidating, (especially looks wise) and was the most stable and studied aircraft we had at the time.

The F-22 and F-35 were supposed to replace it, but they cut back on the order of them to focus on the F-35 which isn't even combat ready yet. They should officially put one out of service without making sure the next is online. They should have waited at least until the F-35 was combat ready before they pulled the F-117, hell the F-22 I believe haven't few a combat mission yet in Afghanistan or Iraq. They are mostly for intercepting Soviets, escorting Air Force One etc when the F-117 was flying missions and doing some serious damage on a regular basis.

yep,a pretty stupid decision to retire that Aircraft!

yes,one has to wonder how high Chuckie Boy's "Encouragement" was to reach that particular decision?

It is stupid to have prematurely retired the F-117A. The first true stealth fighter, based on the Northrop flying wing design. (The B-2 bomber is also based on the same design, but is more obvious.) The F-22 Raptor flies better but it pulls far too many Gs for most pilots to handle. The first combat mission of the F-22 has been against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, since this August.
The F-35 Lightening II is atleast a few years away from being operationalised.
As for the A-10 Warthog, another policy screw up if the USAF is contemplating retiring them w/o a replacement! The best close air support and armor killing aircraft there ever was. The A-10s proved their mettle in the first Gulf War (1991) when they left miles of Iraqi armor as burning and twisted metal. {The Russians have the Sukhoi Su-25 Frogfoot but it comes nowhere close to the A-10!}
Our government's wisdom!

Chucky?

In total agreement here. All though I just read that a couple of F-35's have been made operational and delivered to a USAF base, even though they keep getting grounded and that they are unstable.

The F-117 was the most stable and most studied Stealth Fighter we have had yet. They were all working perfectly without flaw, just a waste of money and resources when were in the middle of several wars or bombing campaigns. Seems kind of silly to me.

Chuck Hagel!

Ummmm, they were retired in 2008.........

http://defensetech.org/2014/02/24/hagel-moves-to-kill-cold-war-aircraft-fleets/

.........In presenting the Pentagon's Fiscal Year 2015 budget proposal, Hagel acknowledged that he had an uphill battle in going against the A-10 and the U-2.

Hagel rattled off a number of Air Force modernization programs in the budget but said that to fund these investments, the Air Force will reduce the number of tactical air squadrons, including the entire A-10 fleet.
Getting rid of the A-10s would save $3.5 billion over five years and speed their replacement by the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in the early 2020s, Hagel said.

The Warthog is a venerable platform, and this was a tough decision,Hagel said,but the A-10 is a 40-year-old single-purpose airplane originally designed to kill enemy tanks on a Cold War battlefield............

http://www.pogo.org/our-work/straus-military-reform-project/weapons/2014/chuck-hagels-a-10-legacy.html

Oh, I was talking about the F-117.

I can't believe that Hagel and Uncle Barry's Administration are wanting to retire the A-10 and replace it with the F-16, which isn't even close to comparable. Many Air Force senior officers are not happy about it either and have stated as much.

Again, more lack of experience and F'ing our military and national security over.

McCain Joins Fight to Save A-10 Warthog

McCain Joins Fight to Save A-10 Warthog
By Brendan McGarry Friday, April 11th, 2014 4:50 pm
Posted in Air, Policy

John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona and former Republican presidential candidate, has added his voice to the growing chorus of lawmakers seeking to block the Pentagon’s plans to retire the A-10 attack plane.

The Air Force in its budget request for fiscal 2015, which begins Oct. 1, has recommended retiring its fleet of the Cold War-era aircraft, known officially as the Thunderbolt II and unofficially as the Warthog. Its snub-nose packs a 30mm cannon designed to destroy tanks and other ground targets.

The service estimates it will save $3.7 billion over five years by retiring the almost 300 A-10s that remain in the inventory. An increasingly vocal group of lawmakers, which now includes McCain, has opposed the move on grounds that the aircraft is critical to protecting ground troops. The plane is credited with saving the lives of numerous service members, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We are going to do away with the finest close-air-support weapon in history?” McCain said at a news conference Thursday on Capitol Hill, where he was joined by other lawmakers and even former Warthog pilots and joint terminal air attack controllers who favor keeping the plane.

The senator, a longtime critic of the F-35 fighter jet – the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons acquisition program designed to replace the A-10 and other aircraft – questioned why the Air Force would begin to get rid of the Warthog before it has started operational flights of the stealthy, radar-evading jet. The F-35A is scheduled to reach initial operating capability, or IOC, in 2016 but only by employing a less lethal version of software.

“And we are then going to have some kind of nebulous idea of a replacement with an airplane that costs at least 10 times as much — and the cost is still growing — with the F-35?” McCain said at the news conference. “That’s ridiculous.”

The Pentagon plans to spend almost $400 billion buying 2,457 F-35 Lightning IIs made by Lockheed Martin Corp. to replace such aircraft as the F-16, A-10, F/A-18 and AV-8B. The Joint Strike Fighter program has had repeated cost overruns and schedule delays due to hardware and software problems.

I don't think the F-35 is a bad piece of hard ware if they can get it working. Cheaper to fly, easier to dog fight with. They shouldn't haven't gotten rid of the F-1177. That was the purpose of this article...............

OK, I thought it was about how the military goes about retiring aircraft.