[IWAR] MIL Pentagon: Downed stealth plane won't tell tales (fwd)

[Puhelin Luettelo <waste@zor.hut.fi>]

From: 7Pillars Partners <partners@sirius.infonex.com>

   Pentagon: Downed stealth plane won't tell tales
   3.49 a.m. ET (750 GMT) April 21, 1999
   
   By Anne Gearan, Associated Press
   
     FOOTNOTE: WASHINGTON (AP) The Pentagon is fairly sure what brought
     down an F-117A stealth fighter early in the air campaign in
     Yugoslavia, but will not say what investigators have turned up.
     
     Studying the wreckage will not help other countries build their own
     radar-evading planes, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
     
     The American F-117A jet went down March 27, four days into the
     bombing campaign against Serb-led Yugoslavia. The pilot, who ejected,
     was rescued by U.S. forces. Serbs claimed they shot down the plane,
     but the U.S. military will not confirm that.
     
     "We are fairly confident that in this case we do know what happened''
     to the $45 million plane, Air Force Maj. Gen. Bruce Carlson said at a
     briefing Tuesday, but the Pentagon will not discuss it because the
     punitive air campaign is ongoing.
     
     Carlson said accidents and malfunctions have not been ruled out after
     an initial investigation. He also said investigators have ruled out
     "an act of God or loss of consciousness of the pilot.'' Official word
     on the cause of the crash, if it is ever released, probably will not
     come until after the bombing campaign ends, he said.
     
     Six other F-117s have crashed, out of a fleet of more than 60 built
     between 1982 and 1990. The other crashes were accidental.
     
     Just after the plane went down early in the bombing campaign,
     television crews filmed happy Serbs posing with the wreckage, some of
     which may have been shipped to Russia for study. The Russian
     government disagrees with the NATO campaign but so far has shown no
     indication it will enter the conflict.
     
     Asked about the possibility that the plane's loss might give other
     governments access to U.S. stealth technology, Carlson said: "Sure,
     that concerns us. We don't like to give anything away.''
     
     But Carlson, an expert on the history and use of stealth technology
     who has flown the plane extensively, said that while the jet's
     stealth features are effective, they represent technology of about 20
     years ago.
     
     "We've put a lot of distance between (that plane) and the planes
     we're building now,'' Carlson said. "That material, should it have
     gone to Russian hands ..., we think that loss is minimal.''
     
     "Low observable,'' or stealth airplanes, are less visible to enemy
     radar because of their angular design and the composition of the
     plane's exterior, or skin.
     
     The F-117 was designed in the late 1970s to be a stealth plane, which
     made it an improvement over initial efforts to apply stealth
     technology to existing planes. The B-2 bomber, also being used in the
     Yugoslav campaign, represents the third generation of the technology.
     The F-22 fighter, still in development, represents the latest
     advances.
     
     "The science involved in making an airplane low-observable are not
     secret,'' Carlson said. "The technology is available in a number of
     places.''
     
     But only the United States has the sophisticated manufacturing
     capability to build stealth planes, he said.