Summary: When Lockheed's F-117 Nighthawk entered service in 1983, it revolutionized military aviation by using stealth over speed to evade detection.
-This breakthrough stemmed from Denys Overholser at Lockheed's Skunk Works, who discovered Soviet physicist Pyotr Ufimtsev's work on radar wave diffraction.
-This led to the creation of the Hopeless Diamond model, whose radar cross-section was so low that it became invisible during tests, necessitating the invention of a new "stealth pole."
-Despite initial skepticism, these advancements paved the way for the F-117, marking a significant milestone in stealth technology and military aviation history.
When Lockheed’s legendary F-117 Nighthawk first entered service in 1983, it brought with it a revolution in military aviation. After decades of focusing on the development of higher and faster-flying aircraft to avoid enemy air defenses, the Nighthawk proved that, through a radar-defeating design, a subsonic aircraft could actually be more survivable.
What followed was decades worth of stealth innovation, competition, and advancement… but before the Nighthawk could change the world, it was up to Ben Rich, the head of Lockheed’s famed Skunk Works at the time, to sell the Air Force on the idea.
And in order to do that, Skunk Works first had to invent a stealth pole for the Air Force.
The stealth design leveraged by Skunk Works may have been uniquely American, but it was actually built upon the collective expertise of a number of scientists and researchers — some of whom even came from the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. Famously, the concept that led to........