This brought the Groom Mountain land seizure controversy to a close. It had taken a total of six years — twice the time needed to develop, build, and conduct the flight and RCS tests of the Have Blue. The new boundaries of the Dreamland restricted area were laid out in straight lines. It was not realized at the time that a few spots had been missed, but that did not matter — for the moment.
While this controversy dragged on, the descendent of Have Blue had made its first flight, undergone systems development, and reached operational status behind the shield of the mountains. A few months later, this Dark Eagle would be publicly unveiled to questions about its cost and whether stealth would work.
Two years later, it would make history.
CHAPTER 8
The Black Jet of Groom Lake
The F-117A Senior Trend
Subtle and insubstantial, the expert leaves no trace; divinely mysterious, he is inaudible.
Thus he is master of his enemy's fate.
By mid-1978, the Have Blue 1001 had proven the basic concept of stealth.
Lockheed proposed two different operational stealth aircraft. One was a medium bomber about the size of the B-58 Hustler. It had a two-man crew and four engines. The other was a fighter-sized aircraft with a single-man crew, two engines, and a payload of a pair of bombs.[400]
The air force chose the stealth fighter design, and on November 16, 1978, Lockheed was given a contract to begin preliminary design work.
Extreme secrecy enveloped the program, code named "Senior Trend." At the start, only twenty people were authorized to know of this Dark Eagle's existence.[401]
The Have Blue aircraft had been designed solely to test faceting, with no allowances for tactical systems or weapons. The little experimental plane would have to be transformed into an operational aircraft. This meant more than simply adding these systems; the aerodynamic and RCS testing had also revealed the need for other design changes.
The most obvious change to emerge during the redesign was the tail. The Have Blue's twin fins were canted inward to shield the platypus exhausts from infrared detectors above the aircraft. In practice, however, the fins reflected the heat toward the ground, making the plane more visible from below. The twin fins were also mounted on a pair of booms, which proved structurally inefficient. In the stealth fighter, the fins were moved farther aft and canted outward, in a V shape (similar to the V-tail of the Beech Bonanza light plane). This also improved control effectiveness. The fins were attached to a central spine that also carried the weight of the weapons.
The Have Blue's wing sweep was an extreme 72.5-degree angle. This resulted in a poor lift-drag ratio, which cut into payload and range performance. Highly swept, low-aspect ratio wings also lose airspeed rapidly in a sustained high-g turn. The sweep angle was reduced to 67.5 degrees, and the wings were extended as far back as possible to improve performance.
Operational requirements also resulted in a change to the design of the windshield and nose. The pilot would need a heads-up display (HUD) for flight information. The plane would also carry two infrared imaging systems — one looking down, and the other looking forward. Neither the HUD nor the forward-looking system could be fitted into the Have Blue's nose shape. This gave the new design a distinctive appearance, over the more conventional shape of the Have Blue's nose section. Although operationally required, the change did slightly increase the plane's RCS.[402]
A major concern was maintenance: extreme care had to be taken with the Have Blue to preserve its stealth. With the operational aircraft, the total number of maintenance hours per hour of flight time was to be similar to that of conventional twin-engine fighters. The portion related to the stealth design was to be limited to a small fraction of the total. To meet the requirements, servicing accesses for aircraft subsystems were located in the wheel wells and weapons bays. All the aircraft's avionics were located in a single bay. This minimized the need to remove and replace RAM coating during maintenance.[403]
Most of the changes from the Have Blue were internal — a reengineered cockpit, revised inlets and exhaust system, tactical systems, a braking parachute and arresting hook, an anti-icing system for the inlet grid, fuel tanks in the wings, retractable antennae, formation and anticollision lights, an inflight refueling receptacle, and, finally, two weapons bays.[404] Each bay would hold a single 2,000-pound bomb. Those bombs would be as remarkable as the aircraft itself.
During the Vietnam War, the United States had developed laser guided bombs (LGB), better known as "smart bombs." The stealth fighter would be equipped with a laser. The pilot would put the laser beam on the aim point, and the bombs would home in on the laser light reflected from the target.
The guidance system would compensate for shifting winds: all the pilot had to do was hold the beam on the target. It was now possible to hit a target within inches of the aim point.
Stealth meant a single aircraft could penetrate the heaviest air defenses. LGBs meant this single plane could then destroy any target, no matter how small or hardened against attack. No longer was it necessary for massive formations to […] one bomb, one target. This was the attack profile the stealth fighter was to undertake. It would change airpower.
The aircraft which emerged from the redesign had a shape similar to that of the Have Blue, but the fuselage was wider and more squat. The Senior Trend was 65.9 feet long, with a wingspan of 43.25 feet. The high canopy trailed off to a very thin rear fuselage. Seen from the front, it resembled a pyramid; from the rear, the plane looked almost flat. By late 1979, a wooden mock-up was completed. This was used to check placement of equipment and systems. A full-scale Senior Trend pole model was also built for RCS testing. This posed a security problem — such testing was done outdoors where the model might be photographed by Soviet reconnaissance satellites.
To prevent any sightings, the testing was done at night.[405]
In December 1979, a contract was awarded to Lockheed to build five full-scale development (FSD) test aircraft and fifteen production aircraft.
This would provide a full squadron of the aircraft.[406] The first Senior Trend was given the aircraft number 780, for its scheduled first flight date of July 1980.
Because of the short time, existing systems were used. The General Electric F404-GE-F1D2 turbofan engines were from the navy F/A-18, without the afterburners of the fighter. The F/A-18 also provided the multifunction cathode-ray tubes, HUD, fuel controls, stick grip, and throttles. The sensor displays were from systems developed for the OV-10D and P-3C. The navigation system was from the B-52. Other systems came from just about every Lockheed aircraft built since the T-33; these included the SR-71, C-130, L-1011, and even the F-104.[407]
Of critical importance was the flight-control system. Like the Have Blue, the Senior Trend was aerodynamically unstable. Harold C. "Hal" Farley Jr., the Lockheed test pilot selected to make the first flight, later described the plane's "aerodynamic sins": "In fact, the unaugmented airframe exhibits just about every mode of unstable behavior for an aircraft; longitudinal and directional instability, pitch up, pitch down, dihedral reversal, and various other cross axis couplings. The only thing it doesn't do is tip back on its tail when parked."
402
"Declassified Photos Show 'Have Blue' F-117A Predecessor,"
403
Paul W. Martin, "Development of the F-117 Stealth Fighter,"
404
Pace,
405
Jay Miller,
407
William Scott, "F-117A Design Presented Avionics Challenges,'Mv/ation Week and Space Technology (February 8, 1993), 43.