The US Air Force Retired the F-117 Nighthawk in 2008 and Never Stopped Flying It. The Service Now Says the Aircraft Will Stay in the Air Until 2034 — 26 Years After Its Own Retirement.

Summary and Key Points: The US Air Force retired the F-117 Nighthawk in 2008, and it is still flying today. The service has said the aircraft will remain in the air until 2034 — 26 years after the retirement ceremony. Lockheed built 64 of them: 5 development airframes and 59 production F-117As, in a classified program costing about $6,560,000,000, of which nearly $2,000,000,000 went to development and about $4,270,000,000 to procurement. The Air Force flew them for 25 years and calculated that retiring the fleet would save around $1,070,000,000 between 2007 and 2011, because the Nighthawk was consuming roughly $350,000,000 a year while making up about 4 percent of the precision-strike force. It retired them, kept them, and started flying them again in September 2021.

There Is Nothing Like the F-117 Nighthawk 

When the Air Force unveiled the all-black Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk stealth plane, the world thought that Uncle Sam had built himself a spaceship.

Triangular, black, and silent, this was not just another warplane.

This was the future brought to life. Despite its impressive display and equally impressive successful service record, the F-117’s time as America’s premier stealth plane ended rather quickly. 

A Costly Affair 

In fact, even though the F-117 was a much-needed solution to a problem the Air Force had spent years trying to overcome — how to stay invisible to increasingly advanced enemy radar — the system itself was far too expensive.

Over time, as it turned out, other Air Force platforms could do the same missions that the F-117 could do, but more affordably and efficiently.

At least that’s what the Air Force believed. 

Despite retiring the bird in 2008, the Air Force didn’t scrap the plane. Instead, they’ve kept it in reserve and used it for training. 

At the same time, money, aging electronics, and expensive maintenance cycles all led to the decision to retire the plane just 25 years after it first took wing.

Compare that short service life to the years that fourth-generation warplanes, like the F-15, have enjoyed.

Or even the continued commitment to fifth-generation stealth warplanes, like the Lockheed F-35 Lightning II that the Air Force has made.

For an advanced warplane, 25 years isn’t that long of a service record. 

Anyway, the classified F-117 program ultimately cost taxpayers about $6.56 billion. Nearly $2 billion went toward development, and about $4.27 billion went toward procurement.

Another $295.4 million went into building the plane. Each unit, according to the Air Force, cost taxpayers around $42.6 million.

At the end of the day, Lockheed built 64 units of the F-117 Nighthawk.

They used five of these units as development aircraft, and 59 were used as production F-117As.

That’s a relatively small fleet, and it was a specialized plane at that.

Because of its small size, complex nature, and specialized mission set, the Air Force figured the F-117 wasn’t worth the money to maintain.

An Impressive (But Short) Service Life 

The F-117 was a single-seat plane.

Its mission was to penetrate sophisticated enemy air defenses at night and deliver precision-guided munitions against high-value targets.

It was the best at that specific mission, too.

In fact, during Operation Desert Storm, the F-117 flew nearly 1,300 missions over Iraq and Kuwait–without ever suffering a combat loss.

That was going up against what was then the top-of-the-line Soviet-made air defense technology.

In other words, Desert Storm was, in a sense, a proof of concept for what a kinetic operation between the US military and the Red Army might have looked like. 

And the F-117 was primed for that possible war.

F-117s were used in military operations over Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Indeed, the F-117s launched the opening attacks against Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime on March 19, 2003, when the US military officially invaded Iraq. The Nighthawk flew another 80 missions from there.

During a 2007 budgetary review, the George W. Bush administration identified the plane’s electronic system as its biggest weakness, and questioned its worthiness to remain on active duty.

By 2007, its electronic systems were obsolete, and upgrading them would have cost more than they were worth.

The Air Force preferred to spend that money on new warplanes better suited to the era’s evolving and complex combat environment.

The Pentagon estimated that retiring the F-117s saved the taxpayer about $1.07 billion between 2007 and 2011.

The Nighthawk fleet consumed around $350 million per year, while the entire F-117 Nighthawk fleet represented four percent of the Air Force’s precision-strike fleet. 

And because the F-117 was covered in radar-absorbing material, the maintenance of the plane was onerous.

After each mission, technicians were required to inspect the coating, repair damaged or diminished sections, reapply the expensive material, and wait for the material to cure — only to be made to inspect the plane again before it could return to active duty.

That process was less time-consuming in peacetime.

Once the United States went to war, though, the process became more complex and took longer (because wear and tear on the F-117s was greater).

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that drawing down the fleet and shutting down the associated F-117 programs would cost $283 million (excluding any subsequent storage and maintenance expenses). 

Coming Back Into the Fold 

In September 2021, as world events started to pull away from Americans, the Air Force returned a small number of F-117s to flight for testing, sensor evaluation, and adversary training. 

In fact, two F-117s took to the skies over Fresno, Calif., generating considerable media buzz at the time.

They also participated in the Sentry Savannah military exercises in 2022.

Indeed, the Air Force has stated that the F-117s will keep flying until 2034, nearly 30 years after they were officially retired.

Was the cost worth it? Without the F-117s, there likely would have been no future stealth program involving more sophisticated systems.

Sure, the F-117 was ultimately limited.

But it was the progenitor of the entire modern Air Force.

And the fact that the Air Force chose to spend that much money maintaining the fleet, even in retirement, shows how important the F-117 really was to the military. 

About the author: Brandon J. Weichert

Brandon J. Weichert is the Senior National Security Editor at 19FortyFive.com. He also manages The Weichert Brief on Substack. Weichert also hosts “National Security Talk” on Rumble. He is the author of four bestselling national security books, the most recent of which is A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine (Encounter Books). Follow him via Twitter/X @WeTheBrandon.