The F-117A Stealth Fighter is designed to be undetectable by radar. Developed in great secrecy during the Cold War, it spearheaded the air assault on Iraq in 1991. At the Controls investigates the secret origins of the Stealth program and how the F-117A is able to penetrate heavily defended airspace that no other plane could venture near. At the Controls takes you on a combat mission with the F-117A, revealing how to attack enemy command bunkers with laser-guided bombs and how to defeat modern antiaircraft defenses.
The most in-depth Stealth fighter book ever follows the development, operation, technology, testing, and history of the F-117 Nighthawk. A special section details F-117 combat operations in Panama and the Gulf War.
An in-depth look at the lives of Stealth Fighter pilots describes how they are selected and trained and how they prepared for the air campaign during the Persian Gulf War.
"Have Blue and the F-117A: Evolution of the "Stealth Fighter" documents the history, observations, and lessons learned from the development and acquisition of the first very-low-observable combat aircraft. The book is a case study of the high-payoff, low-profile strike fighter development effort (code-named "Have Blue" and "Senior Trend"). In 1991, the aircraft played a key role in the air campaign against Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. The book describes the clear vision, strong leadership and teamwork, rapid-response decision making, and keen focus on achieving an operational capability that marked the project. Also discussed are potential applications of the strategies used in the project to today's acquisition environment.
"Much of [this book] is devoted to a basic discussion of how stealth works and why it is effective in reducing the number of shots taken by defensive systems. Treat this little primer as a stepping off point for discovering more of the complexities of low observability. ... [This book] should also shed light on why complex technologies like stealth cost money to field. The quest for stealth is ongoing... In fact, stealth aircraft will have to work harder than ever. The major difference from 1998 to 2010 is that defense plans no longer envision an all-stealth fleet. ... The radar game of 2020 and 2030 will feature a lot of assists and the tactics that go along with that."--P. 7.
Two-volume collection of case studies on aspects of NACA-NASA research by noted engineers, airmen, historians, museum curators, journalists, and independent scholars. Explores various aspects of how NACA-NASA research took aeronautics from the subsonic to the hypersonic era.-publisher description.
Rise of the War Machines: The Birth of Precision Bombing in World War II examines the rise of autonomy in air warfare from the inception of powered flight through the first phase of the Combined Bomber Offensive in World War II. Raymond P. O’Mara builds a conceptual model of humans, machines, and doctrine that demonstrates a distinctly new way of waging warfare in human-machine teams. Specifically, O’Mara examines how the U.S. Army’s quest to control the complex technological and doctrinal system necessary to execute the strategic bombing mission led to the development of automation in warfare. Rise of the War Machines further explores how the process of sharing both physical and cognitive control of the precision bombing system established distinct human-machine teams with complex human-to—human and human-to-machine social relationships. O’Mara presents the precision bombing system as distinctly socio-technical, constructed of interdependent specially trained roles (the pilot, navigator, and bombardier); purpose-built automated machines (the Norden bombsight, specialized navigation tools, and the Minneapolis-Honeywell C-1 Autopilot); and the high-altitude, daylight bombing doctrine, all of which mutually shaped each other’s creation and use.
