Hur svårt är det att skjuta ner ett stridsflygplan?

‘Unfortunately, on the day Vega 31 would be taken out of the sky, the Prowlers were grounded due to weather. The decision was made for the F-117s to fly their strike mission unsupported.

‘Worse yet, the Yugoslavian anti air forces knew that the Prowlers were grounded, and knew that the F-117s were going to fly a strike mission anyway. How did they know? Because the Serbs had spotters and human intelligence assets in Italy, where the strike missions were flying from. They had also compromised NATO communications in the area, and had civilian source in Italy feeding them intelligence who had access to operational information. In short, the NATO forces had a massive failure in operation security, OPSEC, that was feeding valuable data to the enemy. The Serbs knew the strike was coming, knew the general route, and knew the F-117s would be flying without electronic warfare support.

‘It is important to note that the F-117A is a very lean aircraft. It has no radar of its own. When flying for penetration all of its antennas are retracted. It had a single system that could function as a radar warning receiver, but the antennas are not exposed during a strike mission. As such it has no way of detecting search and track radar on its own. Simply put, operating alone, it is effectively blind.’