Defense Blog reports a pair of Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft were spotted above Los Angeles last Friday. The F-117s are supposedly retired but were spotted flying with a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker.
AP Freelance photographer Matt Hartman tweeted a picture of the stealth aircraft on Sunday. He said:
"So one day at @flyLAXairport I get a tip about something special… I look up ……. USAF KC-135R in-flight w/ 2 F-117 Stealth Fighter’s! Well I guess their NOT retired after all?? 02-19-21 2."
After 25 years in service, the Air Force retired the F-117 fleet in April 2008, but in September 2017, the service received special permission to keep 51 in Type 1000 storage, meaning the planes could swiftly return to active service.
In October, we reported two F-117s were spotted at the Miramar Naval Base in San Diego.
It appears the Pentagon is bringing some of these legacy stealth aircraft back to active duty.
Four decommissioned F-117s were secretly deployed to the Middle East in 2017 to launch surgical strikes. The reason for the deployment was simple; Russia and Syria had shut down Syrian airspace by mid-2016. The U.S.-led coalition was unwilling to lose a fifth-generation aircraft to Russia's S-400 missile systems in Syria.
With a great power competition unfolding between the US and China - may be the Pentagon is prepping these planes for future Pacific warfare.
Something very, VERY, big is taking place in the world. So big, in fact, that the F-117 Stealth Fighters, pulled out of service in the 1990's after one was shot down in Serbia, and allowed to be officially RETIRED by Congress in 2016, have been pulled out of being mothballed, and are FLYING. The photo below was taken in southern California yesterday:
In the picture, two F-117A stealth fighters can be seen airborne along with a KC-135 refueling tanker.
This is a staggering development on many levels.
First, there was no public discussion in advance of the F-117's being taken out of mothballs. They just appeared yesterday.
Second, conversations with some of my former colleagues from the Intelligence Community, during my years working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, provided almost giddy information about what has been done to these planes. Even more astonishing, the first picture of the brand new B-21 Raider has also been made available as of yesterday, also shown below:
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