When low-tech beat stealth

When low-tech beat stealth

Wednesday 26 October 2005, 22:29 Makka Time, 19:29 GMT

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2C3ED9AC-1AF9-4592-9B1A-169F48558510.htm

Colonel Zoltan Dani was behind one of the most spectacular losses ever
suffered by the US Air Force: the 1999 shooting down of a F-117A stealth
fighter.

Now, the former Serbian commander of an anti-aircraft missile battery has
spoken to Western media for the first time about the circumstances
surrounding the unprecedented downing of a US stealth plane.

The 27 March 1999 hit on the radar-evading plane during the 78-day Nato
campaign over Serbia, triggered doubts not only about the F-117s, but also
about the entire concept of stealth technology on which the US Air Force has
based its newest generation of warplanes.

Military analysts debated how the planes would fare in a war against a
militarily sophisticated opponent if an obsolescent air defence such as
Serbia's could manage to track and destroy them.

Moonless night

In an interview this week with the Associated Press, Dani said the F-117 was
detected and shot down during a moonless night - just three days into the
war - by a Soviet-made SA-3 Goa surface-to-air missile (SAM).

"We used a little innovation to update our 1960s-vintage SAMs to detect the
Nighthawk," Dani said.

He declined to discuss specifics, saying the exact nature of the
modification to the warhead's SAM guidance system remains a military secret.

It involved "electromagnetic waves," was all that Dani, who now owns a small
bakery in this sleepy village just north of Belgrade, would divulge.

The Pentagon has confirmed the stealth fighter was shot down by an SA-3
missile in the range of Dani's SAMs. The US military believes a combination
of clever tactics, quick learning and luck came together in bringing down
the F-117 fighter.

But James O'Halloran, editor of Jane's Land-Based Air Defense, said the
Serbs were probably able to down the fighter precisely because of their
radar system's outmoded technology.

"We know he is telling the truth. The F-117 was designed to be stealthy
against modern radars. Against old, long-pulse duration radars, its not
stealthy," said O'Halloran. "People in the West do not like to say that."

Less visible

The F-117 was developed in great secrecy in the 1970s. It entered service in
1983 but was not revealed officially until 1988. It saw its first combat in
the 1989 invasion of Panama and was a star of the 1991 Gulf war.

"Long before the 1999 war, I took keen interest in the stealth fighter and
on how it could be detected," said Dani, who has been hailed in Serbia as a
war hero. "And I concluded that there are no invisible aircraft, but only
less visible."

The F-117 was one of only two allied aircraft shot down in the war. The
other was an F-16 fighter, which the US Air Force said was also hit by an
SA-3. Both pilots bailed out and were rescued by Nato helicopters.

Dani said his anti-aircraft missile regiment, tasked with the anti-aircraft
defence of the Serbian capital, Belgrade, downed the F-16.

Several other Nato warplanes were damaged by missile hits but managed to
struggle back to bases in neighbouring Bosnia, Macedonia or Croatia. At
least one is said to have ditched into the Adriatic Sea as it attempted to
regain its base in Italy.

Air supremacy

"The Americans entered the war a bit overconfident. They thought they could
crush us without real resistance"

Colonel Zoltan Dani


Despite Nato's near-total air supremacy, the alliance never succeeded in
knocking out Dani's batteries.

The Serb SAMs remained a potent threat throughout the conflict, forcing
attacking warplanes to altitudes above 15,000ft, where they were safe from
surface-to-air missiles but far less effective in a ground attack role.

Nato won the war in June 1999, after President Slobodan Milosevic decided to
withdraw his largely intact army from Kosovo, following the destruction of
numerous government buildings, bridges and other infrastructure targets
throughout Serbia.

"The Americans entered the war a bit overconfident," Dani said. "They
thought they could crush us without real resistance."

"At times, they acted like amateurs," Dani said, listing some ways the Serbs
managed to breach Nato communications security, including eavesdropping on
pilots' conversations with AWACS surveillance planes.

"I personally listened to their pilots' conversations, learning about their
routes and bombing plans," Dani said.

Dani said that his unit has had annual reunions on every 27 March since 1999
when a cake in the shape of the F-117 is served.


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