I Flew the Stealth Fighter

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

There I was in the cockpit, hurtling toward the coast of Libya at 500 m.p.h. My mission: to drop a couple of 100-lb. Maverick missiles on a terrorist training camp near the Libyan port of Benghazi. My craft: the new supersecret F-19, a plane so hard to pick up on radar that I felt sure I could swoop in and blast Gaddafi's buddies without getting shot down myself. Suddenly, I saw something that shattered my composure. High over my stubby left wing, a Soviet-built MiG-25 Foxbat fighter was headed my way. Did the enemy know I was there? Whew!

Don't panic, I told myself. This is not a real cockpit, but a computer simulation of an American plane so classified that the Pentagon refuses even to admit that it exists. Although the Air Force is about to unveil its B-2 Stealth bomber, deep secrecy surrounds the smaller but equally advanced F-19, also known as the Stealth fighter. Even so, aviation buffs who study the Pentagon know a great deal about the covert craft. Novelist Tom Clancy featured it in his best seller Red Storm Rising, and Testor Corp. is selling detailed plastic-model F-19 kits for $9.50 each. Best of all, MicroProse, a software company based in Hunt Valley, Md., has produced a $69 computer program that lets would-be cold warriors -- and mild-mannered magazine writers -- try their hand at flying the world's most clandestine airplane.

So there I was, sitting at the keyboard of an IBM PC AT, my eyes glued to the screen. Game or not, my pulse raced and my hands sweat as the MiG-25 came threateningly closer. Finally it peeled off toward Tripoli, its Soviet- trained pilot seemingly unaware of my 17-ton, coal-black aircraft a few hundred feet below. Apparently the F-19's array of detection-defeating * components, from the radar-absorbent panels on its wings to the nose cone coated with ceramics to minimize telltale infrared radiation, was working as designed. But I had also learned in my training flights how to slip past MiGs by keeping a close eye on the EMV, the electromagnetic visibility gauge that measures the F-19's "stealthiness." As long as I flew at an altitude below 500 ft., kept the engines throttled back and refrained from opening the bomb- bay doors, the meter's red bar stayed reassuringly low, signaling that I was all but invisible.

But now another %*& !! MiG crossed my nose, and I lost my cool. I fired an AIM-9M Sidewinder, and the MiG disappeared in a satisfying cloud of gray- black smoke. The explosion, though, caught the attention of hostile aircraft up and down the coast. Soon the warning lights on my display panel were lighted up like a pinball machine. I was able to evade an incoming AA-10 Alamo missile by releasing a burst of radar-deflecting chaff, and I fooled an SA-10 surface-to-air missile by sending out a decoy drone. But all the electronic countermeasures in the world were not going to get me back to my aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Sirte now that the Libyan air force was on my tail.

I took a couple of hits, and my plane went into a dive. Before bailing out, I loosed a Maverick in the general direction of Benghazi, unfortunately destroying a nearby village in the process. But as I drifted toward Libya in my parachute, I knew my next move. All I had to do was tap a few keys, go back to the program's main menu and choose another mission. This time I think I'll intercept that Soviet Tu-95D Bear reconnaissance plane heading for East Germany and blast it out of the sky . . .