As his F-117 screamed over Serbia, he opened the bomb bay doors and dropped two laser-guided bombs at his target… at precisely the same time Dani’s troops powered their SA-3 up for a regulation-defying third burn. Inside the Nighthawk’s cockpit, Zelko approached his target, unaware of Dani’s efforts below. It had been 40 seconds and his team knew they’d need to break the system down and begin to relocate, their chances at taking down a stealth jet dashed by their radar’s inability to find its target.
But he wasn’t giving up yet.ĭani gave the order for the system to come online again, once more counting the seconds as they passed to no avail. Dejected, he ordered the system shut down. Twenty seconds clicked by, as the black jet zoomed across the sky above them… but the dated SA-3 system saw nothing. The system could tell Dani that a stealth jet was approaching but do little else to support an intercept.Īs Zelko closed in, Dani ordered his radar online. But the Serb’s P-18 early warning radar, leveraging lower radar frequencies, could detect the aircraft’s presence, if not provide accurate targeting data. Any more than that, and they risked being wiped out by roving Wild Weasels.īy 20:00 local time, Zelko’s F-117 Nighthawk was cruising through Dani’s airspace at a leisurely speed of just about 600 miles per hour, shielded from attack by its angular design and a layer of radar-absorbant paint. In order to avoid being targeted, Dani’s team would activate their radar for just 40 total seconds before breaking down and relocating. Their presence would prompt enemy radar sites to come online and provide the HARM missiles with a beacon to home in on. also deployed radar hunters.Īmerica’s radar-hunting AGM-88 HARM missiles were often carried into the fight by daring pilots who would intentionally fly into harm’s way in specially equipped aircraft known as Wild Weasels. Under good circumstances, they could pull it off in just 90 minutes.īut relocating multiple times per day wasn’t enough to keep his dated SAM site out of danger as the U.S. With practice, they had mastered the art of breaking down their system and loading it onto trucks to be set back up elsewhere. Like those systems, his SA-3 was meant to remain static, but he’d been training his team for this. During the Lebanon War, Dani had watched as Israeli forces decimated similar air defense systems, at one point wiping out 29 of 30 active surface-to-air missile platforms in just under two hours. On the other side of the conflict, a veteran of the 1982 Lebanon War Colonel Zoltán Dani and his team, manning a 1950’s era Soviet SA-3 surface-to-air missile battery, prepared for an American incursion into their airspace.
But little did Zelko know that his flight over Yogoslavia that night would have far-reaching effects on the future of military aviation as well. The Persian Gulf proved the efficacy of stealth and changed military aviation forever. Eight years prior, in the flack-filled skies over Bagdhad, the most heavily defended city on earth, Nighthawks just like his had laid waste to numerous targets.
The angular aircraft had already been in service for 16 years, but its radar-wicking design was still among the most advanced ever to take to the skies. Dale Zelko climbed past the jagged teeth of his black jet’s cockpit canopy. S-125 Neva (NATO name SA-3) air defense system from 250th Air Defense Brigade of Serbian Army.
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