In a B-1 cockpit over the battle.
*Looks at glowing radioactive demon-ship*
*Looks at raging wall of flack and tracer fire*
*Pilot and Co-Pilot lock eyes, nod, and hit the stereo*
B-1 proceeds to scream down on hostiles to the wailing guitar of Danger Zone
I have two reactions to this. The first is, "Oh, come on. They're Air Force. You KNOW they'd be using something by Dos Gringos instead!"
The second:
GuP Abridged!Miho: "Saori... hit the radio!"
*oontz oontz oontz oontz*
Abridged!Mako: "OH GOD MY TINNITUS!"
According to folks I spoke with at AMARG all of the F-117's have been disposed of anyways. To store them would cost more than is even marginally practical as they cannot be stored outside a climate and humidity controlled environment without breaking down completely. So there are none at AMARG and I *think* that there are none left period.
The Nighthawks were stored at their original base at Tonopah Test Range instead of AMARG specifically because of their environmental control requirements. In addition, there have been documented cases of at least a few having been seen flying over the Nellis Range since their official retirement--suggested explanations include the Air Force keeping a few operational as an "emergency capability" (using the others as parts hulks), the Air Force experimenting with converting them into UCAVs for special purposes, and, in what I consider the most likely option, the Air Force keeping a few flyable as radar test targets. (The F-117's radar signature is more thoroughly documented than any other aircraft in history, and thus unmodified Nighthawks would be excellent "control" tests for experimental radar systems and for calibrating the Nellis Range's many radars, since it should be possible to predict exactly what sort of return you should get for any combination of wavelength, radiated power, slant range, and three-dimensional target aspect.)
Even if they were stored at AMARG, though, the only aspect that would degrade would be their radar-absorbent materials coatings; underneath that, they're entirely conventional aluminum airplanes (with lots of parts from existing DoD parts bins, including non-afterburning versions of the F-18's engines, a throttle from the A-10, and lots of avionics from the F-16) that would rot just as slowly as any other old bird at AMARG once they've applied the Spraylat to the intakes, exhausts, windscreens, and sensor openings.
The big thing is that the Nighthawks would be about as stealthy as a Mosquito was (i.e., just hard to see on radar), but without the benefits of speed and agility that it had, and carrying a lot less of a payload, too. So even if they were brought back, they'd be essentially useless against Abyssal ships.
(Dear god in heaven, though... I just found myself pondering whether Boeing is frantically working on upscaling the new glide-bomb kit they designed for the Mark 50/54 ASW torpedoes to let P-8s drop them from high altitude, hoping to make it work with Mark 48s so as to turn B-52s and B-1s into friggin'
torpedo bombers...)
