In the 1980s, US President Ronald Reagan extended an invitation to Margaret Thatcher to participate in US advanced military programs, including the Space Shuttle program and the Lockheed F-117A stealth fighter.
The first operational aircraft in the world built to take advantage of low-observable stealth technology was the F-117A Nighthawk. This precision-strike aircraft was able to use laser-guided weapons against critical targets while penetrating high-threat airspace.
The decision to produce the F-117A was taken in 1978, and Lockheed Advanced Development Projects, also known as the “Skunk Works,” in Burbank, California, was given the contract. Just thirty-one months following the full-scale development decision, on June 18, 1981, came the first flight over the Nevada test ranges.
Deliveries of the F-117A began in 1982 and ended in the summer of 1990. October 1983 saw the 4450th Tactical Group—now the 49th Fighter Wing at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico—achieve operational capability as the only F-117A unit under Air Combat Command.
While the Nighthawk was never exported, US President Ronald Reagan offered Margaret Thatcher the opportunity to work on US advanced military programs in the 1980s, including the Lockheed F-117A stealth fighter and the Space Transportation System (STS, as the Space Shuttle program was officially named), according to declassified documents made public by the British National Archives in 2016.
Thatcher concurred, according to Theguardian.com, that the Space Shuttle program was a more cost-effective choice for Britain than the European Ariane disposable launch vehicle. For communications throughout Europe and the Atlantic, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) intended to launch two military satellites, called Skynet 4; the cost of the shuttle launch was £58 million, or £23 million less than that of Ariane.
But the Challenger disaster and the letter from French Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy pleading with Thatcher to rethink her choice played against the Space Shuttle program. Furthermore, according to Theguardian.com, in 1986, President Ronald Reagan desired to provide the UK access to highly-sensitive US military technologies.
After Thatcher “met privately” with Casapar (Cap) Weinberger, the then U.S. defense secretary, to discuss this unique project, the U.K. Prime Minister sent a top secret personal message (on which someone wrote in faint pencil “Stealth”) to the U.S. President where she stated: “Dear Ron, I was immensely impressed by your splendid achievement. Three cheers for America! I was also very touched by the generosity of the offer of participation which [Cap] brought. It brings home once again who our real friends are.”
The goal of the project, code-named “Project Moonflower,” was to sell the United Kingdom the still highly top-secret F-117.
In answer to a US Air Force (USAF) request for an aircraft that could attack high-value targets without being detected by enemy radar, Lockheed created the F-117A. By the 1970s, engineers were able to create an aircraft that was “stealth” or capable of evading radar thanks to new materials and techniques.
Ultimately, the MoD turned down the offer to purchase the Nighthawk to equip Royal Air Force (RAF) squadrons since the F-117 was still classified as a black program. Charles Powell, the prime minister’s adviser on international affairs, received a letter from the MoD in December 1986 informing him that “Mr. Weinberger has offered us a chance to purchase the current US aircraft, but we have replied that we would not wish to actually buy hardware while the program remains strictly black [secret].”
Photo by Senior Master Sgt. Kim Frey / U.S. Air Force