It was less about technical factors relating to stealth than human factors.

The USAF reused the route packages and the shooters knew the approximate location and timing of the flight. A Serbian asset tipped off the shooters that the normal SEAD assets would not be present. Without SEAD the shooters were able to keep transmitting long enough to see the plane. There were 3 F-117 in the flight, only one had its doors open long enough for the shooters to acquire.

Different routes, randomized timing, SEAD presence, better stealth hygiene and it would have been just another night.

The Serbian commander comes across as skilled, creative, and diligent. The USAF comes across as lazy and sloppy that night.

> I'm curious as to how such a huge oversight in the design of the craft made it to production

Do you work in military aircraft production? (just curious of your background)

Sorry I realize I came off very rude, it was not my intention. When I learned about this hatch and saw the pictures I was just so surprised since it seems the design could be improved to reduce the radar signature significantly by using the standard practices they use for the rest of the craft. Just curious if this was an oversight or what the motivations behind the design were.

How else do you release bombs? I believe that even modern stealth aircraft are more vulnerable when releasing missiles or bombs.

The thing is if the aircraft gets to the point of releasing bombs or missiles it has pretty much done its job. You won't get that far without being stealthy.

The GP is suggesting the doors should have had zig-zag edges.

However, from what I've read, it sounds like radar reflectons from the doors themselves are dwarfed by radar signals bouncing off the upper bulkhead of the bomb bay. If they made the side bulkheads of the bomb bay at 90 degrees to the upper bulkhead, then an incoming radio wave bouncing off both the upper and side bulkheads will leave anti-parallel to its incoming direction... right back at the sending radar. (This geometric identity is used on the laser reflectors left on the moon. They send the laser right back at the sender without having to track the Earth.)

Though, maybe the reporting I've read is just imprecise, and maybe the doors do have a larger radar cross-section than the bomb bays themselves.

The GP is asserting, without any evidence at all, that the designers simply did not think about the radar return from the bomb bay opening. That's a rather absurd position to take, vs the more banal explanation that engineering always involves tradeoffs.

You can only reduce the window that the aircraft is vulnerable, or deploy some kind of countermeasure to provide additional cover.

Only in the worst kind of situation is it acceptable to lose an aircraft like this, especially when you have control of the airspace. In most cases, stealth aircraft should be detected so late that you can't mount an initial defense, or an effective counter attack while the aircraft is returning to base.

The doors could recess and roll away? I’m not an aeronautical engineer so no idea what that would do with the radar profile nor the flight characteristics of the plane.

The bombs could be ejected at high speed along with the outer hatch door, kind of like a magazine, and then a secondary inner hatch closes to cover the hole.

...but I'm also not an aircraft designer.

That's not an oversight. Stealth is a continuum, not a binary thing.

From what I've read, during a strike, the bombs will show up on the radar anyway. So if the hatch doesn't give away the positions, the bombs will. Also, as a layman, it seems like it would be exceedingly difficult to modify the internals of the bomb bay for not that much benefit.

From what I've read, the US got complacent and flew the same air routes at the same time daily, and in this case the pilot did a climb. The Serb battery commander studied the above and just waited until the right moment.