Plane type: Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk

F-117 Nighthawk era. After conversion to the F-117A in May 1992, The 8th deployed fighters and their crews to Southwest Asia during the 1990s as part of Operation Southern Watch to support United Nations (UN) weapons inspectors in Iraq, to enforce the no-fly zone over the southern part of that country to deprive Saddam Hussein of his Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programs and to force his compliance with the UN monitoring regime. 8th F-117s fighters deployed to the Gulf in 1998 during Operation Desert Fox to upgrade the strike force's capability to attack high-value targets. But the 18-hour flight from Holloman AFB to Kuwait meant that the operation was over before the F-117 aircraft arrived in the Gulf.