The last F-117 Black Jets officially retired from active service on Apr. 22, 2008. But some Nighthawks have continued to fly.

On Apr. 22, the U.S. Air Force posted an interesting article on their website titled “Remembering the F-117 Nighthawk”. The story commemorates the 10th anniversary of the retirement of the “Black Jet”, the world’s first and most famous operational stealth combat jet, that took place at Palmdale, California, where Lockheed Martin staff said farewells to the last four-ship formation coming from Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, led by (Ret.) Col. Jack Forsythe.

Indeed, the iconic jet was retired after little more than 25 years of service, on Apr. 22, 2008, even though the official retirement from the active service did not translate into the end of flying activities for the F-117: flights of the Black Jets over Nevada were reported or documented every now and then past the official retirement in 2008 and in 2014, we published the first images that proved that some stealth planes were still operating out of Tonopah Test Range. It later emerged that the aircraft was being maintained and kept in a “Type 1000” storage to be occasionally flown at Tonopah Test Range until the National Defense Authorization Act of 2017, ordered the USAF to “demilitarize the aircraft” i.e. to retire the fleet permanently, once and for all, one in 2017 and the rest at a rate of four F-117s every year. In fact, on Nov. 13, 2017 an F-117 Nighthawk was spotted on a trailer on US-95, south of Creech AFB, in southern Nevada, most probably heading to the boneyard, to be scrapped or prepared for a museum whilst on the following day, Nov. 14, 2017, another F-117, chased by a two-seater F-16, was spotted flying north of Rachel, Nevada.

Anyway, it’s interesting to note that the presence of a small fleet of Nighthawks is never officially mentioned in USAF public releases.

According to our friend Tyler Rogoway at The War Zone the aircraft are flown by Lockheed Martin contractors and this might explain the lack of official references to the aircraft still flying today.

Here’s the full text published by the flying branch along with the photos you can find in this story. It includes some interesting details about the legendary plane: