... Damn shame, this is the F117 out of Holloman AFB that got shot down over Kosovo a few years ago. $100,000,000 down the drain.
Rumor has it that Bagdad has radar capable of detecting them. I hope not.
[url]http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/images/F-117.MPG[/url]

to track a stelth is hard but to track the air i disturbs is not. Every nation now has the tech to use a dopler radar, use this to track the vorticies that an airfoil creates and you will see where the stelth has been ... about 10 seconds prior. From this you can make a shot....pat

... yeah, I'm afraid that enemies have outgrown its once technical edge.

... On to UAV's

I've read of two different methods of detecting stealth planes.

One method is using old Soviet radars. They use longer wavelengths which are, supposedly, capable of detecting stealth aircraft. However, longer wavelength radars don't track as well as shorter wavelengths. The definition isn't as good. The F-117 was developed to defeat newer Soviet SAM's so the older radars, and their inaccurate missiles, weren't considered as much of a threat.

The second method is being pioneered by the Brits. It uses cell phone towers. When there is a distrubance in cell phone transmissions the stealh aircaft can be tracked. It makes sense when you think about it. Stealth aircraft are designed to diffuse radio waves. When cell phone transmissions are disturbed there has to be something that is disturbing them, like a stealth aircraft. The key to the cell phone method is the numbe of towers, which creats a web through which the stealthy aircraft has to fly. Not to mention very powerful computers, which are capable of triangulating the disturbance and processing the vast amount of incoming information.

This last method is very similar to a proposed counter. Basically, it was a transmitter with numerous recievers around it. They would act in concert to put together the radar picture that the stealth plane diffused. Soviet computing power being what it was, it wasn't considered a viable option.

Shooting down a low observable aircraft or missile is a very dicey proposition at best and it involves a lot of new technology and usually a bit of luck on top.

The ability of any radar to detect a stealth plane is dependent upon a number of factors, including frequency (inverse of wavelength), radar pulse characteristics, receiver and signal processor capabilities, effective radiated power (ERP), signal to noise ratio (SNR), and, if an operator is in the loop, that person's awareness.  

Search radars and fire control/tracking radars usually have vastly different operating characteristics, since the search radar is designed to search a large volume around the protected land area or ship and the fire control/tracking radar is designed to track the enemy plane/missile and provide a signal for the your surface to air missile to home in on.  Search radars are even subdivided into surface and air sub catagories.  The surface radar is designed very differently from the air search radar, since it must operate near the surface of the sea or land, a different environment than free space, filled with land clutter that messes up the picture.

Virtually any air search radar can eventually detect a stealthy aircraft when the plane gets close enough.  The same holds true for a fire control radar.  Eventually, you will be able to track the enemy stealth plane.  The issue really is...can you detect, develop a viable track and guide a missile or AAA gun to the guy before he launches a weapon at you?  That is the dicey part.  They are not invisible...just very hard to see.  The harder they are to see, the later you get to shoot at them...and the better chance they have of nailing you.  I have no idea how the F-117 was shot down but I'll bet it was a mix of new technology on the part of the Serbs, with maybe just a bit of over confidence on our part.

[soapbox]