China Says Stealth Technology Not from US Plane

“We believe the Chinese used those materials to gain an insight into secret stealth technologies ... and to reverse-engineer them,” Domazet-Loso said in a telephone interview.

Parts of the downed F-117 wreckage — such as the left wing with US Air Force insignia, the cockpit canopy, ejection seat, pilot’s helmet and radio — are exhibited at Belgrade’s aviation museum.

While not completely invisible to radar, the F-117’S shape and radar-absorbent coating made detection extremely difficult. The radar cross-section was further reduced because the wings’ leading and trailing edges were composed of nonmetallic honeycomb structures that do not reflect radar rays.

Experts say insight into this critical technology, and particularly the plane’s secret radiation-absorbent exterior coating, would have significantly enhanced China’s stealth know-how. The newspaper report refuting the allegations that China used the F-117 technology comes one day after a U.S. federal judge sentenced an engineer of an earlier generation of stealth aircraft, the B-2 bomber, to 32 years in prison for selling military secrets to China.

Noshir Gowadia, 66, who was born in India, was convicted in August on 14 counts, including communicating national defense information to aid a foreign nation and violating the arms export control act.

Prosecutors said Gowadia helped China design a stealth cruise missile to get money to pay the $15,000-a-month mortgage on his luxurious multimillion dollar home overlooking the ocean on the Hawaiian island of Maui. They say he pocketed at least $110,000 by selling military secrets.

The defense argued Gowadia provided only unclassified information to China.