Why is Stealth So Important?

incorporated in the backbone of the air frce, serious technical
problems need to be solved, and compromises must be made.

It is true that the loss rate of the F-117 has been low: The
low rate of other USAF aircraft has also been low, to the
point of making a comparison statistically insignificant.

--
Emmanuel Gustin

Sort of a narrow view of air operations, I would say. Having particiapted in a
number of 100 plane raids in SEA against a single point target that a single
B-2 cold take out now I'd say the tradeoffs with Stealth is no brainer. The
high maintenance requirements for stealth and the controlled hangar
environments are mainly a matter of materiels used in maintaining stealth
coatings and those materials have been much inproved in the past decade.