A retirement ceremony will be held for the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters in just about an hour from now at Holloman Air Force Base with former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry as guest speaker, the Alamogordo Daily News reported.

Perry was a key figure in pushing the Pentagon and Congress to develop advanced weapons systems such as laser-guided bombs, cruise missiles, the Apache helicopter and, of course, the F-117 stealth fighter, the Daily News said.

Following this morning's ceremony, four Nighthawks will do one last flyover at approximately 10:45 a.m., and one of them, with tail number 843 -- the last F-117A to be delivered to the Air Force -- will have its underside painted with the Stars and Stripes in honor of the farewell, the Daily News reported.

"It's the last opportunity to see the plane flying," Arlan Ponder, 49th Fighter Wing media liaison, told the Daily News.

The stealths will then fly off to Palmdale, Calif., for a brief ceremony, and on to the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada "where they will live, supposedly, for the rest of their lives," Ponder told the paper.

Although today is the day of the F-117's official retirement, Ponder pointed out that some other retired planes have been brought back, including the SR-71 and the U-2 spy plane, the Daily News said.

The stealths will be replaced by F-22 Raptors, the first two of which are scheduled to touch down at Holloman in June, according to KOB-TV.

At one point, Eyewitness News 4 reported, Holloman was home to 50 F-117s, which were among the first wave of planes to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. 

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