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@Narayan;

"The F-117 is not really a fighter, in spite of its designation."

The F111, then, is not a fighter either. Just because a plane is dedicated to a ground attack role does not invalidated its fighter designation. The F15 is a multi-role fighter and all of its missions in both Gulf Wars were ground attack missions.

"And even though it is a stealth aircraft, I suspect that it is visible in the day time at altitude."

Guess again. Without a loud engine sound to point your eyes in the right direction, its size at altitude, even in broad daylight, it's essentially invisible.

"It lacks maneouverability for dogfighting."

Narayan, this is the 21st century. Dogfighting should, if you have achieved total air superiority, never happen. In any event, let's say for the sake of agrguement, dogfighting was still relevant. What would trigger the opponents fighters to scramble, being picked up on radar? Not.., How would they find it, locking in on radar? Nope. And neither their sidewinders or radar guided missiles would be nice wing decoration.

"I don't even remember if it is capable of supersonic speeds."

It doesn't by design. Supersonic speeds have this annoying thing associated with them called a sonic boom which kind of defeats the purpose of being invisible.

"Finally, it lacks punch."

I'll give you a large squadron of Su-37's, and a few new Eurofighter Typhoon's, and we can go to war. I'll also give you the latest air defense system with spread spectrum radar, the best in radar guided missiles, and AAA artillery.

Me, I've only got a couple dozen F117's, and a current generation air defense system.

Let's play war. First, since all of your planes are visible on radar and easily downable by heat seekers, you can't get to my bases. SAM's are quite effective against even the most maneuverable fighters but if you want to fly sorties against me, go right ahead. I'll thin your ranks with each successive wave until you realize the futility of the excercise.

Then, when night falls, I'll launch against you. My F117's will be able to fly undetected rigth over your air defenses. Let's say you've got 24-hour air to air coverage of your fighters. I'll target your fuel dumps, the hangars, munitions stores, maintenance areas of your fighter force, and make swiss cheeze out of your runways with cluster bombs. This will undoubtedly after the fact cause you to send your fighters already airborne in vain hope of finding me. You'll fire AAA artillery like the Iraqi's did in wasting a lot of ammo but putting on a great light show, and neither your jets or air defenses can find me cause all you get are blank screens on your radars.

Then I go home and reload. Your airborne fighters have run out of fuel, have no place to land, and have ditched. Your fighters on the ground which I purposely didn't give a rats butt about are sitting there useless, and I'm over here re-arming.

I go up for day two. Having done BDA, I know what I've taken out. Assuming you've got the best runway repair crews in the world, and have been able to patch a few to get planes up, we do it again. I come in, and lay waste to your patch work repairs. I finish the job and completely destroy your fuel supply for your air force, and now take out all your ammo stores. Given I've got lots of bombs left over, I also go to work on your fighters left on the ground and turn them all into heaps of useless tinfoil, leave again, and you're airborne fighters once again can't find me, and either crash or ditch when they run out of fuel, for the last time.

Now that you're entire air force is useless, I now have complete air superiority, and lay waste to your command and control systems, your air defenses so I can let helicopters fly over, and with my extra bombs, start destroying your armored units with complete impunity. Eventually I get around to destroying your munitions plants, and if I'm feeling particularly ornery, bombing your civilians. I can do so, because na na na na nah...you don't have an air force anymore.

Having seen this scenario played out in GWI, the russians had the sense to end the cold war. Lacks punch, you say?

@Hellcat;

"sonic booms are one time things, once you break the barrierits quite smooth and quiet, so you won't hear it at all."

Nope. What you're describing is buffeting of wing surfaces that occured in early aircraft that approached the sound barrier. The Concorde is silent as you approach the barrier and when you go through it. While the ride inside the plane is smooth, the shock waves emanate from the plane continuously as long as it flies supersonic.