Admiral Chegwidden states the government doesn't want another "Gary Powers incident". On May 1, 1960 Francis Gary Powers, a former Air Force captain who worked for the CIA, was flying a U2 spy plane over the Soviet Union when he was shot down by a Soviet antiaircraft surface to air missile battery. At first the US claimed Powers was part of NASA and flying an experimental research aircraft, but the Soviet's had captured Francis and recovered parts of the spy plane, including the photos it had taken. The US government was forced to admit the true purpose of Francis' mission, which caused much embarrassment for the US and shattered the progress made in the peace talks the previous year between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, escalating tensions between the US and Soviets once again that culminated in the Cuban Missile Crisis two years later. Francis was tried and convicted of espionage in a Soviet military tribunal and sentenced to three years imprisonment and seven years hard labor, he was released two years later in February of 1962 in a prisoner exchange for Soviet intelligence officer and spymaster Colonel Rudolf Abel, who had been arrested by the FBI in 1957 after being caught in New York City picking up intelligence left at a dead drop by another KGB spy.
The stealth plane referred to here is the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, a stealth attack aircraft that was in use by the United States Air Force, it was the first operational aircraft with stealth technology. The F-117 was in operation from October 1983 until its retirement in April 2008, it received its first public notice when its stealth capabilities were used to take out Iraqi SAM missile sites in the opening attacks of Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Webb and Rabb mention a carrier variant of the F-117 that Rabb said was supposed to have been scrapped, to which Webb replied "that's what we wanted people to think". In 1984 a proposal was made for a carrier capable variant called the F-117N "Seahawk" to be used by the Navy, but the cost of modifying the fighter to be able to launch and land from a carrier was deemed to be too high and it was feared the heavy jarring of a carrier landing would require stealth material to need more frequent maintenance. As such the program was canceled, although there were rumors that it was continued in secret. The F-117 was replaced by the F-22 Raptor starting in 2005.
Harm says the Navy's backup plan for the F-117 is to take it out with a Maverick missile. The AGM-65 Maverick is a air-to-ground guided missile designed for close air support, in production since 1972 it is the most widely produced precision-guided missile in the Western world. The Maverick can be used on a wide variety of targets but is mainly used against armored vehicles like tanks, air defense platforms, ground transports and storage depots. There are two different warheads used, one is 126 pound shaped charge that detonates on impact, the other is a 300 pound armor penetrating fragmentation charge with a time delay detonator to allow the missile to penetrate a target's armor prior to detonating. The Maverick is part of the standard armament of a number of aircraft including the AH-1 Cobra, AH-64 Apache and A-10 Thunderbolt gunships, F-15E Strike Eagle, F-16 Falcon, F/A-18 Hornet and the F/A-18E Super Hornet. The Maverick, as well as the Hellfire, is slated to be replaced in the US Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy by the new AGM-179 Joint Air-to-Ground Missile, which as of June, 2022 is being deployed on all three variants of the F-35 Lightning, the first to test it will be the Marine Corps F-35B.
When Lt. Commander Keeter asks Mac how she is able to tell time so accurately so responds in Farsi, but doesn't tell him what she said because "it looses something in the translation". Which is true, what she said roughly translates to "praying to God's house", so one can infer she is saying her perfect internal clock is a gift from God.