Soda blasting? That's a ubiquitous process being performed literally all the time.

Yeah, blasting, grinding, cutting, forging, and dozens of other industrial processes are nasty and messy, but that isn't the hassle. The problem here is secrecy and finding shops with a large enough blasting bay (there are thousands of auto body shops with bays for blasting full size trucks and other large vehicles - literally 15 on Google Maps within half an hour of me) and having laborers with top-secret clearance to do the work. All so 1970s tech can stay a secret.

Interesting how that stuff was apparently known to cause health problems by the people stripping the plane, but it also apparently wasn't to blame for folks getting sick at Groom Lake

https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/area-51-burning-revealed/

Doesn't seem likely that they even need to remove it. An F-117 was shot down over Yugoslavia using a modified microwave oven as a lure, and an antiquated Soviet-era anti-aircraft system. Its remains were handed over to the Russians _and_ the Chinese. TL/DR: the nations that we're worried about having the low-RCS paint already have the paint, and whatever was secret about it is secret no longer.