thanks for watching Techquickie click the subscribe button then enable
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whether you're trying to prank a friend play some paintball or just avoid a
meeting you'll want to stay at a site and for folks in the military staying
concealed can be a matter of life and death and that's why billions of dollars
have been dumped into researching and developing stealth technology but how
does this work I mean that's a still
fighter and I can see it just fine also
I'm sure if they fired it up it would make a lot of noise so it must be pretty
hard to hide right well remember that
radar works by firing radio waves at an
object to determine its position velocity and shape based on how those
waves are reflected back to a radar station so stealth technology is focused
not on trying to build a Star Trek cloaking device though I'm sure someone
actually is working on that but on either absorbing those radio waves or
deflecting them in different directions so let's look at some materials that
absorb radio waves starting with paint yeah paint one strategy is to use a
special paint that contains tiny balls of iron oriented in a way that creates a
magnetic field and although radar normally reflects off of metal and
returns to the radar station the special orientation of the paints magnetic field
instead causes the waves to be absorbed
and then dissipated as heat this tactic was notably used on the
f-117 Nighthawk a well-known US Air
Force stealth attacker that was recently retired next up we've got stealth
enhancing pyramids because of their shape radar waves that hit specially
configured pyramids reflect off of them repeatedly losing energy each time they
do these pyramids can be placed underneath the aircraft skin or really
really all ones can even be combined with paint helping direct radar waves to
the iron particles that I mentioned earlier weakening them even more other
solutions include using carbon-based materials underneath the skin with a
higher concentration of carbon the deeper you go this helps slowly rob
incoming radar waves of their energy this strategy was used on the b-2 spirit
stealth bomber and new materials are constantly being developed such as
nanotubes that can be grown into a layer of fibres which can absorb radar beams
in different ways depending on how they're engineered this strategy is
rumored to have been used on the new f-35 Lightning that was just introduced
in 2015 but most kinds of radar
absorbing materials developed so far presents significant engineering
challenges and can be expensive to maintain meaning that the trend in
stealth these days is to focus more on the aircraft's shape to help deflect or
scatter radar beams in different directions earlier designs like the aforementioned
f-117 as well as stealth ships relied
heavily on having flat sharply angled surfaces a stark contrast to the rounded
bodies of commercial jet liners that make them easy to pick up on radar since
a perfectly flat surface can deflect a radar beam in a single predictable
direction as opposed to a rounded surface that scatters waves everywhere
this design philosophy made it possible for engineers to use the aircraft's body
kind of like one of those big suntan mirrors and deflect signals harmlessly
away from the enemy radar the problem is
that one of the biggest weaknesses of the old f-117 was that its sharp edges
made the plane unstable and more difficult to fly safely so looking at
newer crafts like the b-2 f-35 and f-22
Raptor you'll see rounded surfaces but
how did they do that well by keeping the
low profile squashed design they
actually rid what's called the radar cross-section then because these
aircraft were developed after computers became powerful enough to run more
complex simulations the engineers were able to reduce the detect ability of
those curves that are oh so important for aerodynamic reasons by determining
exactly how radar beams would interact
with all surfaces of these fighters and bombers and other design considerations
are also important burying the engines within the interior of the craft for
example not only limits their radar signatures but also serves to hide the
planes from infrared or heat tracking and engineers even think about the way
in which the bay doors open to deploy missiles and bombs so they won't produce
too much of a return signal of course
with military technology being an arms race both literally and figuratively new
stealth designs and materials be they for planes ships trucks or even infantry
and ways to defeat them will continue to
be devised now if you'll excuse me I have to go try and find a way to hide
from my CEO duties around here
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