How Does Stealth Technology Work?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2018-05-06
·
1,062 words · ~5 min read
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whether you're trying to prank a friend play some paintball or just avoid a
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meeting you'll want to stay at a site and for folks in the military staying
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concealed can be a matter of life and death and that's why billions of dollars
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have been dumped into researching and developing stealth technology but how
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does this work I mean that's a still
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fighter and I can see it just fine also
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I'm sure if they fired it up it would make a lot of noise so it must be pretty
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hard to hide right well remember that
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radar works by firing radio waves at an
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object to determine its position velocity and shape based on how those
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waves are reflected back to a radar station so stealth technology is focused
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not on trying to build a Star Trek cloaking device though I'm sure someone
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actually is working on that but on either absorbing those radio waves or
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deflecting them in different directions so let's look at some materials that
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absorb radio waves starting with paint yeah paint one strategy is to use a
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special paint that contains tiny balls of iron oriented in a way that creates a
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magnetic field and although radar normally reflects off of metal and
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returns to the radar station the special orientation of the paints magnetic field
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instead causes the waves to be absorbed
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and then dissipated as heat this tactic was notably used on the
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f-117 Nighthawk a well-known US Air
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Force stealth attacker that was recently retired next up we've got stealth
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enhancing pyramids because of their shape radar waves that hit specially
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configured pyramids reflect off of them repeatedly losing energy each time they
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do these pyramids can be placed underneath the aircraft skin or really
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really all ones can even be combined with paint helping direct radar waves to
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the iron particles that I mentioned earlier weakening them even more other
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solutions include using carbon-based materials underneath the skin with a
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higher concentration of carbon the deeper you go this helps slowly rob
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incoming radar waves of their energy this strategy was used on the b-2 spirit
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stealth bomber and new materials are constantly being developed such as
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nanotubes that can be grown into a layer of fibres which can absorb radar beams
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in different ways depending on how they're engineered this strategy is
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rumored to have been used on the new f-35 Lightning that was just introduced
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in 2015 but most kinds of radar
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absorbing materials developed so far presents significant engineering
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challenges and can be expensive to maintain meaning that the trend in
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stealth these days is to focus more on the aircraft's shape to help deflect or
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scatter radar beams in different directions earlier designs like the aforementioned
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f-117 as well as stealth ships relied
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heavily on having flat sharply angled surfaces a stark contrast to the rounded
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bodies of commercial jet liners that make them easy to pick up on radar since
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a perfectly flat surface can deflect a radar beam in a single predictable
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direction as opposed to a rounded surface that scatters waves everywhere
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this design philosophy made it possible for engineers to use the aircraft's body
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kind of like one of those big suntan mirrors and deflect signals harmlessly
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away from the enemy radar the problem is
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that one of the biggest weaknesses of the old f-117 was that its sharp edges
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made the plane unstable and more difficult to fly safely so looking at
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newer crafts like the b-2 f-35 and f-22
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Raptor you'll see rounded surfaces but
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how did they do that well by keeping the
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low profile squashed design they
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actually rid what's called the radar cross-section then because these
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aircraft were developed after computers became powerful enough to run more
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complex simulations the engineers were able to reduce the detect ability of
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those curves that are oh so important for aerodynamic reasons by determining
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exactly how radar beams would interact
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with all surfaces of these fighters and bombers and other design considerations
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are also important burying the engines within the interior of the craft for
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example not only limits their radar signatures but also serves to hide the
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planes from infrared or heat tracking and engineers even think about the way
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in which the bay doors open to deploy missiles and bombs so they won't produce
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too much of a return signal of course
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with military technology being an arms race both literally and figuratively new
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stealth designs and materials be they for planes ships trucks or even infantry
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and ways to defeat them will continue to
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be devised now if you'll excuse me I have to go try and find a way to hide
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from my CEO duties around here
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yeah no I'm not actually leaving are you
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