Stealth

-being invisible to the other sides' detection methods-

Through the history of war, fighter jets and bombers always had concerns of being shot down or destroyed by enemy mortars or surface to air missiles. This would lead to many deaths of very skilled pilots and crew members. Along with that, very expensive war equipment. Once radar was invented, the idea of stealth was even more important. This is when science had a very important role. First off, stealth is created through a somewhat polymer coating that acts as a very efficient radar wave absorber. The first air craft to use this absorbing technology was the SR71 - Blackbird. In addition to this high tech polymer coating, geometry plays a huge role. Right angles are the worst thing that can be put into the engineering of a stealth air craft. Therefore, the main goal is to completely refract or absorb these radar waves. To do this, the materials used to create these aircrafts needed to be tested for their index of refraction. This helps the engineers understand how the radar waves can be scattered so they are not received in return by the actual radar.

Home