Gadgetory

thanks for watching tech quickie click the subscribe button then enable notifications with the Bell icon so you won't miss any future videos sometimes 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 yeah no I'm not actually leaving are you the boss at your work do you find yourself racing against the clock as a freelancer or small business owner well it's challenging but with the growth of the internet there has never been more opportunities for the self-employed 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