In 1980 the Secretary of Defense Harold Brown gathered reporters at the Pentagon
and announced to the world the existence of a new technology called ‘stealth’.
Sure stealth had always existed since the age of ninjas, but for aviation it
was never even a blip on the radar…. yeah, the jokes are just going downhill from here.
The fighters of WW2 could be heard by troops on the ground from miles away
and by the end of the War even the preliminary radar technology of the day
could detect approaching enemy aircraft from across the English channel.
By the 60’s, radar technology had improved to the
point that a aircraft could be detected from 2,500 km away.
The ability to hide from detection was becoming more and more important, but trying
to hide aircraft from detection wasn’t a new problem, in fact it existed long before radar.
Back in WW1, Germans experimented with the use of Cellon, a transparent covering material,
in an attempt to reduce the visibility of military aircraft.
Unfortunately for those early pilots, it turned out that the sunlight bouncing off
the covering made the aircraft even more visible to forces on the ground.
Nearly three decades later, the Germans
accidentally stumbled onto a radar-resistant plane with the Horten Ho
229 [flying wing fighter-bomber]. Without the vertical surfaces common in the planes of the era,
the plane proved to be nearly undetectable to the radar technology of the time.
And Americans studying how to avoid radar came up with a similar design, the YB-49 flying wing,
with its smooth surfaces and rounded edges and no tail or fuselage. The all-wing configuration
generated a relatively small image on radar screens, but these planes were ahead of their
time, and radar just wasn’t enough of a concern at the time, and so the YB-49 was canceled [in 1949].
The 60’s saw the roll out of the A-12, a plane that nearly 60 years after its first
flight remains the fastest air breathing jet to ever fly. But it was the Sr-71 blackbird,
a variant developed for the air force, that would go on to serve for decades,
and become one of the most widely recognized planes in history.
The blackbird could cruise at mach 3.2, right near the edge of space, and could
do it for hours on end. It’s unusual shape helped reduce its radar signature, but it was really its
special black paint that helped hide it from enemy radar and earn the blackbird its name.
Although it’s moderate stealth capabilities didn’t matter all
that much given that it could outrun the fastest anti-air missiles on the planet.
In their deployments over Korea and Vietnam in the 60’s and 70’s,
they’d be unsuccessfully targeted by over 800 surface to air missiles.
In fact, in it’s 30 year operational history, no SR=71 was ever shot down.
But the SR-71 was just like the planes of WW1 wrapped in Cellon, the planes were built,
and then stealth characteristics, like it's radar absorbant paint, were added as an afterthought.
But the Air Force got to thinking, what if a plane was built with stealth in mind from the start.
Well meet the F-117 Nighthawk.
The F-117, was designed with the rudimentary computers of the 70’s.
Because of limited computational power, the 117 could only be modeled using straight edges,
unlike the curved surfaces of stealth aircraft we see today.
The design was so successful that the plane's 13 meter wingspan
would show up the same as a pigeon on radar. This meant that the F-117
was able to get more than 90 percent closer to radar stations, before being detected.
Be sure to watch our video on the Gulf War if you want to learn more about
the F-117’s impressive technology.
1982 saw the introduction of probably the strangest and least known stealth aircraft,
Tacit Blue. Despite it’s weird shape,
Tactic Blue was the first attempt at using curved structures on a stealth aircraft.
Although Tactic Blue never saw action in combat, its developments would be applied
directly to the B-2 stealth bomber that would be used for penetrating anti-aircraft defences.
The B-2, would become the world's most expensive plane, with each of the 21 units produced
costing $2.1 billion dollars. Just for a reference of just how crazy expensive that is,
those 21 planes combined cost more than the yearly GDP of 105 countries...
The 2000’s saw the rollout of the F-22 and F-35.
The F-22’s vertical fins, unlike the prior F-15’s, were angled outward to deflect radar
and horizontal fins at the back of the plane shielded engine exhaust from detection.
And unlike former fighters like the F-15 and F-16 that could only carry missiles under the
wings where they were one of the greatest contributing factors to radar detection,
the F-22 could carry weaponry in internal weapons bays to maintain it’s stealth signature.
Exact details about the F-22’s coating obviously remains classified,
but we know it's specially designed to absorb radar waves, and even the
cockpit shape was designed to minimize radar bouncing off of the pilots reflective helmet.
And in recent years, countries like Russia and China have stepped into the stealth game, with
planes modeled largely after American ones and thought to be based on stolen classified designs.
And that brings us to today, the history of stealth aircraft in under 5 minutes.
Let us know what other topics you want to see explained in under 5 minutes
down in the comments, and remember, there is always more to learn.