Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and it's time for
Speaker 1: another classic episode, another Friday classic. We're looking at an
Speaker 1: episode that originally published on April twenty second, two thousand thirteen.
Speaker 1: This episode is titled text Stuff Gets Stealthy and Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all about stealth technology and how that works. Let's
Speaker 1: listen in. Are pirates concerned with being stealthy? Then you
Speaker 1: have to know the weapons of your enemy, is what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. And pirates and Ninja being natural enemies in
Speaker 1: the wild, it's important to study your enemies techniques. All
Speaker 1: let's talk of pirates and Ninja's reminds me very much
Speaker 1: of the Cold War, right, and that is an important
Speaker 1: reason why stealth technology even exist. So thank you for
Speaker 1: getting us back on track, Lauren. So, stealth technology in general,
Speaker 1: stealth technology refers to the types of tech we use
Speaker 1: in aircraft to make them difficult or impossible to detect,
Speaker 1: mainly via radar, although we also think about things like
Speaker 1: infrared scanners that sort of stuff, and uh. And really
Speaker 1: to understand how stealth works, we first have to understand
Speaker 1: what radar is and how that works. Right, Radar radar
Speaker 1: works thanks to to basic concepts and that's echo and
Speaker 1: Doppler shift. Yes, so yeah and echo. I mean like
Speaker 1: if you if you were to shout out, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you go visit the Grand Canyon and you shout as
Speaker 1: loudly as you can, uh, you might hear after a
Speaker 1: few seconds your voice coming back to you. And that's
Speaker 1: because some when you when you shout something out, you know,
Speaker 1: your your voice is traveling out in sound waves, they
Speaker 1: will collide with the other side of the canyon, and
Speaker 1: some of those sound waves will bounce back at you
Speaker 1: and eventually arrive back to where you will are. And
Speaker 1: if you are loud enough when you make the initial sound,
Speaker 1: you should be able to hear some of that sound return.
Speaker 1: So that's why you've got that little delay right right.
Speaker 1: And now, if if you were to measure the length
Speaker 1: of time that it took for that sound to bounce
Speaker 1: back to you and measure it pretty accurately, then you
Speaker 1: could mathematically calculate about how far that sound went. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course you also need to know some other
Speaker 1: factors like air press, your humidity, things that would affect
Speaker 1: how fast the sounds traveled. Yeah, because as we know,
Speaker 1: sound will travel at different speeds through different media, and
Speaker 1: that even includes different atmospheres. So if you are you know,
Speaker 1: if you're really at sea level, sound travels at a
Speaker 1: different speed than it would if you were at thirty feet.
Speaker 1: But it's not necessarily detectable to a human ear. But
Speaker 1: we're definitely not a misable in in day to day conversation.
Speaker 1: For example. But you know, I I don't go down
Speaker 1: to Florida and go like, man, it's really humid. I
Speaker 1: can barely hear you from this point five. You know
Speaker 1: it's taking it's taking longer for your words to hit
Speaker 1: my Yeah. But anyway, the same principle works on radar,
Speaker 1: except instead of sound, we're talking about electromagnetic waves or
Speaker 1: radio waves, and so you use radio waves to you
Speaker 1: project them out and if they come into contact with something,
Speaker 1: some of those radio waves will bounce back. So if
Speaker 1: you have a receiver, then you can detect those incoming
Speaker 1: waves and determine by how long it took to go
Speaker 1: out and back about how far away that object is. Now.
Speaker 1: You also mentioned Doppler shifts, So we have to talk
Speaker 1: about right right and Doppler shifts. For example, why a
Speaker 1: car's horn sounds higher pitched when the car is moving
Speaker 1: towards you than it does when the car is moving
Speaker 1: away from you. Yeah, there's there's a great article on
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works that explains this that I like a lot.
Speaker 1: Marshall Brain actually wrote it. He's the founder of How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works and uh, And in it, Marshall talked about
Speaker 1: how if you were if the car is sitting still
Speaker 1: and the driver leans on the horn for a minute.
Speaker 1: First of all, you must be in Boston. Uh. And second, uh,
Speaker 1: that means that if you are far enough away. Let's
Speaker 1: say that you're far enough away that the sound takes
Speaker 1: six seconds to get to you, all right, and you're
Speaker 1: sitting there, that means that the the horn will have
Speaker 1: been uh sounding for six seconds before you can even
Speaker 1: hear it, right, But then it'll it'll last for a minute,
Speaker 1: that's how long because the person's leaning. Then, now, if
Speaker 1: that car is traveling toward you, then the pitch of
Speaker 1: that is going to be higher than it would be
Speaker 1: if if it were just saying still. Those those waves
Speaker 1: are essentially compressed a higher frequency in the same amount
Speaker 1: of time. So and then of course, if the car
Speaker 1: goes by you. You know you've heard this if you've
Speaker 1: ever heard a siren when an emergency vehicle has either
Speaker 1: come up behind or approached you and then passed. As
Speaker 1: it goes as it's traveling towards you, it's a higher pitch,
Speaker 1: and as it's going away it's a lower pitch. And
Speaker 1: that's because of the frequency of the waves and the
Speaker 1: way that the object making the sound is traveling versus
Speaker 1: the sound itself traveling. So the interesting thing about doubler
Speaker 1: shift is if you can detect the if you know
Speaker 1: what the frequency of the waves were when it was
Speaker 1: going out. So, in other words, you've got a transmitter, right,
Speaker 1: that's that's your your radar transmitter and antenna that's transmitting
Speaker 1: the high burst of high frequency radio waves. You know
Speaker 1: what the frequency is when you transmit. When the frequency
Speaker 1: comes back, uh, it's going to be or when the
Speaker 1: radio waves come back, rather it's going to be possibly
Speaker 1: a different frequency than it was when it went out.
Speaker 1: Now that means that the object that hit was in motion.
Speaker 1: If it's a higher frequency, that means that object is
Speaker 1: essentially moving towards you. If it's a lower frequency, that
Speaker 1: object is moving away. So and by measuring exactly the
Speaker 1: difference in the pitch, you can measure how fast it's going, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: or at least get an estimate, pretty good idea. Yes.
Speaker 1: And because we're talking, you know, radio waves move essentially
Speaker 1: at the speed of light, so you know, the delays
Speaker 1: here are really really super tiny, and and the transmission
Speaker 1: is like, is a fraction of a second long. So
Speaker 1: you transmit these really short bursts and uh, and then
Speaker 1: turn off the transmitter and allow the way it's to
Speaker 1: come back, right, and you measure the delay between when
Speaker 1: it went out and when it came back, and you
Speaker 1: measure the Doppler shift, and that gives you an idea
Speaker 1: of the position and speed at which the object is moving,
Speaker 1: so if it's moving towards you or away. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's very useful for detecting things like aircraft, and in fact,
Speaker 1: we use it all the time, not just in military applications,
Speaker 1: but air traffic control. So here's the thing. If you
Speaker 1: are running a military operation and you want to run
Speaker 1: surveillance or some sort of sortie against an enemy territory,
Speaker 1: then you probably don't want your vehicles to be detected.
Speaker 1: It's generally a bad policy, yeah, because that means that
Speaker 1: they can be shot down or or otherwise compromised. And
Speaker 1: so you want to be able to run your mission
Speaker 1: without any kind of entanglements. And so that's when people
Speaker 1: started thinking, well, the radar is a really useful tool
Speaker 1: for detection. How can we get around radar so that
Speaker 1: our enemies don't know when we are there? And that's
Speaker 1: what really got the United States thinking about stealth technology.
Speaker 1: And really it was the Cold War. Yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: was all during the nineteen sevent days. Everyone was really tense. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Soviet Union or the then Soviet Union and the
Speaker 1: United States had been in a Cold war pretty consistently
Speaker 1: since shortly after World War Two, and by the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies that said, really we were seeing escalation on both sides.
Speaker 1: Arsenals were getting more and more powerful and complex. It
Speaker 1: was a lot of posturing on the part of both countries, definitely, uh,
Speaker 1: And the rest of the world was mostly saying, guys,
Speaker 1: can we can chill out? Yeah, this is getting a
Speaker 1: little tense for all of us, and we go get
Speaker 1: a pizza. Yeah, because once you start talking about how
Speaker 1: many times each country could destroy the other country via
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons, Like we could just stroy the the United
Speaker 1: States ten times over, well, we can destroy the so
Speaker 1: Union twelve times over. And everyone's just saying, really, is
Speaker 1: there this much need for these many Yeah, Well, one
Speaker 1: of the thoughts was, how can we deliver a nuclear
Speaker 1: payload to an enemy territory without the about them detecting
Speaker 1: that we're there and stopping us. We can, yeah, before
Speaker 1: the aircraft gets shot down or even or you know,
Speaker 1: how can we run spy missions? And you know exactly
Speaker 1: And so at the time, the main aircraft that was
Speaker 1: being used in bombing runs in the United States was
Speaker 1: the B fifty two bomber. And the B fifty two
Speaker 1: is not a stealth vehicle at all. Anti that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's actually has a quite quite a large radar footprint.
Speaker 1: It's very detectable, but it can travel quite fast and
Speaker 1: it can carry very large payloads. And it was first
Speaker 1: introduced back in nineteen fifty five, and it's known for
Speaker 1: being a reliable aircraft, so much so that there are
Speaker 1: still more than any fifty two in active service. And um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's actually projected after a couple of
Speaker 1: upgrades that will happen between now and it's projected to
Speaker 1: be an active part of our air force until the Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is a this is a longevity issue here.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's definitely a workhorse, but it is
Speaker 1: not a stealth vehicle. So the United States started to
Speaker 1: open up the possibility for different companies to bid on
Speaker 1: developing an aircraft that could stealthily fly and not be
Speaker 1: detected by radar and still have the carrying capacity to
Speaker 1: deliver large nuclear payloads. Yeah. Yeah, that's it was the
Speaker 1: other part of it. Yes, um, scary scary stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: there was simultaneously development of other stealth stealth technology going
Speaker 1: on that we'll talk about a little bit later on,
Speaker 1: but that was that was more on that research kind
Speaker 1: of side of things. And the B two, which is
Speaker 1: what came out of all that we're talking about right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the B two was the big one. I mean, that
Speaker 1: was the one that was unveiled and uh and talked
Speaker 1: about the most. And the B two is also better
Speaker 1: known as the stealth bomber. It's also the called the
Speaker 1: B two Spirit and most of the individual planes are
Speaker 1: called the Spirit of something or other and uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was first unveiled publicly on November twenty second, nineteen
Speaker 1: in Palmdale, California, at the Air Force Plant forty two.
Speaker 1: That same year, another stealth aircraft was unveiled, that was
Speaker 1: the F one seventeen Nighthawk, and we'll talk about that
Speaker 1: more in a little bit. It was a North Grumman
Speaker 1: that ended up winning that that bidding battle, and they're
Speaker 1: the ones who developed the B two. It took about
Speaker 1: a decade for them to make it, and about forty
Speaker 1: billion dollars in research and development, yeah, which which was
Speaker 1: up over what they had originally stated they might be
Speaker 1: able to do it for. Yeah, and uh, and also
Speaker 1: the sanes themselves, the bombers themselves were more expensive than
Speaker 1: what they originally intended. They first thought that they could
Speaker 1: deliver the entire order for you know, ADO plans aren't
Speaker 1: thirty two planes for like forty billion. Twenty Well, I
Speaker 1: think it went from twenty to seventy. Yeah. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: original contract was for twenty two billions from what I've read,
Speaker 1: and then um as when when when has unveiled it
Speaker 1: had the total priced jump to like over seventy And
Speaker 1: eventually they figured that each aircraft would cost about one
Speaker 1: to two billion dollars a piece, and so it got
Speaker 1: really expensive really fast. Like that ended up being the
Speaker 1: UH the target of a lot of criticism, you know,
Speaker 1: people saying that these contracts are all based on estimates
Speaker 1: that were not realistic, and whether or not the companies
Speaker 1: were aware of how unrealistic they were was a matter
Speaker 1: of doubt, and it just got into a really sore subject.
Speaker 1: But something happened that ended up kind of taking a
Speaker 1: little of the sting out, which is that in n
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union collapsed and suddenly people didn't really have
Speaker 1: so much of a need to h to carry large
Speaker 1: amounts of nuclear warheads across enemy territory quietly, and yeah,
Speaker 1: when you're when your chief nemesis goes under, and of
Speaker 1: course we can you know today when you look at
Speaker 1: the United States and Russia, there are other issues where
Speaker 1: you might say things are starting to turn around at
Speaker 1: some points. You know, there's always and and there's always
Speaker 1: tension between various world powers like that. It's like our
Speaker 1: career right now, you know, there's there's always always chicanery,
Speaker 1: right So, so anyway, because the so Union collapsed, that
Speaker 1: that helped UH the United States come to the decision
Speaker 1: to reduce the order from one thirty two to twenty
Speaker 1: one aircraft, twenty of which are still flying around today.
Speaker 1: I'll talk a little bit about that, but before I
Speaker 1: do that, I guess we should kind of describe what
Speaker 1: the B two looks like in case you guys have
Speaker 1: never seen one. They're funky, they are. The design is
Speaker 1: called a flying wing actually because with most aircraft, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's you've seen an airplane, it's got it's
Speaker 1: got a body, it's got wings, it's got stabilizers. Stabilizer
Speaker 1: is coming off in the little strange angles. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but but this flying wing is designed so that the
Speaker 1: entire craft generates lift. Yeah, so it's it doesn't have
Speaker 1: all that like the fuselage and the wings. It's it's
Speaker 1: all one body. It's not it's not like, you know,
Speaker 1: you've got a tube that's the fuselage and then you've
Speaker 1: got the to the two wings attached to that. No,
Speaker 1: it's all one giant wing. And yeah, like you said,
Speaker 1: you know, you just go fast enough and it generates
Speaker 1: the lift it needs to fly. And yeah, the eliminating
Speaker 1: the tail and the fuselage reduced drag and it also
Speaker 1: means that because of its design it doesn't have like
Speaker 1: it's it's easier for it to avoid radar detection based
Speaker 1: on the stuff it's made of. And we'll talk more
Speaker 1: about that and how the stealth stuff actually works in
Speaker 1: a little bit. It is one hundred seventy two ft wide,
Speaker 1: which is fifty two point four meters, which is which
Speaker 1: is a bunch. Yeah, it's it's it's essentially if you
Speaker 1: were to look at an American football field, a B
Speaker 1: two bomber from wingspan from wing tip to wing tip
Speaker 1: would be more than half the length of an American
Speaker 1: football field. Yeah, and this is this is a vehicle
Speaker 1: built for two people. Yeah, it's a two person aircraft. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's also sixty nine feet from tail I mean quote
Speaker 1: unquote tail to tip. It doesn't really have a tail.
Speaker 1: I guess the length of the bit of the wing
Speaker 1: exactly where the B two stops being to where the
Speaker 1: B two starts being right, and is sevent ft high.
Speaker 1: And uh. It can fly about six thousand nautical miles
Speaker 1: which is about eleven thousand, one twelve kilometers before it
Speaker 1: needs to refuel. And if you have an aerial refueling
Speaker 1: as part of its mission. It can go ten thousand
Speaker 1: nautical miles or about eight kilometers. That's a that's a
Speaker 1: long trip. And uh and and we've seen some recent
Speaker 1: use of that. I can carry twenty tons of conventional
Speaker 1: and nuclear weapons. It is considered a high sub sonic flight,
Speaker 1: which means that it's top speed isn't just under the
Speaker 1: speed of sounds some something like what a thousand feet
Speaker 1: per second something like that. Yeah, it's it's it's really Uh.
Speaker 1: It goes about as fast as an aircraft can go
Speaker 1: before it starts becoming super sonic. Right, So, which would
Speaker 1: cause a boom, which is obviously something you want a
Speaker 1: stealth vehicle to do. Right. You know, if the stealth
Speaker 1: vehicle causes booms, it's not that stealthy pirates have discovered
Speaker 1: this to their own unfortunate detriment. Right, Cannons go boom,
Speaker 1: whereas the hurricane goes. Yeah, we all are familiar with
Speaker 1: the hurrican sound. Hey guys, it's Jonathan from being all
Speaker 1: quiet and stealthy like. So we can take a quick
Speaker 1: break to think our sponsors. So remember I said that
Speaker 1: there are twenty of those twenty one aircraft still flying around.
Speaker 1: That's because in February two eight, there was an accident
Speaker 1: during a takeoff at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam,
Speaker 1: and that resulted in the loss of the Spirit of Kansas.
Speaker 1: B two bomber and UH. Nineteen of those twenty are
Speaker 1: at Whiteman Air Force based in Missouri because I don't
Speaker 1: say Missouri, and the other one is at Edwards Air
Speaker 1: Force Base in California, which is used for flight testing purposes. Okay.
Speaker 1: The thing about these B twos, and I guess anything
Speaker 1: that has that is covered in this stealth technology paint
Speaker 1: and tape and stuff, is that all of all of
Speaker 1: that is extremely temperature and weather sensitive. If you if
Speaker 1: you get it too warm, and it's it's like a
Speaker 1: mad wife. If you get warm, if you get it wet,
Speaker 1: if you feed it after midnight, you it after midnight, um,
Speaker 1: it starts to fall apart, and and all of that
Speaker 1: has to be reapplied frequently, basically every time that they
Speaker 1: take it out of these temperature controlled hangars. And they've
Speaker 1: started designing um portable temperature controlled hangars so that they
Speaker 1: can run missions overseas, right, Yeah, that's that is one
Speaker 1: of the big drawbacks to the B two is that
Speaker 1: it does require these these climate controlled hangars to essentially
Speaker 1: live in between missions, because otherwise the material that keeps
Speaker 1: it stealthy would degrade very rapidly, and it would not
Speaker 1: be a secure method of delivering payloads under the radar,
Speaker 1: so to speak. You're not literally going under the radar
Speaker 1: um So, also recently, very recently, and as of the
Speaker 1: Timber recording this podcast, the United States had sent two
Speaker 1: of the B two bombers over the South Korea for
Speaker 1: training exercises. This is all part of that escalating issue
Speaker 1: between North Korea and South Korea, Japan, the United States
Speaker 1: where you know, this is the training exercises. Are are
Speaker 1: this this annual exercise happens over there? And they don't
Speaker 1: necessarily right, yeah, need to be Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: a show of force. It's going just hey guys, remember
Speaker 1: what we got. We got these things right, right. It's
Speaker 1: it's essentially because North Korea has a history of posturing
Speaker 1: and threatening South Korea as well as lots of other
Speaker 1: nations and uh, and then the United States and South
Speaker 1: Korea have a history of sort of giving a giving
Speaker 1: a show of force, not directly against North Korea, but
Speaker 1: just kind of saying, look at all the stuff we
Speaker 1: have think twice before you start to make so um
Speaker 1: and some of the rest of the lots of the
Speaker 1: rest of the world ends up saying, guys again, can
Speaker 1: we can You know, you remember the Cold War and
Speaker 1: remember all tense things got it's kind of happening again.
Speaker 1: Remember that pizza, wasn't it good? Can we go back
Speaker 1: to just the pizza. I mean, I'm not want to
Speaker 1: judge whether or not it's the right call, because that's
Speaker 1: way above my pay grade, and I honestly couldn't tell
Speaker 1: you what's the right thing to do, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: it was definitely one of those things where the United
Speaker 1: States is saying, look, we want to show South Korea
Speaker 1: that we are not going to abandon them, nor are
Speaker 1: we going to abandon the other nations that are often
Speaker 1: threatened by North Korea, Japan being one of them. So
Speaker 1: really as the United States kind of saying like, you, guys,
Speaker 1: aren't alone. But you know, it's one of those one
Speaker 1: of those deals where when you read the news it
Speaker 1: gets a little nerve racking to see kind of the
Speaker 1: escalation of tensions. But besides the b too, there are
Speaker 1: a couple of other stealth aircraft that are worth mentioning.
Speaker 1: There's actually several aircraft that have been in either prototype
Speaker 1: or development stages, but I wanted to specifically mentioned a
Speaker 1: couple that were developed and tested or at least tested
Speaker 1: and one of my favorite places in the hawai world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's right there behind Disneyland. There's Disneyland Area fifty one
Speaker 1: and then Smithsonian so um yeah. The not not that
Speaker 1: those are locationally adjunct, just that that that's the man
Speaker 1: would that would be terrific? That wouldn't be I mean
Speaker 1: it would be a pretty pretty bad secret base if
Speaker 1: it would also be a pretty warm Disneyland. Yes, being
Speaker 1: out there in the middle of the desert, so um
Speaker 1: so Area fifty one, also known as Groom Lakes a
Speaker 1: place that the Air Force has used for testing various
Speaker 1: prototype aircraft secretly to make sure that they were going
Speaker 1: to meet the military specifications and needs uh and be
Speaker 1: away from prying eyes. Now, the B two wasn't necessarily
Speaker 1: flown there. It may have been, but not that we yet.
Speaker 1: But there are a couple of other aircraft that were
Speaker 1: known to have flown out of Area fifty one. One
Speaker 1: of those was called the have Blue Aircraft, which later
Speaker 1: became the F one seventeen, a stealth fighter better known
Speaker 1: as the Nighthawk, and uh, that one also was unveiled
Speaker 1: in although from from what I understand, it had been
Speaker 1: kicking around in research a lot longer. Yeah, the very
Speaker 1: first have Blue I think flew sometime in nineteen eleven
Speaker 1: years or maybe maybe January February, I think is the
Speaker 1: first test that. Yeah, so fun, fun factoid. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure that before it was called have Blue, the very
Speaker 1: very very first name for this technology was Project Harvey,
Speaker 1: based on the film and stage show Harvey. We're in, um, oh,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Stewarts talking to a Jimmy jusible. A rabbit is
Speaker 1: visible only to Jimmy Stewart's character, not to Jimmy Stewart.
Speaker 1: That would be even more meta and awesome. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. Yeah, I didn't know that though.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I wrote the how are you fifty one works?
Speaker 1: And I did not know that that's really cool, So
Speaker 1: of course I might have written that in that article,
Speaker 1: and I just forgot. The Other thing about that is
Speaker 1: that Lockheed was the one that designed have Blue. Slash
Speaker 1: one seventeen a uh. Northrop Grumman also created another stealth
Speaker 1: aircraft besides the B two bomber. It was called Tacit Blue,
Speaker 1: and that was a stealth surveillance aircraft. So this was
Speaker 1: just designed to fly over and essentially spy on nations.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a combat vehicle, and it was never developed
Speaker 1: beyond the prototype stage. In fact, I think there's one
Speaker 1: in a museum at this point. I'd have to go,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure I wrote about in the Area one article,
Speaker 1: But the F one seventeen A actually did go into production,
Speaker 1: so that that's a stealth fighter, not a not a bomber.
Speaker 1: Could it could also carry nuclear payloots. The original contract
Speaker 1: was for five test craft and fifteen production craft or
Speaker 1: operational YEP, and it's been used in lots of United
Speaker 1: States operations, including Operation Desert Thunder, Operation Allied Force, Operation
Speaker 1: Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom and uh the During
Speaker 1: Operation Allied Force back in n it was the one
Speaker 1: and only instance of an F one A being shot down.
Speaker 1: It was shot down by an anti aircraft missile that
Speaker 1: was operated by what was at the time the Army
Speaker 1: of Yugoslavia. Because it crashed and seemed to be relatively
Speaker 1: intact after it crashed. The pilot, by the way, ejected
Speaker 1: safely and was recovered by the U S forces, so
Speaker 1: he was safe. But the aircraft landed crash landed giving
Speaker 1: clearly because there was no one flying it and was
Speaker 1: apparently landed mostly intact, and in fact, UH it seems
Speaker 1: that Russian and Serbian forces were able to observe and
Speaker 1: possibly even copy the stealth technology, which means that the
Speaker 1: stealth technology was compromised as a result of that crash out.
Speaker 1: It is again the one and only time that we
Speaker 1: have lost a stealth aircraft in a combat situation as
Speaker 1: opposed to an accident. Yea too, I think I think
Speaker 1: that I've heard UH of at least one test accident
Speaker 1: that happened where and then apart for on the F
Speaker 1: one seventeen, which by the way, was retired in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, turned out that it was just it
Speaker 1: wasn't really meeting the needs of the military at the time,
Speaker 1: and they started to rely more heavily on the F
Speaker 1: twenty two Raptor, which also has stealth technology and also
Speaker 1: was designed by Lockheed. UH. They retired the F one
Speaker 1: seventeen and two thousand and eight, but there's still a
Speaker 1: fleet of them, so right, yeah, I think that fifty
Speaker 1: nine in total were built from Yeah, and and there's
Speaker 1: at least some of those still in existence. They're just
Speaker 1: not an active service so um, I mean we I
Speaker 1: guess they could be put back into active service if necessary.
Speaker 1: But the F twenty two Raptors essentially taken over their
Speaker 1: spot in the military, and that was unveiled in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven and that remains in service. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of a rundown on the aircraft, the main aircraft in
Speaker 1: the United States that you stealth technology. Gosh, guys, hope
Speaker 1: you really enjoyed this classic episode of tech stuff. But
Speaker 1: before to get too stealthy, let's take another quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: back to stealth. So we know that stealth is all
Speaker 1: about avoiding radar, and we know about the various aircraft
Speaker 1: that incorporates stealth technology to some extent. So exactly how
Speaker 1: the stealth work? How can you avoid radar? Well, so
Speaker 1: there this comes in a couple of different parts. First
Speaker 1: of all, you can you can design the shape of
Speaker 1: the plane in such a way that it bounces the
Speaker 1: radar rather than directly back to the transmitter receiver. Apparatus, um,
Speaker 1: somewhere else entirely. Oh, I say. So, let's say like,
Speaker 1: let's say I've got a flashlight and you have a mirror,
Speaker 1: Lauren and I, and you're just holding the mirror straight
Speaker 1: up to me. I turned the flashlight on, and I
Speaker 1: can see the flashlight reflected right back at me. But
Speaker 1: if you were to tilt that mirror so that the
Speaker 1: top of the mirror comes closer to you and the
Speaker 1: bottom of the mirror is further away from you, then
Speaker 1: the beam is beamed up rather than at me. So
Speaker 1: if you were to design an aircraft so that lots
Speaker 1: of the large flat surfaces were angled in weird wonky
Speaker 1: love crafty in ways using non Euclidean geometry or at
Speaker 1: least some weird angles, those radio waves would not bounce
Speaker 1: right back to the radar station. Correct um. And also
Speaker 1: if you use slightly curved surfaces, um, that will also
Speaker 1: help because you know the same way that if you again,
Speaker 1: if you've got a flashlight and you pointed at a
Speaker 1: curved mirror, yeah, it's not going to bounce right back.
Speaker 1: It's going to bounce in a in a slightly different direction.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the stealth b two bomber as well as
Speaker 1: the other aircraft we've talked about, have these kind of surfaces. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you look at the stealth bomber, you see like
Speaker 1: there's some large, really oddly angular flat surfaces and then
Speaker 1: some other kind of bulgy, uh curve surfaces. Um. In fact,
Speaker 1: an interesting point, you remember we were talking about that
Speaker 1: F one seventeen that was shot down. From what I understand,
Speaker 1: the way that the anti aircraft missile system detected the
Speaker 1: F one seventeen was that the F one seventeens bomber
Speaker 1: doors had opened, which increased its radar footprint just enough
Speaker 1: for it to be detected. Yeah. Yeah, And other things
Speaker 1: that a plane can do can also throw this off.
Speaker 1: I mean, if if you start to roll the plane
Speaker 1: it's going to the surfaces might might line up and
Speaker 1: might line up in a different way. Yeah. So that's
Speaker 1: one thing is actually designing the surfaces of the aircraft
Speaker 1: itself can help essentially reflect the radio waves in a
Speaker 1: different direction. So you you send out that burst of
Speaker 1: high frequency radio signal and nothing comes back, it's the
Speaker 1: same as if nothing is there right right, or you know,
Speaker 1: or you might only get as much radio signal back
Speaker 1: as you would get from a bird or an insect, right,
Speaker 1: which in which case you'd say, well, that's that's nothing
Speaker 1: to worry about. You know that you start worrying about
Speaker 1: every bird, which would probably drive you pretty crazy pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: So that's one way. That's one way, and then the
Speaker 1: other way is to use those materials um that you
Speaker 1: are building the outside of the plane from in ways
Speaker 1: that don't that absorb but rather than reflect, right, and
Speaker 1: this at first you might think, well, what kind of
Speaker 1: special space age technology is this, But then when you
Speaker 1: think about it, you know, radio waves are part of
Speaker 1: the electromagnetic spectrum, as is say visible light. So when
Speaker 1: you think of a visible light, you know, like if
Speaker 1: you use black paint that absorbs light, you know, it's
Speaker 1: reflecting some light back, but not very much. I mean,
Speaker 1: depending on how the quality of the paint you're using,
Speaker 1: how how black the black is. It also absorbs heat
Speaker 1: more readily. Yep. So again that's the infrared radiations. So
Speaker 1: in that case, we already know of materials that can
Speaker 1: absorb light. So so really this is the same sort
Speaker 1: of thing, except instead of absorbing light, it's absorbing radio waves.
Speaker 1: And it can be paint, it can be um, a
Speaker 1: powder like substance that's worked into the actual composite material
Speaker 1: that makes up the plane tapes. And again it's this
Speaker 1: paint and tape that really needs to be replaced each
Speaker 1: time the B two goes out. The F twenty two
Speaker 1: Raptor relies more on the shape of the aircraft than
Speaker 1: this sort of material, which means that you can fly
Speaker 1: in F twenty two Raptor more frequently without having to
Speaker 1: replace all those exterior parts or or to touch up
Speaker 1: all the exterior plants. In fact, that was one of
Speaker 1: the things that Lockheed put in mind when they started
Speaker 1: designing the F twenty two, and it's because they learned
Speaker 1: their lessons from the F one and the B two bomber.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that that's the other thing is that you
Speaker 1: create these materials that actually absorb the radio waves, and
Speaker 1: again that means that there are fewer waves bouncing back
Speaker 1: from the aircraft and less of a chance to actually
Speaker 1: be picked up on radar. Now, at the top of
Speaker 1: the show, I also mentioned the fact that stealth technology
Speaker 1: is not just about radar. That's the primary that we
Speaker 1: share the well, that's the primary censor that people are
Speaker 1: using to detect planes at longer distances than anything else.
Speaker 1: But you can also detect planes either by hearing them,
Speaker 1: by seeing them, or you know, by detecting a heat signature. Now,
Speaker 1: the heat signature thing, I think that's really interesting. The
Speaker 1: way the B two gets around the heat signature is
Speaker 1: a very creative exhaust system, right, because the way that
Speaker 1: people pick up on the heat of planes is is
Speaker 1: not by you know, reading like the heat of an
Speaker 1: engine directly by reading the exhaust uh and so yeah,
Speaker 1: so so if you if you take steps to disguise
Speaker 1: that by by for example, cooling the exhaust off before
Speaker 1: it actually exits the plane plane, or by putting the
Speaker 1: exhaust ports on top of the plane where fewer sensors
Speaker 1: are likely to be you know, hovering hovering above the
Speaker 1: plane than they are on the ground. Yeah. So so
Speaker 1: that's it's pretty interesting. Yeah. There is this cooling system
Speaker 1: that the B two has, So the exhaust actually passes
Speaker 1: through this cooling system, losing a lot of that heat,
Speaker 1: and it just keeps uh ternalized by the plane, by
Speaker 1: the bomber, and so once the exhaust comes out, it's
Speaker 1: not as hot as it would be without that cooling system,
Speaker 1: making it more difficult to detect the B two with
Speaker 1: a with like some sort of thermal sensor. And then
Speaker 1: it's also the way the actual plane is designed. It's
Speaker 1: designed such a way that's difficult to tell which way
Speaker 1: it's facing when you just glance at it, because it's
Speaker 1: got that flying wing structure. Yeah, yeah, it's it's just
Speaker 1: sort of triangular at that point. It's like, yeah, so
Speaker 1: if you if you aren't able to get a really
Speaker 1: good bead on it from the ground, it can be
Speaker 1: very difficult or from anywhere, really, it can be really
Speaker 1: difficult to tell what direction it's moving in, which again
Speaker 1: makes it a little bit uh more likely that the
Speaker 1: B two will be able to complete its mission without
Speaker 1: any any problems, right right, if it's flying at night,
Speaker 1: of course, the black paint will also help it kind
Speaker 1: of melt in and uh. And so they're also systems
Speaker 1: aboard the B two that allow it to target to
Speaker 1: to locate target. It's even in darkness. Sometimes you're talking
Speaker 1: about pilots who are wearing night vision goggles essentially. Um,
Speaker 1: so you know, it's it's it's again it's a weapon
Speaker 1: design for secrecy and stealth, so it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: a cool thing and it's scary too. Yeah. They also
Speaker 1: take an electromagnetic energy created on board the plane into
Speaker 1: account when they're doing all of this. Uh, they take
Speaker 1: steps to dampen anything so that it's not going to
Speaker 1: be radiating outward, radiating outward. Lots of lots of electromagnetic shielding.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's a lot
Speaker 1: of things you have to think about when you are
Speaker 1: designing an aircraft that is supposed to be uh, it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be able to escape detection um, and so
Speaker 1: it's kind of uh, I mean, it's really it's a
Speaker 1: fascinating subject to me. And by the way, this has
Speaker 1: meant that that there's also been developments in radar technology
Speaker 1: as people have tried to find other ways to make
Speaker 1: it more possible to detect their craft. Yeah. Another instrument
Speaker 1: on these planes tends to be a radar warning receiver. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so says so that if you do notice that you're
Speaker 1: being watched, you can take steps to write you can
Speaker 1: at least be alerted to that fact and try to
Speaker 1: keep on the lookout for any ground defenses like anti
Speaker 1: aircraft missiles if you need to take evasive maneuver whatever
Speaker 1: they or you know, radio back home and say please advise,
Speaker 1: do we continue on with the mission or do we
Speaker 1: abort the mission? Yeah, and it's it's it's fascinating stuff
Speaker 1: and we do we actually do know quite a bit
Speaker 1: about it, although the actual secret sauce of the stuff
Speaker 1: that goes on these aircraft remains a secret for obvious reasons,
Speaker 1: right right. I know that it's sprayed on by four
Speaker 1: independently active robots. Wow, boy, the stories those guys must
Speaker 1: tell when they're just sipping down oil over at the
Speaker 1: oil cooler the end of the long day. My world
Speaker 1: is the magical world. It sounds like it. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: but anyway, that's that's the low down on stealth technology.
Speaker 1: It's actually pretty straightforward and it's mostly all about physics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you think about it's kind of it's to me,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting that took as long as it
Speaker 1: did to start to develop aircraft that could effectively avoid radar,
Speaker 1: because once you understand how radar works, that you already
Speaker 1: know what it takes to get around it. I guess
Speaker 1: it just mostly depends on developing the materials that are
Speaker 1: very good at absorbing radar. Because obviously you could design
Speaker 1: an aircraft that has these weird angles on it. Although
Speaker 1: to make such an aircraft flight worthy, I suppose is
Speaker 1: a bit of a challenge, right. And that's the other
Speaker 1: really interesting part about the development of all of these
Speaker 1: technologies was that it was happening in a time when
Speaker 1: people were first starting to computer design blueprints, right, and
Speaker 1: and also computer construct use computers to actually do the
Speaker 1: construction of materials, you know, those robots that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: using robots on an assembly line to extremely precisely put
Speaker 1: something together. And that concludes another classic episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: Hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have a suggestion
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