Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm m and Today we want
Speaker 1: to talk to you a little bit about a subject
Speaker 1: that was sent into us by one of our listeners.
Speaker 1: Listener Kevin sent us a request via Facebook, and Kevin
Speaker 1: wanted to know about stealth technology. So, yeah, being stealthy,
Speaker 1: I'm an expert at this, Because what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: I am, I'm like the stealthiest stealth whoever, stealth like
Speaker 1: Super Ninja. They and half century is what you're saying,
Speaker 1: to be fair and more pirate than Ninja. So um, okay,
Speaker 1: are pirates concerned with being stealthies? You have to know
Speaker 1: the weapons of your enemy, is what I'm saying. And
Speaker 1: pirates and Ninja being natural enemies in the wild, it's
Speaker 1: important to study your enemies techniques. All Let's talk of
Speaker 1: pirates and ninjas reminds me very much of the Cold War, right,
Speaker 1: and that is an important reason why stealth technology even exists.
Speaker 1: So thank you for getting us back on track, Lauren. So,
Speaker 1: stealth technology in general, stealth technology refers to the types
Speaker 1: of tech we use in aircraft to make them difficult
Speaker 1: or impossible to detect, mainly via radar, although we also
Speaker 1: think about things like infrared scanners that sort of stuff
Speaker 1: and uh, and really to understand how stealth works, we
Speaker 1: first have to understand what radar is and how that works. Right,
Speaker 1: Radar radar works thanks to to basic concepts, and that's
Speaker 1: echo and Doppler shift. Yes, so yeah, and echo. I
Speaker 1: mean like if you if you were to shout out, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you go visit the Grand Canyon and you
Speaker 1: shout as loudly as you can, uh, you might hear
Speaker 1: after a few seconds your voice coming back to you.
Speaker 1: And that's because some when you when you shout something out,
Speaker 1: you know, your your voices traveling out in sound waves.
Speaker 1: They will collide with the other side of the canyon,
Speaker 1: and some of those sound waves will bounce back at
Speaker 1: you and eventually arrive back to where you 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 pressure, humidity, things that would affect how
Speaker 1: fast the sound is 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: it would definitely be a meshable in in day to
Speaker 1: day conversation for example. But you know, I I don't
Speaker 1: go down to Florida and go like, man, it's really humid.
Speaker 1: I can barely hear you from this point five. You
Speaker 1: know it's taking it's taking longer for your words to
Speaker 1: hit my ear. Yeah. But anyway, the same principle works
Speaker 1: on radar, except instead of sound, we're talking about electromagnetic
Speaker 1: waves or radio waves, and so you use radio waves
Speaker 1: to you project them out and if they come into
Speaker 1: contact with something, some of those radio waves will bounce back.
Speaker 1: So if you have a receiver, then you can detect
Speaker 1: those incoming waves and determine by how long it took
Speaker 1: to go out and back about how far away that
Speaker 1: object is now. You also mentioned Doppler shifts, so we
Speaker 1: have to talk about right right and Doppler shift as
Speaker 1: for example, why a car's horn sounds higher pitched when
Speaker 1: the car is moving towards you than it does when
Speaker 1: the car is moving away from you. Yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: a great article on How Stuff Works that explains this
Speaker 1: that I like a lot. Marshall Brain actually wrote He's
Speaker 1: the founder of How Stuff Works and U and in it,
Speaker 1: Marshall talked about how if you were if the car
Speaker 1: is sitting still and the driver leans on the horn
Speaker 1: for a minute. First of all, you must be in Boston. Uh.
Speaker 1: And second, uh, that means that if you are far
Speaker 1: enough away. Let's say that your far enough away that
Speaker 1: the sound takes six seconds to get to you, all right,
Speaker 1: and you're sitting there. That means that the the horn
Speaker 1: will have been uh sounding for six seconds before you
Speaker 1: can even hear it, right, But then it'll it'll last
Speaker 1: for a minute. That's how long because the person is
Speaker 1: leaning on Now, if that car is traveling toward you,
Speaker 1: then the pitch of that is going to be higher
Speaker 1: than it would be if if it were just saying still,
Speaker 1: those those waves are essentially compressed a higher frequency in
Speaker 1: the same amount of time. So and then of course,
Speaker 1: if the car goes by you. You know you've heard
Speaker 1: this if you've ever heard a siren when an emergency
Speaker 1: vehicle has either come up behind or approached you and
Speaker 1: then passed. As it goes As it's traveling towards you,
Speaker 1: it's a higher pitch, and as it's going away it's
Speaker 1: a lower pitch. And that's because of the frequency of
Speaker 1: the waves in the way that the object making the
Speaker 1: sound is traveling versus the sound itself traveling. So the
Speaker 1: interesting thing about Doppler shift is if you can detect
Speaker 1: the uh, if you know what the frequency of the
Speaker 1: waves were when it was going out. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you've got a transmitter, right, that's that's your your radar
Speaker 1: transmitter and antenna that's transmitting the high burst of high
Speaker 1: frequency radio waves. You know what the frequency is when
Speaker 1: you transmit. When the frequency comes back, uh, it's going
Speaker 1: to be or when the radio waves come back, rather
Speaker 1: it's going to be possibly a different frequency than it
Speaker 1: was when it went out. Now, that means that the
Speaker 1: object that hit was in motion. If it's a higher frequency,
Speaker 1: that means that object is essentially moving towards you. If
Speaker 1: it's a lower frequency, that object is moving away. So
Speaker 1: and by measuring exactly the difference in the pitch, you
Speaker 1: can measure how fast it's going, Yeah, exactly, or at
Speaker 1: least get an estimate, pretty good idea. Yes. And because
Speaker 1: we're talking, you know, radio waves move essentially at the
Speaker 1: speed of light, so you know, the delays here are
Speaker 1: really really super tiny, and and the transmission is like,
Speaker 1: is a fraction of a second long. So you transmit
Speaker 1: these really short bursts and uh, and then turn off
Speaker 1: the transmitter and allow the waves to come back, right,
Speaker 1: and you measure the delay between when it went out
Speaker 1: and when it came back, and you measure the Doppler shift,
Speaker 1: and that gives you an idea of the position and
Speaker 1: speed at which the object is moving. So if it's
Speaker 1: moving towards you or away. Uh. And it's very useful
Speaker 1: for detecting things like aircraft, and in fact, we use
Speaker 1: it all the time, not just in military applications but
Speaker 1: air traffic control. So here's the thing. If you are
Speaker 1: running a military operation and you want to run surveillance
Speaker 1: or some sort of uh 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 other wise compromised.
Speaker 1: And so you want to be able to run your
Speaker 1: mission without any kind of entanglements. And so that's when
Speaker 1: people started thinking, well, the radar is a really useful
Speaker 1: tool for detection. How can we get around radar so
Speaker 1: that our enemies don't know when we are there? And
Speaker 1: that's 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 seventies. 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 we chill out? Yeah, this is in
Speaker 1: a little tense for all of us. Let me go
Speaker 1: get a pizza. Yeah, because once you start talking about
Speaker 1: how many times each country could destroy the other country
Speaker 1: via nuclear weapons, like we could destroy 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 say, really, is
Speaker 1: there this much need for these many Well, one of
Speaker 1: the thoughts was, how can we deliver a nuclear payload
Speaker 1: to an enemy territory without the about them detecting that
Speaker 1: we're there and stopping us. But 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 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 a a an aircraft that could stealthily fly and
Speaker 1: not be detected by radar and and still have the
Speaker 1: carrying capacity to deliver large nuclear payloads. Yeah. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that was the other part of it. Yes, Um, scary
Speaker 1: scary stuff. Well, there was simultaneously development of other stealth
Speaker 1: stealth technology going on that we'll talk about a little
Speaker 1: bit later on, but that was that was more on
Speaker 1: that research kind of side of things. And right, the
Speaker 1: B two, which is what came out of all that
Speaker 1: we're talking about right now. Yeah, the B two was
Speaker 1: the big one. I mean, that was the one that
Speaker 1: was unveiled and uh and talked about the most. And
Speaker 1: the B two is also better known as the stealth bomber.
Speaker 1: It's also the called the B two Spirit, and most
Speaker 1: of the individual planes are called the Spirit of something
Speaker 1: or other and uh, yeah. It was first unveiled publicly
Speaker 1: on November twenty second, nineteen in Palmdale, California, at the
Speaker 1: Air Force Plant forty two. That same year, another stealth
Speaker 1: aircraft was unveiled. That was the F one seventeen Nighthawk,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about that more in a little bit.
Speaker 1: It was a North Grumman that ended up winning that
Speaker 1: that bidding battle, and they're the ones who developed the
Speaker 1: B two. It took about a decade for them to
Speaker 1: make it, and about forty billion dollars in research and development, yeah,
Speaker 1: which which was up over what they had originally stated
Speaker 1: they might be able to do it for. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: uh and also the planes themselves, the bombers themselves, were
Speaker 1: more expensive than what they originally intended. They first thought
Speaker 1: that they could deliver the entire order for you know,
Speaker 1: I have a hundreds hundred thirty two planes for like
Speaker 1: forty billion twenty well I think it went from twenty
Speaker 1: to seventy. Yeah. Yeah, the original contract was for twenty
Speaker 1: two billions. From what I've read, and then um as
Speaker 1: of when when when has unveiled it had the total
Speaker 1: price had jumped to like over seventy and eventually they
Speaker 1: figured that each aircraft would cost about one to two
Speaker 1: billion dollars a piece, and so it got really expensive
Speaker 1: really fast. Like that ended up being the UH the
Speaker 1: target of a lot of criticism, you know, people saying
Speaker 1: that these contracts are all based on estimates, that we're
Speaker 1: not realistic, and whether or not the companies were aware
Speaker 1: of how unrealistic they were was a matter of doubt,
Speaker 1: and it just got into a really sore subject. But
Speaker 1: something happened that ended up kind of taking a little
Speaker 1: of the sting out, which is that in nine the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union collapsed and suddenly people didn't really have so
Speaker 1: much of a need to UH to carry large amounts
Speaker 1: of nuclear warheads across enemy territory quietly. And yeah, when
Speaker 1: you're when you're chief nemesis, UH 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 cheri and and there's
Speaker 1: always tension between various world powers. Like that. It's like
Speaker 1: Korea right now. Yeah, there's there's always always chicanery, right. So,
Speaker 1: so anyway, because the so Union collapsed, that that helped, uh,
Speaker 1: the United States come to the decision to reduce the
Speaker 1: order from one thirty two to twenty one aircraft, twenty
Speaker 1: of which are still flying around today. And I'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about that. But before I do that,
Speaker 1: I guess we should kind of describe what the B
Speaker 1: two looks like in case you guys have never seen one.
Speaker 1: They're funky, they are. That The design is called a
Speaker 1: flying wing actually because with most aircraft, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's you've you've seen an airplane. It's got it's got
Speaker 1: a body, it's got wings, it's got stabilizers, stabilizers coming
Speaker 1: off in the little strange angles. But yeah, but but
Speaker 1: this flying wing is designed so that the entire craft
Speaker 1: generates lift. Yeah. So it's it doesn't have all that
Speaker 1: like the fuselage and the wings. It's it's all one body.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not like, you know, you've got a
Speaker 1: tube that's the fuselage and then you've got the to
Speaker 1: the two wings attached to that. No, it's all one
Speaker 1: giant wing and Yeah, like you said, you know, you
Speaker 1: just go fast enough and it generates the lift it
Speaker 1: needs to fly. And yeah, the eliminating the tail of
Speaker 1: the fuselage reduced drag. And yeah, it also means that
Speaker 1: because of its design it doesn't have like it's it's
Speaker 1: easier for it to avoid radar detection based on the
Speaker 1: stuff it's made of. And we'll talk more about that
Speaker 1: and how the stealth stuff actually works in a little bit.
Speaker 1: It is one D seventy two ft wide, which is
Speaker 1: fifty two point four meters, which is which is a bunch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's essentially if you were to look at an
Speaker 1: American football field, a a B two bomber from wingspan
Speaker 1: from wing tip to wingtip would be more than half
Speaker 1: the length of an American football field. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is this is a vehicle built for two people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a two person aircraft. Yeah. It's also sixty
Speaker 1: nine feet from tail I mean quote unquote tail to tip.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really have a tail. Yeah, I guess the
Speaker 1: length of the bit of the wings exactly where the
Speaker 1: B two stops being to where the B two starts
Speaker 1: being right, and and is sevent feet high and uh,
Speaker 1: it can fly about six thousand nautical miles, which is
Speaker 1: about eleven thousand, twelve kilometers before it needs to refuel.
Speaker 1: And if you have an aerial refueling as part of
Speaker 1: its mission, it can go ten thousand nautical miles or
Speaker 1: about eighty kilometers. That's a that's a long trip. And
Speaker 1: uh and and we've seen some recent use of that.
Speaker 1: It can carry twenty tons of conventional and nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: It is that considered a high sub sonic flight, which
Speaker 1: means that it's top speed isn't just under the speed
Speaker 1: of sound some something like what a thousand feet per
Speaker 1: 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. You know, if the stealth vehicle
Speaker 1: causes booms, it's not that stealthy pirates have discovered this
Speaker 1: to their own unfortunate detriment. Right, Cannons go boom, whereas
Speaker 1: the again goes. Yeah, we all are familiar with the
Speaker 1: Shurrikan sound. So remember I said that there are twenty
Speaker 1: of those twenty one aircraft still flying around. That's because
Speaker 1: in February two eight, there was an accident during a
Speaker 1: takeoff at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam, and that
Speaker 1: resulted in the loss of the Spirit of Kansas B
Speaker 1: two bomber and UH nineteen of those twenty are at
Speaker 1: Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri because I don't say Missouri,
Speaker 1: and the other one is at Edwards Air Force Base
Speaker 1: in California, which is used for flight testing purposes. The
Speaker 1: thing about these B twos, and I guess anything that
Speaker 1: has that is covered in this stealth technology paint and
Speaker 1: tape and stuff, is that all of all of that
Speaker 1: is extremely temperature and weather sensitive. Um. If you if
Speaker 1: you get it too warm, and it's it's like a
Speaker 1: mag wife. If you get warm, if you get it wet,
Speaker 1: if you feed it after midnight, if you feed it
Speaker 1: after midnight, um, it starts to fall apart. And and
Speaker 1: all of that has to be reapplied freakly basically every
Speaker 1: time that they take it out of these temperature controlled hangars.
Speaker 1: And they've started designing um portable temperature controlled hangars so
Speaker 1: that they can run missions overseas. Right, Yeah, that's that
Speaker 1: is one of the big drawbacks to the B two
Speaker 1: is that it does require these these climate controlled hangars
Speaker 1: to essentially live in between missions, because otherwise the material
Speaker 1: that keeps it stealthy would degrade very rapidly, and it
Speaker 1: would not be a secure method of delivering payloads under
Speaker 1: the radar, so to speak. They're not literally going under
Speaker 1: the radar um So. Also, recently, very recently, and as
Speaker 1: of the Timber recording this podcast, the United States had
Speaker 1: sent two of the B two bombers over to South
Speaker 1: Korea for training exercises. This is all part of that
Speaker 1: escalating issue between North Korea and South Korea, Japan, 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: miss fairly right, Yeah, need to be Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a show of force. It's going just hey, guys,
Speaker 1: remember what we got We got these things right, right.
Speaker 1: It's it's essentially because North Korea has a history of
Speaker 1: posturing and threatening South Korea, as well as lots of
Speaker 1: other nations and uh, and then the United States and
Speaker 1: South Korea have a history of sort of giving a
Speaker 1: giving a show of force not directly against North Korea,
Speaker 1: but just kind of saying, look at all the stuff
Speaker 1: we have, think twice before you start to make anything.
Speaker 1: So um and some of the rest of the lots
Speaker 1: of the rest of the world ends up saying, guys again,
Speaker 1: can we can you know, you remember the Cold War
Speaker 1: and remember how 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
Speaker 1: guys aren't alone. But you know, it's one of those
Speaker 1: one of those deals where when you read the news,
Speaker 1: it gets a little nerve racking to see kind of
Speaker 1: the escalation of tensions but besides the B two, there
Speaker 1: are 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 that
Speaker 1: would be terrific. That wouldn't be I mean it would
Speaker 1: be a pretty pretty bad secret base if it would
Speaker 1: also be a pretty warm Disneyland. Yes, being out there
Speaker 1: in the middle of the desert, so um so Area
Speaker 1: fifty one, also known as Groom Lake, a place that
Speaker 1: the Air Force has used for testing various prototype aircraft
Speaker 1: secretly to make sure that they were going to meet
Speaker 1: the military specifications and needs uh and be away from
Speaker 1: prying eyes. Now, the B two wasn't necessarily flown there.
Speaker 1: It may have been, but not that we know of. Ye,
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: fur to have Blue I think flew sometime in nineteen
Speaker 1: eleven years or maybe maybe January February, I think is
Speaker 1: the first test. That 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
Speaker 1: um oh, Jimmy Stewarts talking to a j a rabbit
Speaker 1: that's visible only to Jimmy Stewart's character, not to Jimmy Stewart.
Speaker 1: Thought that would be even more meta and awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know what you're talking about. Yeah, I didn't know that, though.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I wrote the how arey of 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 the have blue
Speaker 1: Slash one seventeen a. UH. Northrop Grumman also created another
Speaker 1: stealth aircraft besides the B two bomber. It was called
Speaker 1: Tacit Blue, and that was a stealth surveillance aircraft. So
Speaker 1: this was just designed to fly over and essentially spy
Speaker 1: on nations. It wasn't a combat vehicle, and it was
Speaker 1: never developed beyond the prototype stage. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: there's one in a museum at this point, I'd have
Speaker 1: to go, and I'm sure I wrote about in the
Speaker 1: Area fifty one article, But the F one seventeen A
Speaker 1: actually did go into production, so that that's a stealth fighter,
Speaker 1: not a not a bomber. Could it could also carry
Speaker 1: nuclear payloads. The original contract was for five test craft
Speaker 1: and fifteen production craft or operational YEP, and it's been
Speaker 1: used in lots of United States operations, including Operation Desert Thunder,
Speaker 1: Operation Allied Force, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom
Speaker 1: and UH. The during Operation Allied Force back in nineteen
Speaker 1: it was the one and only instance of an F
Speaker 1: one seventeen A being shot down. It was shot down
Speaker 1: by an anti aircraft missile that was operated by what
Speaker 1: was at the time the Army of Yugoslavia because it
Speaker 1: crashed and seemed to be relatively intact. After it crashed,
Speaker 1: the pilot, by the way, ejected safely and was recovered
Speaker 1: by the U S forces, so he was safe. But
Speaker 1: the aircraft landed crash landed giving clearly because there was
Speaker 1: no one flying it and was apparently landed mostly intact,
Speaker 1: and in fact, UH it seems that Russian and Serbian
Speaker 1: forces were able to observe and possibly even copy the
Speaker 1: stealth technology, which means that the stealth technology was compromised
Speaker 1: as a result of that crash. It is again the
Speaker 1: one and only time that we have lost a stealth
Speaker 1: aircraft in a combat situation as opposed to an accident.
Speaker 1: I think I think that I've heard UH of at
Speaker 1: least one test accident that happened where and then, apart
Speaker 1: from the F one seventeen, which by the way, was
Speaker 1: retired in two thousand and eight, turned out that it
Speaker 1: was just it wasn't really meeting the needs of the
Speaker 1: military at the time, and they started to rely more
Speaker 1: heavily on the F twenty two Raptor, which also has
Speaker 1: stealth technology and also was designed by Lockheed. UH. They
Speaker 1: retired the F one, seventeen and two thousand eight, but
Speaker 1: there's still a fleet of them, so right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that fifty nine in total were built from Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and there's at least some of those still in existence.
Speaker 1: They're just not an active service so um, I mean
Speaker 1: we I guess they could be put back into active
Speaker 1: service if necessary. But the F twenty two Raptors essentially
Speaker 1: taken over their spot in the military, and that was
Speaker 1: unveiled in nineteen seven and that remains in service. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of a rundown on the aircraft, the main
Speaker 1: aircraft in the United States that use stealth technology. We're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we will talk about how stealth technology actually works. So
Speaker 1: we'll do that in a minute, but first, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick moment to thank our sponsored Okay, back to stealth.
Speaker 1: So we know that stealth is all about avoiding radar,
Speaker 1: and we know about the various aircraft that incorporates stealth
Speaker 1: technology to some extent. So exactly how the stealth work?
Speaker 1: How can you avoid radar? Well, so there this comes
Speaker 1: in a couple of different parts. First of all, you
Speaker 1: can you can design the shape of the plane in
Speaker 1: such a way that it bounces the radar rather than
Speaker 1: directly back to the transmitter receiver apparatus, um, somewhere else entirely. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see. So let's say, like, let's say I've got
Speaker 1: a flashlight and you have a mirror, Lauren and I,
Speaker 1: and you're just holding the mirror straight up to me.
Speaker 1: I turned the flashlight on, and I can see the
Speaker 1: flashlight reflected right back at me. But if you were
Speaker 1: to tilt that mirror so that the top of the
Speaker 1: mirror comes closer to you and the bottom of the
Speaker 1: mirror is further away from you, then the beam is
Speaker 1: beamed up rather than at me. So if you were
Speaker 1: to design an aircraft so that lots of the large
Speaker 1: flat surfaces were angled in weird wonky love crafty in
Speaker 1: ways using non Euclidean geometry or at least some weird angles,
Speaker 1: those radio waves would not bounce right back to the
Speaker 1: radar station. Correct. Um. And also if you use slightly
Speaker 1: curved surfaces, um, that will also help because you know
Speaker 1: the same way that if you again, if you've got
Speaker 1: a flashlight and you pointed at a curved mirror, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not going to bounce right back it's going to
Speaker 1: bounce in a in a slightly different direction. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the Stealth B two bomber, as well as the other
Speaker 1: 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 seventeen's 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 send out that burst of high
Speaker 1: frequency radio signal and nothing comes back, it's the same
Speaker 1: as if nothing is there a 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, yeah, which would probably drive you pretty crazy
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. So that's one way. That's one way. And
Speaker 1: then the other way is to use those materials um
Speaker 1: that you are building the outside of the plane from
Speaker 1: in ways that don't that absorb rather than reflect, right,
Speaker 1: And this at first you might think, well, what kind
Speaker 1: of special space age technology is this, But then when
Speaker 1: you think about it, you know, radio waves are part
Speaker 1: of the electromagnetic spectrum, as is say visible light. So
Speaker 1: when you think about visible light, you know, like if
Speaker 1: you use black paint that absorbs light, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's 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 radiation. 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 could 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 rapt Or more frequently without having
Speaker 1: to replace all those exterior parts or or to touch
Speaker 1: up all the exterior parts. Uh. In fact, that was
Speaker 1: one of the things that Lockheed put in mind when
Speaker 1: they started designing the F twenty two, and it's because
Speaker 1: they learned their lessons from the F one s and
Speaker 1: the B two Bomber. So yeah, that that's the other
Speaker 1: thing is that you create these materials that actually absorb
Speaker 1: the radio waves, and again that means that there are
Speaker 1: fewer waves bouncing back from the aircraft and less of
Speaker 1: a chance to actually be picked up on radar. Now,
Speaker 1: at the top of the show, I also mentioned the
Speaker 1: fact that stealth technology it's not just about radar that's
Speaker 1: the primary that we share that well, that's the primary
Speaker 1: censor that people are using to detect planes at longer
Speaker 1: distances than anything else. Right. But you you can also
Speaker 1: detect planes either by hearing them, by seeing them, or
Speaker 1: you know, by detecting a heat signature. Now the heats
Speaker 1: nature thing. I think that's really interesting. The way the
Speaker 1: B two gets around the heat signature is a very
Speaker 1: creative exhaust system, right, because the way that people pick
Speaker 1: up on the heat of planes is is not by
Speaker 1: you know, reading like the heat of an engine directly,
Speaker 1: it's by reading the exhaust right. 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, it's internalized by the plane,
Speaker 1: by the bomber, and so once the exhaust comes out,
Speaker 1: it's not as hot as it would be without that
Speaker 1: cooling system, making it more difficult to detect the uh,
Speaker 1: the B two with a with like some sort of
Speaker 1: thermal sensor. And then it's also the way the actual
Speaker 1: plane is designed. It's designed such a way that it's
Speaker 1: difficult to tell which way it's facing when you just
Speaker 1: glance at it, because it's got that flying wing structure. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's just a sort of triangular. And at that
Speaker 1: point it's like, yeah, so if you if you aren't
Speaker 1: able to get a really good bead on it from
Speaker 1: the ground, it can be very difficult or from anywhere, really,
Speaker 1: it can be really difficult to tell what direction it's
Speaker 1: moving in, which again makes it a little bit uh
Speaker 1: more likely that the B two will be able to
Speaker 1: complete its mission without any any problems, right right, if
Speaker 1: it's flying at night, of course, the black paint will
Speaker 1: also help it kind of melt in the night sky
Speaker 1: and uh. And so they're also systems aboard the B
Speaker 1: two that allow it to target, to to locate targets
Speaker 1: even in darkness. Sometimes you're talking about pilots who are
Speaker 1: wearing night vision goggles essentially. Um, so you know it's
Speaker 1: it's it's again it's a weapon designed for secrets seen stealth,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's it's kind of a cool thing and
Speaker 1: it's scary too. Yeah. They also take an electromagnetic energy
Speaker 1: created on board the plane into account when they're doing
Speaker 1: all of this. They take steps to damp in anything
Speaker 1: so that it's not going to be radiating outward, radiating outward.
Speaker 1: Lots of lots of electromagnetic shielding. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot of things you have to
Speaker 1: think about when you are designing an aircraft that is
Speaker 1: supposed to be uh, it's supposed to be able to
Speaker 1: escape detection. Um. And so it's kind of uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really it's a fascinating subject to me. And by
Speaker 1: the way, this has meant that that there's also been
Speaker 1: developments in radar technology as people have tried to find
Speaker 1: other ways to make it more possible to detect steal
Speaker 1: their craft. Yeah. Another instrument on these planes tends to
Speaker 1: be a radar warning receiver. Yeah. So that so that
Speaker 1: if you do notice that you're being watched, you can
Speaker 1: take steps to rite you can at least be all
Speaker 1: did to that fact, and try to keep on the
Speaker 1: lookout for any ground defenses like anti aircraft missiles if
Speaker 1: you need to whatever, or you know, radio back home
Speaker 1: and say please advise. Do we continue on with the
Speaker 1: mission or do we abort the mission? Yeah? And it's
Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating stuff and we do. We actually do
Speaker 1: know quite a bit about it, although the actual secret
Speaker 1: sauce of the stuff that goes on these aircraft remains
Speaker 1: a secret for obvious reasons. Right right, I I know
Speaker 1: that it's sprayed on by four independently active robots. Wow. Boy,
Speaker 1: the stories those guys must tell when they're just sipping
Speaker 1: down oil over at the oil cooler the end of
Speaker 1: a long day. My world is the magical world. It
Speaker 1: sounds like it. Yeah, but but anyway, that's that's the
Speaker 1: low down on stealth technology. It's actually pretty straightforward, and
Speaker 1: it's mostly all about physics. When you think about it's
Speaker 1: kind of it's to me, it's kind of interesting that
Speaker 1: took as long as it did to start to develop
Speaker 1: aircraft that could effectively avoid radar, because once you understand
Speaker 1: how ray our works, then you already know what it
Speaker 1: takes to get around it. I guess it just mostly
Speaker 1: depends on developing the materials that are very good at
Speaker 1: absorbing radar, because obviously you could design an aircraft that
Speaker 1: has these weird angles on it, although to make such
Speaker 1: an aircraft flight worthy, I suppose as a bit of
Speaker 1: a challenge, right. And that's the other really interesting part
Speaker 1: about the development of all of these technologies was that
Speaker 1: it was happening in a time when people were first
Speaker 1: starting to computer design blueprints, right, and and also computer
Speaker 1: construct use computers to actually do the construction of materials,
Speaker 1: you know those robots that we're talking about, using robots
Speaker 1: on an assembly line to extremely precisely put something together.
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember when the stealth Bomber was unveiled.
Speaker 1: Do you remember, Lauren? Not not in the slightest Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was all enough to remember this, Okay, I was
Speaker 1: older than that. I remember when the Stealth Bomber was unveiled.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking it was the coolest looking thing I
Speaker 1: had seen since the Lamborghini Kuntash and uh that in
Speaker 1: some ways it reminded me of the Lambrighini ratosh. I
Speaker 1: also thought it was interesting even as a kid, you know,
Speaker 1: growing up in this era of the Cold War. I
Speaker 1: thought it was really interesting the reaction that people had
Speaker 1: to this, because people were kind of a little they
Speaker 1: were a little unnerved by the thought of secret, silent, secret, secret,
Speaker 1: secret aircraft that could be flying over and you would
Speaker 1: never know. Now, I never know when aircraft are flying
Speaker 1: over me anyway, unless it's loud enough for me to
Speaker 1: notice or I'm looking up. Otherwise I'm largely ignorant of it.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't really that doesn't really bother me so much.
Speaker 1: But I can understand why it's unnerving. But it's it's
Speaker 1: interesting technology, and I'm sure that the technology itself has
Speaker 1: advanced well beyond what we're talking about. But because of
Speaker 1: the very nature of what it is, that information is
Speaker 1: not easily available right right, certainly not to ask. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not on that list now, not anymore. Okay, guys,
Speaker 1: if you have any other topics that you would guess
Speaker 1: to tackle, you know, we really enjoyed this discussion on
Speaker 1: stealth technology something. Thanks so much to Kevin. Ye be
Speaker 1: like Kevin. Kevin was great. We want more Kevin's out there.
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