Can a plane really be invisible?
A brief look at stealth technologies.
Introduction
Blue Angels over Chicago, 2015: CC3 License from Scott M. Liebenson at Wikimedia Commons
During dinner yesterday, we were talking about my late father-in-law, who passed away in August. The conversation turned to past discussions we had held with him, one of which involved the use of stealth technologies in modern warfare. In particular, he stated the opinion that aircraft carriers are worthless in modern warfare between advanced powers, because the aircraft carrier would be easy prey for submarines with stealth technology. He spent several decades as a submariner in the US Navy, so when he stated this opinion, it's something that I still remember some months or years later.
From there, yesterday's conversation meandered to an experience someone else had while vacationing near a Naval Air Base along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. One day, while on the beach, the person telling the story had the opportunity - during their day at the beach - to watch a Blue Angels training exercise that was taking place out over the water. During the course of this exercise, the observers were surprised to see a plane that seemingly disappeared from view and reappeared. The person telling me the story was convinced that it hadn't been caused by something as simple as sun glare or the plane being obscured in the clouds.
Naturally, the possibility of vanishing planes and some sort of visual "cloaking" technology piqued my interest, so I have done some web searches today to see what is known about the possibility. It sounds pretty far-fetched, but I found this in a YouTube documentary (starting around 46 minutes):
A Hercules military transport belonging to the US Airforce was on a routine flight, headed toward the Black Sea. After more than 30 minutes in international airspace, a Russian stealth fighter approached, unnoticed. Suddenly, the Hercules copilot noticed a movement on the port side. He could hardly believe his eyes when he saw the Russian jet flying near his left wing. Just as quickly and silently as it appeared, the SU-57 vanished.
Likewise, in 2013 we find, Invisible Planes: China, US Race for Cloaking Tech, which says:
New stealth technology makes airplanes invisible not only to radar, it renders them hidden to the human eye as well -- just like an invisibility cloak in a Hollywood sci-fi thriller.
In the rest of this post, I'll tell you what I found in the course of my web searches. Sections will summarize what I've learned about the foundation and history of the technologies, land and sea uses of stealth technology, and its latest uses in aircraft.
Foundation and history
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Flower-class corvette, Public domain license from Wikimedia Commons
Most of the sources I found today suggest that serious work towards modern stealth technologies began between WWI and WWII, with substantial advances beginning in WWII. According to, Cloaking Devices: The U.S. Military Tried to Build the Ultimate ‘Stealth’ Weapon, Professor Edmund Burr noticed in 1940 that light reflecting at just the right angle off of the snow covered ground could make an aircraft seem to disappear when it was approaching. The British Navy harnessed this effect before 1942 by fitting two Corvettes with light projectors that reduced the detection range by as much as 50%.
A related effect was attempted with aircraft in 1943, where the plane would project light towards a target. In testing, this prevented a plane from being detected until it closed to within 1.6 miles (vs. 12 miles for an uncamouflaged plan). The technique never went live, however, due to the rise of centimeter-wave radars. This was done under the auspices of Project Yehudi (The man who wasn't there) and it is described here:
In 1973, US planes in Vietnam applied camouflage paint in order to reduce detection distance by 30%.
The documentary from above suggests that there are four aspects to stealth technology:
- visible light
- sound
- heat
- radar
Another point that they note is that stealth is sometimes accompanied by intentional non-stealth, in the form of a decoy. For example, the Eurofighter Tycoon deploys missiles that make use of radar-based stealth technology. To counteract any imperfections in the missile's stealth technology, the plane will also fire decoy missiles that send out fake radar signals and make attractive targets for anti-missile weapons.
Land and sea uses of stealth technology
Several of these applications surprised me. I was already aware of some research into creating a so-called "cloak of invisibility", but there is much more going on. Efforts are underway to hide tanks, soldiers, and even planes on airfields from outside observers.
BAE Systems, for example advertises their ADAPTIV - Cloak of Invisibility, which says:
With peacekeeping operations now often taking place in deserts, as well as forests and towns all in the same day, ADAPTIV is capable of shielding large pieces of military equipment from detection by allowing vehicles to mimic the temperature of their surroundings to suit varying terrain. It can also make a tank look like other objects, such as a cow or a car, or bushes and rocks.
The technique is described, here,
BAE's technology, similar to what the Chinese are now touting, deploys sheets of hexagonal "pixels" that can change temperature very rapidly. On-board cameras pick up the scenery and display it on the vehicle, which can allow a moving tank to match its surroundings.
Similarly, Israel Found a Way to Make Soldiers Invisible tells us about the Israeli technology, Kit 300, which mixes traditional camoflauge with thermal blocking to make soldiers invisible to night vision technology.
This video describes ten invisibility techniques that are currently under active research
- Light bending materials
- Electromagnetic cloaking
- Octopus-inspired Synthetic skins that can mirror their environments
- Spectral cloaking
- Carpet cloaking
- Invisibility cloak ("quantum technology cloth made of transparent material")
- The Rochester Cloak
- Active camoflauge
- A cloaking device from Toyota
- Invisible glass
Stealth in aircraft
U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter: Public Domain license from Wikimedia Commons
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Although there are four areas of stealth technology (visual, audio, heat, and radar), the one that is most commonly discussed with regards to aircraft continues to be the last: reduced radar footprints. It seems that countries around the world now have stealth technologies, and unsurprisingly it's hard to figure out exactly what they are capable of.
Techniques to implement radar stealth include materials that absorb radar waves, materials that scatter radar waves, and construction techniques that minimize the use of vertical surfaces. In the US, the "top of the line" (publicly known) stealth aircraft seems to be the F-35. Although I wasn't able to find confirmation of whether that aircraft includes visual stealth, this video from November, 2017 was interesting, where President Trump said,
It wins every time because, the enemy cannot see it. Even if it's right next to it, it can't see it.
As noted earlier, the Russian SU-57 and the Eurofighter Tycoon also offer substantial stealth capabilities.
And we all know that the Granddaddy of them all was the B2 bomber. More speculative, there are also reports that an F-36 Kingsnake is under development with plans to make use of 3D printing technologies
Conclusion
So there you have the product of a few hours of research into today's stealth technologies. I wasn't able to answer the question that sparked the effort, namely do we really have technologies that can make planes disappear from sight when flying over the Gulf of Mexico? However, I learned a good bit about the past and present of stealth technologies.
In conversation last night, we speculated that light-bending materials or computation and projection techniques could be used to make a plane blend in with the sky and appear to be invisible to a viewer, and after reviewing what I found on the Internet today, the concept still seems plausible.
For the best overview of publicly available information, I definitely recommend this documentary, which I also included in the Introduction section:
Thank you for your time and attention.
As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".
Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.
Pixabay license, source
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In fact, there is some progress in this area. I read that a material has been created that consists of complex molecular structures. So it has interesting properties. Some of them have a negative refractive index of light – it seems to flow around a three-dimensional object covered with such material, and forces the observer to see what is behind it. A cloak made of such a fabric can make a person invisible not only in the optical, but also in the infrared part of the spectrum. Moreover, its "work" does not require power sources, mirrors, lamps or complex electronic devices. Maybe they'll come up with something for the plane soon.
Hola amigo tenia tiempo si poder leerle y si que me pareció interesante su publicación tan interesante como peligrosa, ya que este tipo de tecnología puede prestarse para cosas feas como la guerra y creo que de hecho es con ese fin que la están empleando, si el hombre usara toda esa inteligencia para crear y utilizar la tecnología para cosas buenas como las curas a enfermedades cronicas estoy segura de que el mundo fuera diferente.
Gracias amigo por traer este tema donde pude aprender mucho de un buen tema.
You discussed an interesting topic with your late father-in-law. I would look at the invisibility cloak mentioned in the video. I think when it is created, the whole world will know about it. And this will happen sooner than we think, because the color-changing dress has already been created.
I saw parts of the video, technology is advancing by leaps and bounds, I think that in a few years we will be able to have many more advances, that is to say, that one plane has camouflage to become invisible will be very feasible.