Eli5: How do stealth boats/planes/submarines hide themselves from radar?
In: Technology
Radar works by sending out radio waves that pulse out in the air like ripples through water at regular intervals. If one of these waves hits an object, it bounces off in the same way as a ripple does. The radio detector waits to see if a reflection comes back, and then because they know how fast the radio waves are moving they can measure the time it took for the pulse to return and then map out how far away the object is.
Stealth technology focuses on trying to disrupt this process as much as possible. Stealth vehicles are covered with materials and paints that absorb, instead of reflect a lot of the radio waves. Vehicles are also designed to reflect what they can’t absorb at very strange angles, to make sure that as little as possible makes it back to the original site. Some aspects of stealth design are still classified as they are actively used today and cannot be made common knowledge without endangering the vehicles themselves, but these are the things we know.
Unlike in the movies, radar doesn’t show up as little dots on a screen, it’s blurrier than that, and humans are required to interpret the data they see. Stealth designs are not able to make vehicles perfectly invisible, but they can blend in with the background and hope to be missed, mistaken for flocks of birds or waves or smaller ships or even just a glitch or artifact of the radar station. So it’s less like running around with an invisibility cape and more like creeping through the dark when everyone else is making a lot of noise and hoping nobody notices you.
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