Eli5: What makes a stealth fighter harder to detect than a regular plane?
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You have a nerf gun full of unlimited bouncy balls.
Your friend is walking across a field at night towards you.
You pickup your nerf ball gun and spray in a line across the field. When a ball, or a bunch of them, hit your friend they come back towards you. Congratulations, you found your friend.
Now your friend goes stealth. He carries a padded cardboard box, except he points a corner of it towards you, so any balls directed at him bounce off to the sides – or because of the padding just get absorbed.
Stealth planes either deflect or absorb radar “bouncy balls” so that they don’t get sent back to the enemy. It comes down to the design of the plane as well as the materials used as, you can’t have any signal going towards the enemy or they will see you.
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