Eli5: What makes a stealth fighter harder to detect than a regular plane?
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Radar waves just like light can be reflected, refracted and scattered. The shape and material of a stealth plane reflect the radar waves away from the radar emitter.
Instead of a radar signal bouncing off the plane and returning to the transmitter the radar waves bounce off the plane and scatter. This way the radar doesn’t detect the plane.
Radar uses radio waves, which is basically invisible light. So, how stealthy something is, is measure of how shiny or not it is. You can make the plane (for example) less shiny by painting it with black paint, by making it such a shape as it doesn’t reflect the ‘light’ back towards you, or by making it out of transparent material. Or some combination of all three.
Take a tennis ball and throw it straight at a wall. It will bounce back at ya.
Take the same ball and throw it at a slanted wall. It will bounce some where else.
Take it and throw at the sand. It will be absorb.
F117 uses those slanted angles to deflect. Modern stealth is like the sand and will absorb and deflect somewhat.
The Real Engineering video on the F-35B discusses the engineering principles behind the stealth capabilities of that plane. It a lot about how the shape of the plane is designed to not reflect much of the radar signal back to the sources. For example avoiding two flat surfaces 90deg apart which can cause a double bounce.
The shape and materials of a stealth plane don’t echo radar waves.
Radars send waves, blobby metal things bounce them back.
Operationally speaking is stealth still a thing? They hang missile rails and fuel tanks off the wings.
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When they were first building scale prototypes to test the combined theories of materials, coatings and shape/design, they built a mockup – like eight feet across – and mounted it on a post way the hell over there on an air base, where they could get a good look at it with radar. The radar operator looked at his screen and said “I don’t see it – the damn thing must have fallen off the post.” Another guy picked up a pair of binoculars to look, and there it was, on top of the post, in all its matte black multifaceted glory. Before he could say anything, he saw a bird land on the model – a normal average bird-sized bird – and the radar guy said “oh wait, never mind, I see it now”. That’s when they knew they were really on to something.
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