Ight I have essentially no knowledge in planes. What makes a big triangle more stealthy than say a Pringles can with wings?
In: Technology
Someone with more knowledge will fill in the blanks here. By stealth they mean low radar signature, thats usually how planes are spotted first. The stealth aspects that I’m aware of comes from two aspects, the shape and material of the skin.
Radar needs to physically travel from the radar site, hit the plane and come exactly back to the site. The plane is angled so radar bounces off and away so very little radar actually returns. The skin of the plane is also made from a material that will absorb(or maybe scatter)some radar instead of bouncing it back.
These features allow the plane to travel closer to radar sites than other planes. Maybe even pass between sites far enough apart.
Many factors at play.
To avoid radar detection the shape is an almost flat triangle to reflect the best way possible while preserving flight controls. The paint of all visible surfaces are coated with a special coating to avoid any reflections / absorb radar signals
To avoid thermal cameras there are no elements on the outside that are heated, such as air (pitot) tubes are heated on the inside instead
It also doesn’t send out any signals, other than military satellite signals, but no ground system can detect that because it’s pointing directly at the satellite
You have some really great answers here but another element of stealth is sound and heat and they have ways of mitigating this or limiting this by kind of shielding the exhaust with those two Wings in the back and also limits the sound. Of course it is not 100%. Those two angled Wings in the back kind of act like a heat shield for the exhaust itself
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ELI5 Answer: Radar works by sending out light waves, the waves bounce off of objects and the radar picks up this returned light. You can make your plane more stealthy by:
1. Shaping your plane so that the waves bounce away from the source.
2. Coat you plane in material that absorbs some of the waves
Non-ELI5 Answer: [This](https://basicsaboutaerodynamicsandavionics.wordpress.com/2016/03/04/stealth-techniques-and-benefits/) is a pretty through explanation on radar and infrared signature reduction.
Modern American stealth aircraft almost depend more on the surface coating than just angles to get a tiny radar signature.
What it’s made of is a tightly kept secret of course.
Pretty stealthy when looking at it through radar; not very stealthy when looking it with your eyes.
Plane is big but sky is bigger.
Seriously though human sight isn’t really a concern it’s all about radar signatures and the angles of stealth planes are designed to deflect or absorb the radar signals.
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the shape of it / the material its made of makes radar scatter instead of bouncing back to the thing trying to detect it, so the people trying to find it either see nothing, or at least nothing that looks like a bomber
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