Introduction to Stealth Systems

Abstract

Guessing and knowing are two completely different things. The objective of stealth is to keep the adversary guessing until it is too late. Over the past few years, stealth platforms, especially aircraft, have come into public consciousness. However, stealth research work was conducted in earnest beginning in the mid-1970s and was spearheaded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in both U.S. Air Force and Navy programs. Most of those programs are still shrouded in secrecy, but a few, especially the earliest, are now declassified, and the basic notions of Stealth technology can be described. For reasons of classification, nothing can be said about deployed aircraft such as the F-117A and the B-2, pictured in Figs. 1.1 and 1.2, respectively, but they grew out of those early programs. Several generations of technology have now passed, as embodied by such aircraft, but the basic stealth concepts remain the same.