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As I recall, the faceted look of the early stealth aircraft was said to be a practical matter. It reduced the complexity of modeling the reflections during the
by saltcured 1y ago
As I recall, the faceted look of the early stealth aircraft was said to be a practical matter. It reduced the complexity of modeling the reflections during the design process. So with additional computational complexity, they could go back to smooth surfaces in later designs.
I imagine there are similar issues with ship design. Since these things are wavelength specific, you probably have a bigger computational problem for a bigger vessel. You can't just solve for the design on a miniature and scale it up to build it.
- Animats 1y ago> I imagine there are similar issues with ship design. The U.S. Navy built some stealthy ships.[1][2] But they were very expensive. It seems to have been a dead end not worth the trouble. There are so many sensors, shipborne, airborne, spaceborne, and onshore, that trying to hide a slow moving warship isn't likely to work against a peer opponent. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Shadow_(IX-529) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Shadow_(IX-529) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Zumwalt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Zumwalt
- saltcured 1y agoYes, imagine if air search radar was good enough to see the "wake" of the aircraft so that even if the plane was invisible you could just locate and track its effect on the atmosphere...