Message posted by Rocketfox on April 02, 2002 at 9:56:07 PST:

In reality, optical stealth was sucessfully developed in the Second World War by the illusionists working under the direction of Harry Blackstone Senior and Thurston the Great. I was call ed Project Yahoodie and invloved matching background illumination.

This was never further developed as the radar guidance systems as mentioned made it somewhat obsolete. That changed however, with the introduction of the Wild Weasel SEAD program, where radar itself became a liability, and AA systems were outfitted with an Auxilary electro-optical aiming mechanism.

The SEAD tactics encouraged the passive acquisition of targets at shorter ranges to insure surivibility of the defending platforms. With that, Optical stealth became a minor priority once again. Reports exist that the concepts are being investigated, with varying degrees of success and methods.

Current rumours include the skin of the craft covered in LCD material, with variable colour and brightness control, but these have posed difficulties. It's much more liable that the investigators will return to the light and reostat system originally developed in WW2, with some sort of computer control, and a video sensing unit of some sort.

Other posts have dealt with sound suppression systems, so I'll not go into that here. except to mention that several years ago I attended a demonstraion by the Blue Angels where a sub-sonic on-the-deck F/A 18 "buzzed the crowd" from an unexpected direction while our attention was directed elsewhere. No one knew the plane was there until after it had already passed. In terms of a combat situation, that would have been about 3 seconds before the ordnance arrived.

R*

In Reply to: Re: Stealth posted by Toms on April 02, 2002 at 7:08:50 PST:

Replies: