An advancement created by scientists in China makes it more difficult to spot aircraft with radar, according to a report by Defense One.
Huazhong University of Science and Technology researchers said the feat can be accomplished by coating the military equipment with a stealth material that trumps advanced radar functioning at ultrahigh frequencies.
Modern synthetic aperture radar are able to gain an approximate understanding of an object’s size (and in turn gain a better understanding of what it might be) by using antennas that point microwave energy through natural cloaks like clouds and fog. The new material, according to the scientists, would be able to absorb some of the energy so that the entire signal wouldn’t make it back to the radar receiver. Provided that some of that signal is missing, an aircraft could look more like a high-flying bird.
Other cloaking materials have been developed before, but those creations are too thick to apply to an aircraft. One of the scientists, Wenhua Xu, claims that the material the group created is nearly 10 times thinner than traditional absorbers, according to Defense One.
The material was shared by the group in a paper published in the Journal of Applied Physics, ensuring that no one military force or other group will be able to hold the creation over their foes.
In the report, the scientists said the material features semi-conducing diodes and capacitors bonded to a circuit board. That layer of material is placed under a .04 mm thick layer of copper resistors, that the scientists call an “active frequency selective surface material,” or AFSS for short.
To read the report, “An ultra-thin broadband active frequency selective surface absorber for ultrahigh-frequency applications,” click here.
Filed Under: Aerospace + defense, Capacitors
