F22 Stealth Fighter - Avoiding Visual and Noise Detection

When looking at designing a fighter, many things have to be arranged, specially when looking at the balance between war power and stealth. What makes an aircraft a real revolution is to find that exact balance where the both things are complementing each other and this is exactly the case of the F22 Stealth Fighter.

Being the Raptor a powerful and lethal flying machine, it has been created with the purpose of being the most stealthy fighter ever made. And the question is: What sort of things need to be developed in order to create a stealth plane?

In this article I will focus only in how the F22 Stealth Fighter deals with the visual and noise detection. Let’s define stealth as a condition. This condition involves the different possibilities in which an aircraft can be detected.

One of the points, is that stealth has to make the aircraft difficult to detect with the naked eyes. When flying at low and mid altitudes, a stealth designed plane that can be seen from the ground (something as painting the lower part in red or any similar barbarism) will of course end up with the dream. In order to achieve visual stealth, the F22 Stealth Fighter has been painted in a light gray color that makes it very easy to confuse it with the color of the sky. To protect it to be seen also from fighters that could be flying above, a combination of grays, greens and browns is used, also depending on the kind of terrain where the plane has to operate.

In relation with the visual detection, there are two problems that also need to be solved. One of them is the Smoke Contrails. Powerful engines like the ones that this plane uses are supposed to produce quantities of smoke that will follow the route of the plane in the air. This does not only compromise the position of the plane, but it also gives indirect information on direction and even speed, and reduces the difficulty to follow break maneuvers to escape from a potential enemy placed on the tail. Fortunately, the high cruise speed that the F22 Stealth Fighter is able to reach without use of the afterburners (main reason that creates a smoke trail) makes it able to fly at high speed with no signal of its presence.

Together with this problem it comes also the effect of Air Moisture trails. When an aircraft flies at high speed across the air, it disturbs it with the wings, causing the moisture to form trails. Some horizontal stabilizers have been located in the aft of the aircraft and help in the reduction of the probability to form those trails.

A way that was very much used some years ago to avoid showing your presence in enemy radars has nowadays become a bit obsolete. This strategy was dangerous, and it consisted in flying very low following the shape of the terrain in a way that the enemy radar couldn’t detect the plane as they confused it with terrain features such as trees or buildings. Actually, radar developments have overcome this defect, so it is no longer a valid option, even if sometimes it is still used. In any case, this technique used with the F22 Stealth Fighter would not be recommended.

On the other hand, some ground-to-ground missiles are programmed to follow the shape of the terrain until they reach the target in a way that they are able to follow valleys and hide between mountains, and when the enemy is alerted they are already over their heads.

Going from here, the next stealth condition that has to be accomplished is that the plane can’t make noise. That sounds like incredible. Two of the most powerful engines that have been ever placed in a plane that can reach Mach 1.5 without afterburner… And you ask to make them noiseless? Yes. A great effort has been placed in order to make the engines run smoothly while efficiently. Great exhaust engineer the one that worked with the F22 Stealth Fighter, I must admit!

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Dani Alonso

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