TechStuff Gets Stealthy

I am, I'm like the stealthiest stealth whoever, stealth like Super Ninja. They and half century is what you're saying, to be fair and more pirate than Ninja. So um, okay, are pirates concerned with being stealthies? You have to know the weapons of your enemy, is what I'm saying. And pirates and Ninja being natural enemies in the wild, it's

important to study your enemies techniques. All Let's talk of pirates and ninjas reminds me very much of the Cold War, right, and that is an important reason why stealth technology even exists.

So thank you for getting us back on track, Lauren. So, stealth technology in general, stealth technology refers to the types of tech we use in aircraft to make them difficult or impossible to detect, mainly via radar, although we also think about things like infrared scanners that sort of stuff and uh, and really to understand how stealth works, we first have to understand what radar is and how that works. Right, Radar radar works thanks to to basic concepts, and that's

echo and Doppler shift. Yes, so yeah, and echo. I mean like if you if you were to shout out, uh, you know, you go visit the Grand Canyon and you shout as loudly as you can, uh, you might hear after a few seconds your voice coming back to you. And that's because some when you when you shout something out, you know, your your voices traveling out in sound waves. They will collide with the other side of the canyon, and some of those sound waves will bounce back at

you and eventually arrive back to where you are. And if you are loud enough when you make the initial sound, you should be able to hear some of that sound return. So that's why you've got that little delay right right. And now, if if you were to measure the length of time that it took for that sound to bounce back to you and measure it pretty accurately, then you

could mathematically calculate about how far that sound went. Yeah, and of course you also need to know some other factors like air pressure, humidity, things that would affect how fast the sound is traveled. Yeah, because as we know, sound will travel at different speeds through different media, and that even includes different atmospheres. So if you are you know, if you're really at sea level, sound travels at a different speed than it would if you were at thirty feet.

But it's not necessarily detectable to a human ear, but it would definitely be a meshable in in day to day conversation for example. But you know, I I don't go down to Florida and go like, man, it's really humid. I can barely hear you from this point five. You know it's taking it's taking longer for your words to

hit my ear. Yeah. But anyway, the same principle works on radar, except instead of sound, we're talking about electromagnetic waves or radio waves, and so you use radio waves to you project them out and if they come into contact with something, some of those radio waves will bounce back. So if you have a receiver, then you can detect those incoming waves and determine by how long it took to go out and back about how far away that

object is now. You also mentioned Doppler shifts, so we have to talk about right right and Doppler shift as for example, why a car's horn sounds higher pitched when the car is moving towards you than it does when the car is moving away from you. Yeah, there's there's a great article on How Stuff Works that explains this

that I like a lot. Marshall Brain actually wrote He's the founder of How Stuff Works and U and in it, Marshall talked about how if you were if the car is sitting still and the driver leans on the horn for a minute. First of all, you must be in Boston. Uh. And second, uh, that means that if you are far enough away. Let's say that your far enough away that the sound takes six seconds to get to you, all right,

and you're sitting there. That means that the the horn will have been uh sounding for six seconds before you can even hear it, right, But then it'll it'll last for a minute. That's how long because the person is leaning on Now, if that car is traveling toward you, then the pitch of that is going to be higher than it would be if if it were just saying still, those those waves are essentially compressed a higher frequency in the same amount of time. So and then of course,

if the car goes by you. You know you've heard this if you've ever heard a siren when an emergency vehicle has either come up behind or approached you and then passed. As it goes As it's traveling towards you, it's a higher pitch, and as it's going away it's a lower pitch. And that's because of the frequency of the waves in the way that the object making the

sound is traveling versus the sound itself traveling. So the interesting thing about Doppler shift is if you can detect the uh, if you know what the frequency of the waves were when it was going out. So in other words, you've got a transmitter, right, that's that's your your radar transmitter and antenna that's transmitting the high burst of high frequency radio waves. You know what the frequency is when

you transmit. When the frequency comes back, uh, it's going to be or when the radio waves come back, rather it's going to be possibly a different frequency than it was when it went out. Now, that means that the object that hit was in motion. If it's a higher frequency, that means that object is essentially moving towards you. If it's a lower frequency, that object is moving away. So and by measuring exactly the difference in the pitch, you can measure how fast it's going, Yeah, exactly, or at

least get an estimate, pretty good idea. Yes. And because we're talking, you know, radio waves move essentially at the speed of light, so you know, the delays here are really really super tiny, and and the transmission is like,

is a fraction of a second long. So you transmit these really short bursts and uh, and then turn off the transmitter and allow the waves to come back, right, and you measure the delay between when it went out and when it came back, and you measure the Doppler shift, and that gives you an idea of the position and speed at which the object is moving. So if it's

moving towards you or away. Uh. And it's very useful for detecting things like aircraft, and in fact, we use it all the time, not just in military applications but air traffic control. So here's the thing. If you are running a military operation and you want to run surveillance or some sort of uh sortie against an enemy territory, then you probably don't want your vehicles to be detected.

It's generally a bad policy, yeah, because that means that they can be shot down or or other wise compromised. And so you want to be able to run your mission without any kind of entanglements. And so that's when people started thinking, well, the radar is a really useful tool for detection. How can we get around radar so that our enemies don't know when we are there? And that's what really got the United States thinking about stealth technology. And really it was the Cold War. Yeah, yeah, this

was all during the nineteen seventies. Everyone was really tense. Yeah. Yeah. The Soviet Union or the then Soviet Union and the United States had been in a Cold War pretty consistently since shortly after World War Two, and by the nineteen seventies that said, really we were seeing escalation on both sides. Arsenals were getting more and more powerful and complex. It was a lot of posturing on the part of both countries, definitely, uh, And the rest of the world was mostly saying, guys,

can we can we chill out? Yeah, this is in a little tense for all of us. Let me go get a pizza. Yeah, because once you start talking about how many times each country could destroy the other country via nuclear weapons, like we could destroy the the United States ten times over, Well, we can destroy the so

Union twelve times over. And everyone's just say, really, is there this much need for these many Well, one of the thoughts was, how can we deliver a nuclear payload to an enemy territory without the about them detecting that we're there and stopping us. But we can, yeah, before the aircraft gets shot down or even or you know, how can we run spy missions? And you know exactly And so at the time, the main aircraft that was being used in bombing runs in the United States was

the B fifty two bomber. And the B fifty two is not a stealth vehicle at all. Anti that. Yeah, it's actually has a quite quite a large radar footprint. It's very detectable, but it can travel quite fast and it can carry very large payloads. And it was first introduced back in nineteen fifty five, and it's known for being a reliable aircraft, so much so that there are

still more than any two in active service. And um, yeah, I mean it's it's actually projected after a couple of upgrades that will happen between now and it's projected to be an active part of our air force until the Yeah, so this is a this is a longevity issue here. I mean it's it's definitely a workhorse, but it is

not a stealth vehicle. So the United States started to open up the possibility for different companies to bid on developing a a an aircraft that could stealthily fly and not be detected by radar and and still have the carrying capacity to deliver large nuclear payloads. Yeah. Yeah, that's that was the other part of it. Yes, Um, scary

scary stuff. Well, there was simultaneously development of other stealth stealth technology going on that we'll talk about a little bit later on, but that was that was more on that research kind of side of things. And right, the B two, which is what came out of all that we're talking about right now. Yeah, the B two was the big one. I mean, that was the one that was unveiled and uh and talked about the most. And the B two is also better known as the stealth bomber.

It's also the called the B two Spirit, and most of the individual planes are called the Spirit of something or other and uh, yeah. It was first unveiled publicly on November twenty second, nineteen in Palmdale, California, at the Air Force Plant forty two. That same year, another stealth aircraft was unveiled. That was the F one seventeen Nighthawk, and we'll talk about that more in a little bit.

It was a North Grumman that ended up winning that that bidding battle, and they're the ones who developed the B two. It took about a decade for them to make it, and about forty billion dollars in research and development, yeah, which which was up over what they had originally stated they might be able to do it for. Yeah, and uh and also the planes themselves, the bombers themselves, were

more expensive than what they originally intended. They first thought that they could deliver the entire order for you know, I have a hundreds hundred thirty two planes for like forty billion twenty well I think it went from twenty to seventy. Yeah. Yeah, the original contract was for twenty

two billions. From what I've read, and then um as of when when when has unveiled it had the total price had jumped to like over seventy and eventually they figured that each aircraft would cost about one to two billion dollars a piece, and so it got really expensive

really fast. Like that ended up being the UH the target of a lot of criticism, you know, people saying that these contracts are all based on estimates, that we're not realistic, and whether or not the companies were aware of how unrealistic they were was a matter of doubt,

and it just got into a really sore subject. But something happened that ended up kind of taking a little of the sting out, which is that in nine the Soviet Union collapsed and suddenly people didn't really have so much of a need to UH to carry large amounts of nuclear warheads across enemy territory quietly. And yeah, when you're when you're chief nemesis, UH goes under and of

course we can. You know, today when you look at the United States and Russia, there are other issues where you might say things are starting to turn around at some points. You know, there's always cheri and and there's always tension between various world powers. Like that. It's like

Korea right now. Yeah, there's there's always always chicanery, right. So, so anyway, because the so Union collapsed, that that helped, uh, the United States come to the decision to reduce the order from one thirty two to twenty one aircraft, twenty of which are still flying around today. And I'll talk a little bit about that. But before I do that, I guess we should kind of describe what the B two looks like in case you guys have never seen one.

They're funky, they are. That The design is called a flying wing actually because with most aircraft, you know, I mean, it's you've you've seen an airplane. It's got it's got a body, it's got wings, it's got stabilizers, stabilizers coming off in the little strange angles. But yeah, but but this flying wing is designed so that the entire craft generates lift. Yeah. So it's it doesn't have all that like the fuselage and the wings. It's it's all one body.

It's not it's not like, you know, you've got a tube that's the fuselage and then you've got the to the two wings attached to that. No, it's all one giant wing and Yeah, like you said, you know, you just go fast enough and it generates the lift it needs to fly. And yeah, the eliminating the tail of the fuselage reduced drag. And yeah, it also means that because of its design it doesn't have like it's it's easier for it to avoid radar detection based on the

stuff it's made of. And we'll talk more about that and how the stealth stuff actually works in a little bit. It is one D seventy two ft wide, which is fifty two point four meters, which is which is a bunch. Yeah, it's it's essentially if you were to look at an American football field, a a B two bomber from wingspan from wing tip to wingtip would be more than half the length of an American football field. Yeah, and this is this is a vehicle built for two people. Yeah,

it's it's a two person aircraft. Yeah. It's also sixty nine feet from tail I mean quote unquote tail to tip. It doesn't really have a tail. Yeah, I guess the length of the bit of the wings exactly where the B two stops being to where the B two starts being right, and and is sevent feet high and uh, it can fly about six thousand nautical miles, which is about eleven thousand, twelve kilometers before it needs to refuel.

And if you have an aerial refueling as part of its mission, it can go ten thousand nautical miles or about eighty kilometers. That's a that's a long trip. And uh and and we've seen some recent use of that. It can carry twenty tons of conventional and nuclear weapons. It is that considered a high sub sonic flight, which means that it's top speed isn't just under the speed of sound some something like what a thousand feet per second something like that. Yeah, it's it's it's really Uh.

It goes about as fast as an aircraft can go before it starts becoming super sonic. Right, so, which would cause a boom, which is obviously something you want a stealth vehicle to do. You know, if the stealth vehicle causes booms, it's not that stealthy pirates have discovered this to their own unfortunate detriment. Right, Cannons go boom, whereas the again goes. Yeah, we all are familiar with the Shurrikan sound. So remember I said that there are twenty

of those twenty one aircraft still flying around. That's because in February two eight, there was an accident during a takeoff at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam, and that resulted in the loss of the Spirit of Kansas B two bomber and UH nineteen of those twenty are at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri because I don't say Missouri, and the other one is at Edwards Air Force Base

in California, which is used for flight testing purposes. The thing about these B twos, and I guess anything that has that is covered in this stealth technology paint and tape and stuff, is that all of all of that is extremely temperature and weather sensitive. Um. If you if you get it too warm, and it's it's like a mag wife. If you get warm, if you get it wet, if you feed it after midnight, if you feed it

after midnight, um, it starts to fall apart. And and all of that has to be reapplied freakly basically every time that they take it out of these temperature controlled hangars. And they've started designing um portable temperature controlled hangars so

that they can run missions overseas. Right, Yeah, that's that is one of the big drawbacks to the B two is that it does require these these climate controlled hangars to essentially live in between missions, because otherwise the material that keeps it stealthy would degrade very rapidly, and it would not be a secure method of delivering payloads under the radar, so to speak. They're not literally going under

the radar um So. Also, recently, very recently, and as of the Timber recording this podcast, the United States had sent two of the B two bombers over to South Korea for training exercises. This is all part of that escalating issue between North Korea and South Korea, Japan, United States, where you know, this is the training exercises are are this this annual exercise happens over there, and they don't miss fairly right, Yeah, need to be Yeah, it's kind

of a show of force. It's going just hey, guys, remember what we got We got these things right, right. It's it's essentially because North Korea has a history of posturing and threatening South Korea, as well as lots of other nations and uh, and then the United States and South Korea have a history of sort of giving a giving a show of force not directly against North Korea, but just kind of saying, look at all the stuff we have, think twice before you start to make anything.

So um and some of the rest of the lots of the rest of the world ends up saying, guys again, can we can you know, you remember the Cold War and remember how tense things got. It's kind of happening again. Remember that pizza, wasn't it good? Can we go back

to just the pizza. I mean, I'm not want to judge whether or not it's the right call, because that's way above my pay grade, and I honestly couldn't tell you what's the right thing to do, but it's definitely it was definitely one of those things where the United States is saying, look, we want to show South Korea that we are not going to abandon them, nor are we going to abandon the other nations that are often

threatened by North Korea, Japan being one of them. So really as the United States kind of saying like, you guys aren't alone. But you know, it's one of those one of those deals where when you read the news, it gets a little nerve racking to see kind of the escalation of tensions but besides the B two, there are a couple of other stealth aircraft that are worth mentioning.

There's actually several aircraft that have been in either prototype or development stages, but I wanted to specifically mentioned a couple that were developed and tested or at least tested. And one of my favorite places in the hawai world. Yeah, it's right there behind Disneyland. There's Disneyland Area fifty one and then Smithsonian so um yeah. The not not that those are locationally adjunct, just that that that's the that

would be terrific. That wouldn't be I mean it would be a pretty pretty bad secret base if it would also be a pretty warm Disneyland. Yes, being out there in the middle of the desert, so um so Area fifty one, also known as Groom Lake, a place that the Air Force has used for testing various prototype aircraft secretly to make sure that they were going to meet the military specifications and needs uh and be away from prying eyes. Now, the B two wasn't necessarily flown there.

It may have been, but not that we know of. Ye, But there are a couple of other aircraft that were known to have flown out of area fifty one. One of those was called the Have Blue aircraft, which later became the F one seventeen, a stealth fighter better known as the Nighthawk. And uh, that one also was unveiled in although from from what I understand, it had been

kicking around in research a lot longer. Yeah, the very fur to have Blue I think flew sometime in nineteen eleven years or maybe maybe January February, I think is the first test. That so fun, fun factoid. I'm pretty sure that before it was called have Blue, the very very very first name for this technology was Project Harvey, based on the film and stage show Harvey. We're in um oh, Jimmy Stewarts talking to a j a rabbit that's visible only to Jimmy Stewart's character, not to Jimmy Stewart.

Thought that would be even more meta and awesome. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, I didn't know that, though. That's interesting. I wrote the how arey of fifty one works? And I did not know that that's really cool? So of course I might have written that in that article, and I just forgot the Other thing about that is that Lockheed was the one that designed the have blue Slash one seventeen a. UH. Northrop Grumman also created another

stealth aircraft besides the B two bomber. It was called Tacit Blue, and that was a stealth surveillance aircraft. So this was just designed to fly over and essentially spy on nations. It wasn't a combat vehicle, and it was never developed beyond the prototype stage. In fact, I think there's one in a museum at this point, I'd have to go, and I'm sure I wrote about in the Area fifty one article, But the F one seventeen A actually did go into production, so that that's a stealth fighter,

not a not a bomber. Could it could also carry nuclear payloads. The original contract was for five test craft and fifteen production craft or operational YEP, and it's been used in lots of United States operations, including Operation Desert Thunder, Operation Allied Force, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom and UH. The during Operation Allied Force back in nineteen it was the one and only instance of an F

one seventeen A being shot down. It was shot down by an anti aircraft missile that was operated by what was at the time the Army of Yugoslavia because it crashed and seemed to be relatively intact. After it crashed, the pilot, by the way, ejected safely and was recovered

by the U S forces, so he was safe. But the aircraft landed crash landed giving clearly because there was no one flying it and was apparently landed mostly intact, and in fact, UH it seems that Russian and Serbian forces were able to observe and possibly even copy the stealth technology, which means that the stealth technology was compromised as a result of that crash. It is again the one and only time that we have lost a stealth aircraft in a combat situation as opposed to an accident.

I think I think that I've heard UH of at least one test accident that happened where and then, apart from the F one seventeen, which by the way, was retired in two thousand and eight, turned out that it was just it wasn't really meeting the needs of the military at the time, and they started to rely more heavily on the F twenty two Raptor, which also has

stealth technology and also was designed by Lockheed. UH. They retired the F one, seventeen and two thousand eight, but there's still a fleet of them, so right, Yeah, I think that fifty nine in total were built from Yeah, and and there's at least some of those still in existence. They're just not an active service so um, I mean we I guess they could be put back into active service if necessary. But the F twenty two Raptors essentially taken over their spot in the military, and that was

unveiled in nineteen seven and that remains in service. So that's kind of a rundown on the aircraft, the main aircraft in the United States that use stealth technology. We're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we will talk about how stealth technology actually works. So we'll do that in a minute, but first, let's take a quick moment to thank our sponsored Okay, back to stealth.

So we know that stealth is all about avoiding radar, and we know about the various aircraft that incorporates stealth technology to some extent. So exactly how the stealth work? How can you avoid radar? Well, so there this comes in a couple of different parts. First of all, you can you can design the shape of the plane in such a way that it bounces the radar rather than directly back to the transmitter receiver apparatus, um, somewhere else entirely. Oh,

I see. So let's say, like, let's say I've got a flashlight and you have a mirror, Lauren and I, and you're just holding the mirror straight up to me. I turned the flashlight on, and I can see the flashlight reflected right back at me. But if you were to tilt that mirror so that the top of the mirror comes closer to you and the bottom of the mirror is further away from you, then the beam is

beamed up rather than at me. So if you were to design an aircraft so that lots of the large flat surfaces were angled in weird wonky love crafty in ways using non Euclidean geometry or at least some weird angles, those radio waves would not bounce right back to the

radar station. Correct. Um. And also if you use slightly curved surfaces, um, that will also help because you know the same way that if you again, if you've got a flashlight and you pointed at a curved mirror, yeah, it's not going to bounce right back it's going to bounce in a in a slightly different direction. So yeah, the Stealth B two bomber, as well as the other

aircraft we've talked about, have these kind of surfaces. Uh. If you look at the stealth bomber, you see like there's some large, really oddly angular flat surfaces and then some other kind of bulgy, uh curve surfaces. Um. In fact, an interesting point, you remember we were talking about that

F one seventeen that was shot down. From what I understand, the way that the anti aircraft missile system detected the F one seventeen was that the F one seventeen's bomber doors had opened, which increased its radar footprint just enough for it to be detected. Yeah. Yeah, and other things that a plane can do can also throw this off. I mean, if if you start to roll the plane it's going to the surfaces might might line up and

might line up in a different way. Yeah. So that's one thing is actually designing the surfaces of the aircraft itself can help essentially reflect the radio waves in a

different direction. So you send out that burst of high frequency radio signal and nothing comes back, it's the same as if nothing is there a right right or you know, or you might only get as much radio signal back as you would get from a bird or an insect, right, which in which case you'd say, well, that's that's nothing to worry about, you know that you start worrying about every bird, yeah, which would probably drive you pretty crazy

pretty quickly. So that's one way. That's one way. And then the other way is to use those materials um that you are building the outside of the plane from in ways that don't that absorb rather than reflect, right, And this at first you might think, well, what kind of special space age technology is this, But then when you think about it, you know, radio waves are part

of the electromagnetic spectrum, as is say visible light. So when you think about visible light, you know, like if you use black paint that absorbs light, you know, it's it's reflecting some light back, but not very much. I mean, depending on how the quality of the paint you're using, how how black the black is. It also absorbs heat more readily. Yep. So again that's the infrared radiation. So in that case, we already know of materials that can

absorb light. So so really this is the same sort of thing, except instead of absorbing light, it's absorbing radio waves. And it could be paint, it can be um a powder like substance that's worked into the actual composite material that makes up the plane tapes. And again it's this paint and tape that really needs to be replaced each

time the B two goes out. The F twenty two Raptor relies more on the shape of the aircraft than this sort of material, which means that you can fly in F twenty two rapt Or more frequently without having to replace all those exterior parts or or to touch up all the exterior parts. Uh. In fact, that was one of the things that Lockheed put in mind when they started designing the F twenty two, and it's because they learned their lessons from the F one s and

the B two Bomber. So yeah, that that's the other thing is that you create these materials that actually absorb the radio waves, and again that means that there are fewer waves bouncing back from the aircraft and less of a chance to actually be picked up on radar. Now, at the top of the show, I also mentioned the fact that stealth technology it's not just about radar that's the primary that we share that well, that's the primary censor that people are using to detect planes at longer

distances than anything else. Right. But you you can also detect planes either by hearing them, by seeing them, or you know, by detecting a heat signature. Now the heats nature thing. I think that's really interesting. The way the B two gets around the heat signature is a very creative exhaust system, right, because the way that people pick up on the heat of planes is is not by you know, reading like the heat of an engine directly,

it's by reading the exhaust right. Uh. And so yeah, so so if you if you take steps to disguise that by by for example, cooling the exhaust off before it actually exits the plane plane, or by putting the exhaust ports on top of the plane where fewer sensors are likely to be you know, hovering hovering above the plane than they are on the ground. Yeah. So so

that's it's pretty interesting. Yeah, there is this cooling system that the B two has, So the exhaust actually passes through this cooling system, losing a lot of that heat and it just keeps. Uh, it's internalized by the plane, by the bomber, and so once the exhaust comes out, it's not as hot as it would be without that cooling system, making it more difficult to detect the uh, the B two with a with like some sort of thermal sensor. And then it's also the way the actual

plane is designed. It's designed such a way that it's difficult to tell which way it's facing when you just glance at it, because it's got that flying wing structure. Yeah, yeah,

it's it's just a sort of triangular. And at that point it's like, yeah, so if you if you aren't able to get a really good bead on it from the ground, it can be very difficult or from anywhere, really, it can be really difficult to tell what direction it's moving in, which again makes it a little bit uh more likely that the B two will be able to complete its mission without any any problems, right right, if it's flying at night, of course, the black paint will

also help it kind of melt in the night sky and uh. And so they're also systems aboard the B two that allow it to target, to to locate targets even in darkness. Sometimes you're talking about pilots who are wearing night vision goggles essentially. Um, so you know it's it's it's again it's a weapon designed for secrets seen stealth, so yeah, it's it's kind of a cool thing and it's scary too. Yeah. They also take an electromagnetic energy created on board the plane into account when they're doing

all of this. They take steps to damp in anything so that it's not going to be radiating outward, radiating outward. Lots of lots of electromagnetic shielding. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's a lot of things you have to think about when you are designing an aircraft that is supposed to be uh, it's supposed to be able to escape detection. Um. And so it's kind of uh, I mean,

it's really it's a fascinating subject to me. And by the way, this has meant that that there's also been developments in radar technology as people have tried to find other ways to make it more possible to detect steal their craft. Yeah. Another instrument on these planes tends to

be a radar warning receiver. Yeah. So that so that if you do notice that you're being watched, you can take steps to rite you can at least be all did to that fact, and try to keep on the lookout for any ground defenses like anti aircraft missiles if you need to whatever, or you know, radio back home and say please advise. Do we continue on with the mission or do we abort the mission? Yeah? And it's

it's it's fascinating stuff and we do. We actually do know quite a bit about it, although the actual secret sauce of the stuff that goes on these aircraft remains a secret for obvious reasons. Right right, I I know that it's sprayed on by four independently active robots. Wow. Boy, the stories those guys must tell when they're just sipping down oil over at the oil cooler the end of a long day. My world is the magical world. It sounds like it. Yeah, but but anyway, that's that's the

low down on stealth technology. It's actually pretty straightforward, and it's mostly all about physics. When you think about it's kind of it's to me, it's kind of interesting that took as long as it did to start to develop aircraft that could effectively avoid radar, because once you understand how ray our works, then you already know what it

takes to get around it. I guess it just mostly depends on developing the materials that are very good at absorbing radar, because obviously you could design an aircraft that has these weird angles on it, although to make such an aircraft flight worthy, I suppose as a bit of

a challenge, right. And that's the other really interesting part about the development of all of these technologies was that it was happening in a time when people were first starting to computer design blueprints, right, and and also computer construct use computers to actually do the construction of materials, you know those robots that we're talking about, using robots on an assembly line to extremely precisely put something together. I mean, I remember when the stealth Bomber was unveiled.

Do you remember, Lauren? Not not in the slightest Yeah, I was all enough to remember this, Okay, I was older than that. I remember when the Stealth Bomber was unveiled. I remember thinking it was the coolest looking thing I had seen since the Lamborghini Kuntash and uh that in some ways it reminded me of the Lambrighini ratosh. I also thought it was interesting even as a kid, you know,

growing up in this era of the Cold War. I thought it was really interesting the reaction that people had to this, because people were kind of a little they were a little unnerved by the thought of secret, silent, secret, secret, secret aircraft that could be flying over and you would never know. Now, I never know when aircraft are flying over me anyway, unless it's loud enough for me to notice or I'm looking up. Otherwise I'm largely ignorant of it.

So it doesn't really that doesn't really bother me so much. But I can understand why it's unnerving. But it's it's interesting technology, and I'm sure that the technology itself has advanced well beyond what we're talking about. But because of the very nature of what it is, that information is not easily available right right, certainly not to ask. Yeah, yeah,

we're not on that list now, not anymore. Okay, guys, if you have any other topics that you would guess to tackle, you know, we really enjoyed this discussion on stealth technology something. Thanks so much to Kevin. Ye be like Kevin. Kevin was great. We want more Kevin's out there. So if you're a Kevin, or if you're not a Kevin, but you have a great idea I suggest sending it

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