What are the advantages of "plasma stealth"???

Very interesting stuff. Thanks for the insight, Intelgurl, Aerospaceweb, and others.

My initial impression - plasma stealth may hide you from radar, but it surely ruins your IR signature.

Second impression - a flying tesla coil... now there's something that the Berumuda Triangle folks could really get worked up about.

...or the ionised gases glowing in your overhead fluorescent, the flame when you light a match, the gaseous components of nebulae. Plasma can exist in many temperatures at many different densities, right across the log scale.

So a ground/airborne giant tesla could theoretically soot down a plasma aircraft just because of the attraction of the electromagnetics

Hmm, good point ronii, never thought of that

Oh yeah, the good old flying triangle guy. I've checked out his site before. As far as I can tell, the Northrop papers only dealt with using electromagnetics to reduce drag and said nothing directly related to stealth technology. I've never heard of the papers being suppressed, but I suppose it's easy enough to try looking for them. AIAA papers are usually pretty easy to find through research libraries.

In this particular case the validity of the paper is not diminished by how ever tarnished you may find the Naudin web site.

The paper is quite real, and available from AIAA but it is not accessible for reading on the web.

I included the Naudin web site simply because it had the most information available on the internet for the paper in question without the layman forking over $25 for the PDF.

Nick Cook of JDW (I'm sure you have some colorful opinions of him) among others has stated that the paper was initially supressed and it was only in the early 1990's that it was again made available for public consumption.

I was actually hoping you had some familiarity with this paper or at least any history that might be associated with it - thereby confirming or debunking Cook's assertions.




[Edited on 10-5-2004 by intelgurl]

That Naudin guy's site is worth reading. I had never heard of it before and found it entertaining, at the very least. He has nice RC planes, too.

The gist of his floating triangles - he applies a large electric potential between the upper wire and the lower tinfoil sections. Electrostatic thrust ensues, a la the Sharper Image Ionic Breeze(tm) air filter.

Oh noes, classified electrogravitic technology!

I wasn't intending to cast any aspersions on the Naudin fellow's site. In fact, I think it's kind of cool! I'd consider building one of these flying triangles myself if I wasn't convinced I'd electrocute myself in the process. I don't know how practical the idea is considering that the power source he needs to make it work is several orders of magnitude heavier than the vehicle itself, but that could change if we ever manage to develop very lightweight high-voltage power sources.

But to answer your question, I've never heard of any suppression of the paper. That doesn't mean there wasn't any, but I'm not familiar enough with it to say for certain. What I do know of it is that the emphasis was on methods of reducing drag. Perhaps reducing RCS was an additional benefit, but I'm not aware that the authors spoke of it directly. I'd be somewhat surprised if they knew anything about RCS since it's not something engineers of that day typically thought about.

plasma stealth gives some weird extra phenomenons
and ofcourse it is difficult to control,maintain and direct.

is that you can use it on your obviously non-stealthy export fighters and bamboozle customers into thinking they are getting something almost as good as the Real Thing.


Yes it may work. But will it work in the rain? What about during hard maneuvering?

Might not a very high power electromagnetic generator be detectable in its own way as well?

Usually charging the atmosphere to make it a better conductor might make it a better reflector of radio waves.

I think it's more interesting perhaps as a means of changing free-flight aerodynamics, possibly to increase cruising fuel efficiency. That's a big component of military capability.

But really it is probably alot of pre-emptive marketing to prevent the bottom from falling out of sales once the JSF goes to exportable status.

I put "plasma stealth" in the same category as the myserious and elusive Russian "red mercury" technology.

Smells alot like something a business development branch would cook up based upon 30 year old research in nebulous area to boost sales in a lagging economy....

Maybe I should break the news to you!

Russians already HAVE plasma stealth.

Also drop that attitude because for your info we are NOT commies and we can do the SAME things as US.

We Russians are not cool enough to have plasma stealth?

Damn I didnt know you have to be cool to have technology.

Also please show me where US uses plasma stealth?



Just read in "AeroKosmichekie Novosti"
- Aerospace News:

Mig-29SMT is equiped with plasma stealth system. It
was already tested in RuAF (probably that first
machine upgraded recently).

MOSCOW, Jan 4, 2001 -- (Agence France Presse) Russia has developed new technology which will allow military planes to completely escape radar and other tracking systems, researchers were quoted by Itar-Tass Wednesday as saying.

The technology consists of a plasma field capable of absorbing the electromagnetic waves emitted by enemy tracking systems, sending back false signals on the plane's speed and position, the Keldysh research center sources said.

The nascent Russian system would eclipse the finest of US stealth technology, according to the report.

Russia's new fifth-generation MIG fighter planes will be equipped with the new technology, the researchers said.

So Russians are not cool enough for this tech?

How about US?

Out,
Russian

Moscow, January 20, 1999. Nicolai Novichkov, ITAR-TASS information agency

Research team of the Recearch Center named after M.V. Keldysh has developed new technologies allowing dramatic decrease in aircrafts' radar observability.
Russian approach to low observability (LO) technologies is completely different from US Stealth and offers complete furtiveness of the protected object at a significantly lower price.
An exclusive interview about these technologies was conducted by Nicolai Novichkov, ITAR-TASS with director of the Center, academic of Russian Scientific Academy Anatoliy Korteev.

As academic explained, American approach to LO (Stealth technology) applied on B-2, F-117A, and fifth generation fighter F-22 "Raptor" is based on the following principles.
The airframes of these aircrafts are designed to minimize their radar cross section (RCS), avoid all possible elements of the structure, which could reflect electromagnetic radiation.
In order to minimize reflected radiation radio absorbing materials (RAM) are also applied to the surface of the structure. The main drawbacks of the Stealth technology are its negative effects on the flight and agility characteristics of the stealth aircrafts.

Russian scientists approach the issue from the other direction. They proposed to create a plasma formation around protected object, which prevents radars from seeing it.
Thus,aerodynamical characteristics of the plane itself do not suffer. Without interfereing with technical characteristics the artificially created plasma cloud surrounding the plane guarantees more than hundred times decrease in its observability.

The physics of plasma protection can be described as following. If an object is surrounded by a cloud of plasma, several phenomenas are observed when the cloud interacts with electromagnetic waves radiated by enemy radar.
First, an absorption of electromagnetic energy occurs in the cloud, since during plasma penetration it interacts with plasma charged particles, pass onto them a portion of its energy, and fades.
Second, due to specific physical processes, electromagnetic wave tends to pass around plasma cloud. Both of these phenomenas results in dramatic decrease of the reflected signal.

Static and flight experiments proved the effectiveness of this technology. The first generation devices, producing plasma field surrounding an aircraft and decreasing reflected signal were created in the Center. Later, a possibily of creating second generation advanced systems (capable of not only decreasing reflected signal and changing its wavelength, but also producing some false signals) was discovered.
Such systems significantly complicate determination of actual aircraft's speed, its location and leads to development of completely new approaches to LO provision, unachievable to conventional Stealth technology.
Furthermore, the weight of the systems developed in Russia do not exeed 100 kg, and power consumption ranges from kilowatts to tens of kilowatts.

Advances in development of the third generation LO systems allowed to clear the systems of first and second generation for export, commented academic Anatoliy Korteev.

Air-Attack

This is from our own ATS member website!

Out,
Russian

I'm still somewhat dubious about this actually being employed upon active aircraft in a fasion that has it running for a long time. To a large extent this sounds a lot like the rail guns and lasers debate, the technology is there for everything but the power. Now I don't think this is as bad as rail guns and laser so we may be able to pull off the power requirements. However in the interum I think it would still be and effective counter-measure to hit when you go for the hi-G turn to lose a radar homing missile. If this technology is available in a way that has it running 24/7 then the Russians have made a very impressive counter U.S. stealth technology. Also I don't think the initial employment of this technology would cover the entire aircraft. I could see the plasma generators on the leading edge of the wings and behind the cockpit and air intakes. This would hide most of the aircraft without screwing with the engien and obscuring the view of the pilot(as I would think plasma would do) also if you place your own antennas and radar forward you could see them without them seeing you. Also from what I've seen making the front end of a plane have a low RCS is much easier then the rest of the plane.

plasma stealth would make a plane glow like a giant light bulb and would also be able to be picked up by a more advanced form of radar

Perhaps. P.T. Barnum was not a poor man, and in most cases, money equals power.

reply to post by jrock24

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A plasma screen is a more stable form of plasma, we could put it under the Radar Transparent Material (RTM). The radar emission trapped, and then taken along. Where? to engine, or get back to radar antenna, or to refill the batteries, etc.