Plasma Stealth: Past & Present

Originally posted by Aelita
Sounds like a tough technology to implement, and yet... Didn't the Russians develop the supercaviting supersonic torpedoes? That's heavy duty stuff as well...

Actually, no - they never perfected them. They were straight line only and they had some problems with sinking their own subs (like the Kursk).

Quite intersting. I've been spending a lot of time reading from Sandia Labs, Los Alamos, Princeton Plasma Physics labs, and a few other places with regards to Plasma physics for power generation (and nuclear weapons testing without the nuclear weapons).

Nothing at all like what your talking about. this stuff would cause aircraft to...um... evaporate, or better yet, cease to exist? Plasma temperatures achieved in fusion experiments range between (these days) 1.5 million to a little under 200 million degrees celcius. Hm, sorry to go off topic

Originally posted by Torus
Quite intersting. I've been spending a lot of time reading from Sandia Labs, Los Alamos, Princeton Plasma Physics labs, and a few other places with regards to Plasma physics for power generation (and nuclear weapons testing without the nuclear weapons).

Nothing at all like what your talking about. this stuff would cause aircraft to...um... evaporate, or better yet, cease to exist?

You need to read up on COLD plasma.
This is real, it is happening right now and no aircraft are evaporating.
Not ALL plasma is thousands or millions of degrees and these are not fusion experiments.

Funny how the glass globe isn't melting
from being in contact with plasma that's
millions of degrees.





[edit on 26-10-2004 by bios]

Indeed, bios. Most matter in the universe is in fact composed of plasma at a few degrees above kelvin. Again: plasma is ionised gas. Your overhead fluorescents aren't vapourising from the intense heat, are they?

Nothing at all like what your talking about. this stuff would cause aircraft to...um... evaporate, or better yet, cease to exist?
You need to read up on COLD plasma.
This is real, it is happening right now and no aircraft are evaporating.
Not ALL plasma is thousands or millions of degrees and these are not fusion experiments.

I have two comments:
1) Cold is a relative term

2)Yes, right now...................SW of Phoenix on the Goldwater Bombing Range. The F-35 and a partner unknown (unseen for that matter) are being tested.
www.worldblend.net...
Thanks to Intel-Gurl for asking the right questions and for this quality thread.

Originally posted by titus

will pak-fa utilize this technology?

the pak-fa, in my openion would incorporate conventional stealth.


check out this pak-fa pic, it looks like a f-22 ??

i guess normal stealth would satisfy its stealth needs .

Those wings are U-G-L-Y UGLY!

The interesting thing about this design is that it incorporates a lenticular saucer shape... the best radar-deflecting design of all (along with the triangle).

Originally posted by American Mad Man
Those wings are U-G-L-Y UGLY!

All that matters is that its a great aircraft! Russia doesnt need beautiful aircrafts. They just need them great at combating others.

Out,
Russian

Originally posted by bios

Originally posted by Torus
Quite intersting. I've been spending a lot of time reading from Sandia Labs, Los Alamos, Princeton Plasma Physics labs, and a few other places with regards to Plasma physics for power generation (and nuclear weapons testing without the nuclear weapons).

Nothing at all like what your talking about. this stuff would cause aircraft to...um... evaporate, or better yet, cease to exist?

You need to read up on COLD plasma.
This is real, it is happening right now and no aircraft are evaporating.
Not ALL plasma is thousands or millions of degrees and these are not fusion experiments.

Funny how the glass globe isn't melting
from being in contact with plasma that's
millions of degrees.

[edit on 26-10-2004 by bios]

You are right, it is NOT burning the glass, but put a penny onto that glass and see how hot it gets. It turns red. My science teacher a year ago in Boston field trip told me he will buy me lunch if I was able to lay my finger ontop of the penny on the glass. I couldn't touch it for a second.

Originally posted by Russian

Originally posted by American Mad Man
Those wings are U-G-L-Y UGLY!

All that matters is that its a great aircraft!

Russia doesnt need beautiful aircrafts. They just need them great at combating others.

Out,
Russian

I know - I'm sure it will be a great aircraft. It's just they could have made it sexy like the raptor or Black Widow

You are right, it is NOT burning the glass, but put a penny onto that glass and see how hot it gets. It turns red. My science teacher a year ago in Boston field trip told me he will buy me lunch if I was able to lay my finger ontop of the penny on the glass. I couldn't touch it for a second.

Conductors tend to pick up electrical currents in the region of high voltage power sources. Eddy currents are formed, heat is generated... red hot penny. Or at least I assume that's the scenario!

Originally posted by Russian

All that matters is that its a great aircraft!

Russia doesnt need beautiful aircrafts. They just need them great at combating others.

So, is at least the prototype ready? I personally think it will not go into full production before 2020.

Are some aircrafts using active stealth? I don't mean plasma or something like that it's called radar wave cancelation. The incoming radar wave is analyzed and deflected and the onboard radar device sends exactly the same wave to the enemy radar direction but with oposite phase, so the both waves (deflected and created by aircraft) will simply cancel themselves and the radar will see nothing. I think they tested it and it worked well , but just with one enemy radar. With more radars the whole thing became too complicated, but it was years ago and computing power is now much improved.

Also Intelgurl I heard the B2 could be using similar technology against long radar waves (these WWII era radars are big and inaccurate, but they are able to detect "conventional" stealth plane, and long waves should be simplier to cancel using this technology).

Originally posted by Lampyridae

You are right, it is NOT burning the glass, but put a penny onto that glass and see how hot it gets. It turns red. My science teacher a year ago in Boston field trip told me he will buy me lunch if I was able to lay my finger ontop of the penny on the glass. I couldn't touch it for a second.

Conductors tend to pick up electrical currents in the region of high voltage power sources. Eddy currents are formed, heat is generated... red hot penny. Or at least I assume that's the scenario!

A aircraft is a giant conductor

Originally posted by longbow

Originally posted by Russian

All that matters is that its a great aircraft!

Russia doesnt need beautiful aircrafts. They just need them great at combating others.

So, is at least the prototype ready? I personally think it will not go into full production before 2020.

The deadline for a flying prototype is 2006. It is to enter service by 2010(this according to Russia's defence minister is a conservative estimate !!)
Ambitious indeed .....

Originally posted by Laxpla

Originally posted by Lampyridae

You are right, it is NOT burning the glass, but put a penny onto that glass and see how hot it gets. It turns red. My science teacher a year ago in Boston field trip told me he will buy me lunch if I was able to lay my finger ontop of the penny on the glass. I couldn't touch it for a second.

Conductors tend to pick up electrical currents in the region of high voltage power sources. Eddy currents are formed, heat is generated... red hot penny. Or at least I assume that's the scenario!

A aircraft is a giant conductor

Yes. This is why getting struck by lightning can be a problem. An aircraft with passive stealth is NOT a giant conductor however, and an aircraft with an active stealth system is NOT a penny on a plasma globe. Its airframe is not conducting anything anywhere, otherwise it could not produce a plasma field. It is in essence a giant dielectric or capacitor. The AIR around the aircraft would be the conductor, but it would not heat up because of the sheer volume of it and the rate of flow.

PS Picking holes in theories is fine, but adding more than a single line and an emoticon would add much to your credibility!

[edit on 5-11-2004 by Lampyridae]

Hold On! Before this gets carried away, let me set the record straight!

First of all, you've missed one critical fact: All Steath relies on Plasma to some degree! The difference is, the Russians use a free form cloud that is generated around the aircraft, while the US relies on a hollow, honey-combed skin filled with plasma. Radar Absorbent Material (RAM), works by produsing plasma when an electric current is added to it. The main difference is that the US method requires less energy to maintain the plasma field then it's Russian counterpart, but requires more care and attention to detail during construction. The bottom line is: Plasma is a part of ALL stealth, but there are different ways to use it to get the same effect. For more info on plasma and stealth, see the B-2 Research Project.

Tim
ATS Director of Counter-Ignorance

Hold On! Before this gets carried away, let me set the record straight!

First of all, you've missed one critical fact: All Steath relies on Plasma to some degree! The difference is, the Russians use a free form cloud that is generated around the aircraft, while the US relies on a hollow, honey-combed skin filled with plasma. Radar Absorbent Material (RAM), works by produsing plasma when an electric current is added to it. The main difference is that the US method requires less energy to maintain the plasma field then it's Russian counterpart, but requires more care and attention to detail during construction. The bottom line is: Plasma is a part of ALL stealth, but there are different ways to use it to get the same effect. For more info on plasma and stealth, see the B-2 Research Project.

Tim
ATS Director of Counter-Ignorance

I stumbled on this thread by chance and feel like I need to make a few comments:

> One specialist in the area of military arms sales for a US intelligence agency pointed out that it was 5 1/2 years ago in January 1999 that the Tass News Agency's article announced this technology was to be exported and as of yet there is no such product for sale on the world's arms markets.

Available for export does not necessarily mean an ad in the Rosoboronexport catalog. It also does not mean that something is available for export to everyone. I can think of a number of reasons why sales and acquisitions of such technology may be kept out of industry tabloids. Military technology and equipment is exported by Russia on a case-by-case basis. The nationality of the buyer usually plays an important role. While I do not argue with your source, there mere fact that the US military cannot buy something does not mean it's not there and available to others.

>An electromagnetic field is generated - the downside however, is that such a field would be detectable by electronic sensors
>the issue of photon emissions - visual glowing from plasma sources can be tracked using CCD sensors

"Detectable" is a relative term. A flying aircraft produces a broad spectrum of EM emission. An aircraft generates an EM field simply by moving through the atmosphere. The on-board electronics produces EM emissions. The engines and various hot spots of the airframe emit IR radiation. All of this occurs without any plasma stealth technology. The question is whether or not plasma stealth makes an aircraft less or more vulnerable to detection under a particular set of conditions.

As a strictly theoretical example, consider and aircraft that can be reliably detected and tracked by a specific type of an active radar at 100 kilometers while flying toward the radar at an altitude of 5000 meters. The same aircraft can be detected and tracked by passive radar at 10 kilometers and by a FLIR system at 15 kilometers.

Now imagine that some sort of a plasma stealth device installed on the aircraft reduces the effective range of that specific type of active radar down to 20 kilometers. Additional EM emissions produced by the plasma stealth device boost the aircraft's EM emissions and allow its passive radio/IR detection at 25 kilometers.

If your aircraft carries missiles with effective range of 50 kilometers - you just successfully bombed your enemy's base instead of being blown out of the sky by SAMs.

There is also a big difference between being able to detect an aircraft and being able to target it. An F-117 can be detected by passive and long-wave radars at ranges exceeding the effective range of the aircraft's weaponry. Unfortunately for the air defense guys, simply knowing that something is out there is not enough to shoot it down.

In the previous example a plasma stealth device boosted the aircraft's EM emissions and made it detectable by passive systems at 25 kilometers. It could have made it easier to target the aircraft. It just as well could have made it harder to target it. Consider a flow of ionized particles being reabsorbed into the atmosphere as the aircraft flies by: now your tracking station will also have to deal with a cluttered background of EM emissions trailing the aircraft. It may make it easier to detect but harder to target.

>A physicist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had questions about how the aircraft's onboard systems would interact with a surrounding plasma field. For instance in order for the plasma field to be effective it would have to to be so powerful that the aircraft itself would have to be shielded from it's own stealth system. Would this mean that they would have to employ something similar to a Faraday cage

While I do not specialize in plasmas, I do have two degrees in physics and aerospace engineering and I have no idea what this guy is asking. It seems like he misunderstood the problem. An aircraft might need to be shielded from the device generating plasma - depending on how such a device operates - but there is no need to shield the aircraft from plasma itself. Plasma is a quasineutral matter with a zero total electrical charge. This remains true independent of plasma's density or its temperature. Electrical neutrality is a defining property of any type of plasma.

And if you ever get a chance to communicate with LLNL people, please ask them to STOP LEECHING MY SITE. They do this on a weekly basis and drive my hosting provider nuts. LLNL should relax - we all work for the same people :-)

>An aerospace engineer for a leading US fighter manufacturer questioned how this ionized gas envelope would interact with the airflow over the control surfaces at flight speed. Also he wondered if sharp, angled manuevering would shear off the ionization thus exposing the aircraft to enemy radar.

When we talk about plasma stealth we should accept this is not the golden goose of stealth technology. There are bound to be drawbacks and limitations. The real question is whether or not there are workarounds for such problems. A plasma "shield" may obscure an aircraft in level flight in the frontal hemisphere. Turning or running may destroy its effectiveness. It's a limitation but a workable one.

We don't know much about how such systems may work even in theory, let alone on a practical level. Russian technology has always leaned toward the practical. There is no Russian translation for the word "advanced" that would accurately convey its meaning. If your weapon is a shovel, your preferred type of combat will not be dueling at twenty paces. If your plasma screen covers you only in level flight and frontal hemisphere, you'll stick to a flight plan that maximizes this advantage. And if you find yourself in a situation when a sharp turning maneuver is needed to save your skin, then it's probably already too late to worry about your plasma shield.

>the same group of scientists (ITAE) who in 1999 stated via ITAR-TASS news agency that they had a 100kg plasma stealth unit

ITAE is not the same as the Keldysh Research Center from the 1999 ITAR-TASS interview. These are two separate research organizations apparently working on two distinct types of plasma stealth devices. Here are the links:

Keldysh Research Center: www.kerc.msk.ru... (this should not be confused with the Keldysh Applied Mathematics Institute).

ITAE is a part of the Scientific Association for High Temperatures ( oivtran.iitp.ru... ) that was formed in the early 1990s on the basis of the Institute for High Temperatures.

While both Keldysh Research center and the ITAE belong to the Russian Academy of Sciences, these are separate organizations. KRC is led by Anatoli Koroteyev (the guy who gave the ITAR-TASS interview in 1999) and the ITAE is led by Andrei Lagarkov.

>The Russian scientific organization that touted having made this development later in 2003 recanted the claim saying that it was too problematic.

I am not aware of any such statements. Any references?