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