Well, I don't know enough about the subject to ask any intelligent questions, but I can tell when someone knows their stuff, and you do. I'll be watching for your posts from now on..

Cool, cool, post! Thank you for the research! During my long hours at work staring a unit control screens my mind has wandered to this exact same thing. My thought, be it silly, is maybe have a coating actually made to burn. The "painted" on surface could be reapplied when on the ground. When entering enemy territory the plane could ignite the outer layer and actually "burn" when entering enemy territory. The resulting flame enveloping the plane could mess up the radar. The burn may also help the problem of overheating by consuming the outside air molecules before contacting the real skin of the plane. Or better yet have a plane follow a "burning" missile into enemy territory and hide in its off gas. Just a thought!

P.S if any "government agency" is reading this and thinks its a great idea, HIRE ME! I am bored stiff in my job and want to work in WARM Las Vegas!!!

[edit on 27-2-2009 by christopherledwards]

Originally posted by fnord
theoretically speaking, if we did invent plasma stealth technology, and we had a corona around the plane, wouldn't the plane look like a stereotypical ufo? (IE the glowing dots) such a result would explain why it never shows up on radar as well.

thoughts on this?

It may be possible to drive a plasma sphere beyond the optical range by its frequency, the object within can be standard faceted deflection for radar stealth.

havn't read all this board so im sorry if im repeating anyone but plasma stealth has been used for years on the b2. it does charge its hull, but not for ag, it is how it gains its stealth capabilities, and gets off the ground with a full load. MHD effects make it possible. plus the developer, northrop, wrote a paper on it called "Electroaerodynamics in supersonic flow" which describes the effect, hence the fact they won the prize over lockheed. And by the way, liquid, gas, even spacetime are fluids scince fluid dynamics are the standard methods for calculating their behaviour. Plasma is just hot ionised gas, which means atoms stripped of their electrons in a hot energetic soup. a gas none the less, so a fluid. High school stuff

A plasma plane would be a good feature to any base because the charged plasma would distort any electromagnetic radiation.

The two different frequencies would collide and lose energy.

The physics of plasma waves with electromagnetic waves is exceptionally complex and there is a deep literature.

Yes it is possible to create anti-radar effects (in the lab) by creating either absorbers (e.g. at the cyclotron frequency) or nullers (emitters which destructively cancel).

I think it would be much more difficult however to accomplish such things against advanced adversarial radars which change frequencies as compared to classic plane waves. There are too many instabilities and difficulties to be really reliable. You may be able to reduce the cross section against a stationary civilian radar at a classic CW frequency but it's not so easy otherwise. The complexity of the physics & dynamics is very high and if you make a mistake you can easily boost the cross section.

For reducing RCS, I think the radar absorbing materials and essentially 'refractive' microwave metamaterials are likely to be more reliable across frequencies atmospheric conditions and adversarial radars.

Possibly one might consider a 'plasma stealth' to be an adjunct to the ECM (as no doubt it would have to monitor incoming frequencies and with a physical model attempt to adjust as necessary), but my unexpert basic-physics opinion would put the biggest bets on materials.

Actually I think the most profitable application for plasma stealth if any would be for non-geostationary surveillance satellites: easier to maintain a low density plasma, more stable environment, much less maneuvering, and probably have to face more classic big CW radars from the ground. You'd go stealth mode before executing an orbital burn. If enemy ground track radar finds it hard to lock on you might be able to get yourself in an orbit not known to the adversary for a few weeks until brute force optical telescope searches find you again.