Stealth windows

Hey all

i was thinking about stealth, as one does.

and i was wondering about the windows/EO of stealth aircraft.


SURELY a normal window would reflect radar worse than some other parts of the aircraft and they are inherently right on the front of the aircraft and in the cases of sensor windows.

are these windows electrified or are they made of some special material that is still transparent?

why even use windows these days? just use paper thin displays like a wall paper, imagine a cockpit that was looked like glass with instruments projected onto it and if there is a problem then you could eject a small panel to look through.

all aircraft.....like you said, a porthole.....all general avialtion aircraft need to see down below...and straight up.....help the rookies.....general aviation only......yes....including tour aircraft.....they crashin this summer....

hey, let the computer land it.....huh!!

a reply to: penroc3

a reply to: penroc3

Check out ALON (transparent aluminium) which is apparently used for some sensor windows.

In the case of canopies they are use Acrylic with a coating of Tin Oxide.

After that I suppose it's "just" a case of getting the shape right.

so, transparent aluminum is real....wonderin bout that...

a reply to: TheResidentAlien

The canopy is treated with classified materials that make it opaque to radar. The helmet the pilot wears would reflect radar if they weren't.

a reply to: GBP/JPY

Yep. It's been around for a while. I worked for a watch company that used it for the watch case.

Very strong but brittle. We dropped a sample of the material and it chipped.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
The canopy is treated with classified materials that make it opaque to radar. The helmet the pilot wears would reflect radar if they weren't.

Meaning that they totally absorb microwaves?

I figured that canopies were configured to send reflected signals in a direction other than back to the transmitter.

a reply to: Phage

It does both I guess, absorbs what it can and scatters the rest. Appears they have some smart folk working on these things

"The transparent conducting film of gold or ITO (indium tin oxide) is used as an electromagnetic wave shield as well for stealth aircraft. Applying such transparent conducting film thus enables, while maintaining transparency to visible radiation, both a radio wave stealth property which scatters radio waves in various directions so as not to be detected by radar, and an electromagnetic wave shield property which prevents harmful electromagnetic waves, except for visible radiation, from invasion into the aircraft."

a reply to: grey580

transparent AL is just a clear ruby and as we know they are not very hard when compaired to metals or other gems

that's a cool watch

i always figured they electrified these new widows as it looks almost metalicized. i know there is a transparent coating for ice that will heat up so not much further to a window that can be electrified and via various means make the radar flow over it like water

a reply to: penroc3

From what I understood of the material is that it was a ceramic and not a crystal. The material was very tough to cut and wore out the tooling fairly quickly. I never found out the process to make the stuff. But if it was Aluminum Oxynitride then it was about 85% as hard as sapphire.

I thought the canopies were gold plated?

a reply to: Slys13

They are, but there's more than just gold in them.

a reply to: grey580

sweet

got any more watches

a reply to: Zaphod58

so my real question, are they elecrifed id some maybe be it ionization laminar flew etc