BEIJING: Stealth technology is one of the biggest advantages any military could wield, and now China is looking to out-gun other nations in the field after scientists unveiled a breakthrough that could effectively create invisible fighter jets and warships.
The research, led by Chinese scientist Wenhua Xu, suggests the newly-developed material could surpass the stealth capabilities of Lockheed Martin’s F-35, which has stealth technology that may not be too effective against ultrahigh frequencies according to Popular Mechanics.
Modern synthetic aperture radar are able to gain an approximate understanding of an object’s size (and in turn gain a better understanding of what it might be) by using antennas that point microwave energy through natural cloaks like clouds and fog. Anti-radar materials absorb a few of those signals, making a large object appear smaller than it is. Provided that a few of that signal is missing, an aircraft could look more like a high-flying bird. “Our proposed absorber is nearly ten times thinner than conventional ones”, he said in a statement. The team detailed their findings in the Journal of Applied Physics. That layer is sitting under a layer of copper resistors and capacitors just. Now thanks to an ultra-thin absorbing surface called an active frequency selective surface (AFSS) that’s only 0.4mm thick, it can be stretched over jet fighters, vehicles or equipment. The next layer is a thin metal honeycomb and final is a metal slab.
The good news: the material isn’t locked away in a lab but published openly, so it’s not going to surprise anyone.
