Did we ever find out what this chrome paint stuff was and what it was supposed to do?
Did we ever find out what this chrome paint stuff was and what it was supposed to do?
Did we ever find out what this chrome paint stuff was and what it was supposed to do?
New Ram/IR camo
yeah
Allegedly some kind of stealth coating. Until it actually enters some kind of operational service I'm still pretty sure its main purpose is to look sick as hell.
Its for NGAD.
They are taking known stealth aircraft, with their known RCS and IR signatures and using them as a test bed to refine a next gen all aspect stealth coating.
Anti EW weapon armor.
I wouldn't worry about it.
They are just fucking with the Chinese.
Two words:
Laser. Armour.
Mirror coating for that only works really well if it's an FSM, which would mean the coating itself would be prone to constant repair. Not saying that isn't feasible with ridiculous budgets being what they are, but that shit would need replacement basically every flight.
Pro tip: SSM or second surface mirrors are shit for proper deflective use because a second surface mirror stores heat while an FSM or first surface mirror, does not. Which is why a nasty laser that can actually cause damage can burn through second surface mirroring.
Just a shot in the dark, but in addition to testing new coatings, could be testing different patterns to confuse signal processing of current radars, and the effects of patterns of different RAM on radar returns at different angles throughout the flight envelope.
Here's a novel idea. Instead of reducing radar signatures, make them as big as freaking possible. Make the radar return be so massive, it looks like the moon is about to crash land on earth. That way, the radar system has no idea where the actual plane is amongst the massive radar signal it's getting.
So jamming?
Do the principle for armored divisions. Get your tank column painted in the most bright neon unicolour pigment imaginable so anything looking at it cannot distinguish an individual tank from the entire column as one massive neon blob. Zebra do this naturally through the shape refraction of thier stripes in a group but for it to work againt optics it would need to be eye-searing to look at.
To make a group the equivilant of a motorized or walking JAFF or CHILL disbursement the material used would need to be so reflective and bright that it would be no doubt be toxic, because this universe is no fun.
fun idea but that's not how it works unfortunately. "radar cross section" measured in area is useful for communicating the idea of how stealthy a plane is but it doesn't always give you an objective metric of how big an object is going to appear to a radar operator.
So, a fuckhuge cross section wouldn't appear to be a massive object, it would just be a very strong return from that one point. you'd have to physically occupy that huge volume of space to look that huge.
i also don't think there's a feasible way to, hypothetically, bounce radar waves back as if they were reflecting off an object X# meters beside you because there wouldnt be a way to mimic the time of flight.
The F-117 scheme is to trick kinetic rangefinders on IRST-type systems. Makes the jet look smaller than it is so that electrooptics can't calculate the range and speed accurately by passive means
In the case of the F-35 wavy it likely hampers the ability of such systems AI to recognise the type of aircraft it's looking at (like old dazzle camo) and track it.
Testing new coating for NGAD most likely. Expect it on the modified Manta airframe as the gen 6 fighter
God they look so fucking good.