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Achieving stealth means minimizing all the ways that an enemy can detect a plane, whether by sight, noise, heat, or radar waves. Avoiding radar detection in particular demands a great deal of sophisticated engineering and manufacturing savvy, and the results sometimes seem just short of miraculous: In the late 1980s in an experimental stealth project, a plane sitting on the tarmac prior to take-off was completely invisible to personnel looking through a radarscope. The only reason they detected the plane was because a bird had landed on top and appeared to be floating in midair.
In this interactive, take a closer look at Boeing's ultra-stealthy Bird of Prey fighter plane and learn some of the ways that aircraft designers can achieve stealth. To launch the interactive, click on the image at left.
This interactive originally appeared on NOVA's Battle of the X-Planes Web site.
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