Some Great news for stealth aircraft

The coatings that are used to make our aircraft more stealthy are fragile and a big expenses when it comes to maintaining the coating. Looks like there has been a big breakthrough for a better more heat resistant ceramic-based coating that has finally gotten the attention and funding it required.

In an attempt to improve on current materials, which notoriously have several drawbacks, a team from the North Carolina State University has developed a new ceramic-based coating that not only offers dramatic improvements in radar invisibility but will likely result in a whole host of improvements to the aircraft’s overall performance.
“If we get the support we need to scale this up, aircraft manufacturers will be able to fundamentally redesign stealth aircraft,” said Chengying “Cheryl” Xu, whose NC State research team developed the new, stealthy aircraft skin in a press release announcing their results. “The material we’ve engineered is not only more radar-absorbent, but it will also allow the next generation of stealth aircraft to be faster, more maneuverable, and able to travel further.”

Which means it is lighter and stronger than present coatings

in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, the researchers point out that ceramics are also much more resistant to the harmful effects from the air, water, heat, and even things like sand, which can all do significant damage to current polymer-based materials. They also note that the ceramic material they used “retains its radar-absorbent characteristics at temperatures as high as 1,800 C (and as cold as -100 C).”

thedebrief.org...

All I can say is they better beef up cyber security.

originally posted by: OccamsRazor04

originally posted by: Arnie123
All I can say is they better beef up cyber security.

-removed-.

Totes.

a reply to: 727Sky

The F-35 coating was the first one that was truly durable. It's basically embedded in the skin of the aircraft on some of the panels, making it much more resilient than previous coatings. Ceramics have been the holy grail in multiple aviation fields. It'll be interesting to see where else this goes.

a reply to: Zaphod58


The f-35 is pretty cool. But i somehow feel that we have hit a wall in jet fighter/bomber development. Kind of like the p51 mustang was really the last big development in piston tech.

Who knows, maybe some kid out there has had an idea noone has thought of yet, but it just feels at this point we're just coming up with ways to get the next gen just a mite more shiny for the folks at home.

a reply to: KatorGhensenKiel

Those next generation aircraft that look "a mite more shiny for the folks at home" are far, far more than just looking prettier than the last. New and future stealth aircraft are far more capable than even the F-22 or B-2 currently are. The F-35 is far more capable than the F-22 in terms of overall capabilities, and that will improve as time goes on. The NGAD and B-21 are going to be even more capable than they are in terms of both stealth, which will be incredible, and overall combat capabilities. Just because it doesn't go Mach 15, and travel into orbit doesn't mean that we aren't seeing radical changes in terms of capabilities.

Oooo. Starlite comes to mind, even though it was mainly polymer based it had ceramics included.

Kind of like the p51 mustang was really the last big development in piston tech.

P51 was designed for the Brits early in WW2.There were platforms that came out later with more performance and technology.

I couldn't find the image I was looking for, but they are looking into large bombers with high air to air missile capacity to race up front to take out many at one time.

a reply to: Psalms91

I thought there was purchase of 144 f-15's (ex?) as bomb trucks?