It is instead manoeuvred by hundreds of tiny jets that blast air in order to influence to change the lift, drag and other features of performance.

The result is a more streamlined, aerodynamic craft that cuts down on edges and gaps – features that can increase radar detection.

The end result is an aircraft with fewer moving parts in need of maintenance and a reduced radar signature.

Link via OhGizmo! | Photo: Cranfield University

For the test run, a thin layer of the material was painted on dummy missiles, and radar waves aimed at them had a difficult time registering them.

The paint particles don’t make the missile’s detection on the radar disappear completely, but make it exceedingly difficult to positively identify the object as a missile. In the future, this development will allow any missile or jet significantly decreased radar detection.

Even though they may not entirely disappear from radar screens, this technology is a considerably more cost-effective method to evade radar detection than purchasing an American stealth plane for $5 billion.

Link via Popular Science | Photo (unrelated) by Flickr user eschipul used under Creative Commons license

The aviation company Eurocopter is developing noise-reducing helicopter blades that could minimize the sound that a helicopter makes:

This week Eurocopter unveiled its most recent effort to reduce helicopter noise with the radical-looking Blue Edge rotor blade. The new blade has been tested on one of the company’s EC155 helicopters and was shown to reduce noise 3 to 4 decibels, according to the company.

In addition to the Blue Edge rotor blade, the company also introduced something called Blue Pulse technology. Also designed to reduce helicopter noise, the Blue Pulse system uses three flap modules in the trailing edge of each rotor blade. Piezoelectric motors move actuate the flaps 15 to 40 times per second in reduce the “slap noise” often heard when a helicopter is descending.

Both of these technologies are able to reduce noise by minimizing the blade-vortex interaction of the main rotor on a helicopter. Blade-vortex interaction is the source of the pulsating sound most of us are familiar with when helicopters fly overhead. The noise is created when a rotor blade hits the wake vortex left behind from the blade in front of it.

Video at the link.

Link via Popular Science | Photo: Eurocopter

The Nazi Horten 2-29 fighter plane looked like something from a Star Wars prequel: an all-wing jet capable of speeds up to 600 mph, made mostly of wood.

Designer Walter Horten had lost hundreds of Luftwaffe colleagues during the Battle of Britain in 1940, and he was keen to avenge their deaths by developing a plane that would be pretty much invisible to Britain’s radar system.

He and his brother built and flew the prototype Ho 2-29 just before Christmas 1944, but the war ended before the plane could enter mass production.

The only remaining Horten 2-29 is kept hidden from public view at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility outside Washington, DC.

Did the plane truly have stealth capability against WWII radar? A team from Northrup Grumman built and tested a full-scale replica to find out.

Photo by Linda Reynolds/Flying Wing Films

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.