History of Modern Aviation (Exerpt)

Ghosts of the sky

One of the many advancements aviation has brought us is the usage of stealth enhancing technologies. The ability for aircraft to be hardly visible on radar, which is a major benefit for any military's air force. One of the earlist stealth bomber designs is the British jet bomber, the Avro Vulcan. The Vulcan, despite not being designed as a stealth bomber, had a much fainter radar signature, due to the smooth shape of the aircraft, such as internalized engines, weapons bays, and smooth blended wings that don't look like an extension of the fuselage, but rather the fuselage itself.

While the actual origins of some American built stealth aircraft like the F-117 Nighthawk, and the B-2 Spirit remain unclear if not unclassified, it is often suggested that the designers of those aircrafts took cues from the Vulcan. Additionally, the engineers have also used special materials to create the airplanes out of that absorb radar waves rather than reflect the waves back to the detector.

The airframes of the Nighthawk and Spirit are also unique in comparison to the Vulcan. The Nighthawk's airframe consists of the wings being a part of the fuselage, but rather than a round shape, it is a more faceted shape, where the fuselage of the aircraft, rather than being round like a pearl, looks much more jagged and sharper like a diamond. There were many concerns from the engineer whethet the aircraft is airworthy, hense it's Skunk Work's codename, the Hopeless Diamond.

The Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit is another stealth aircraft used by the USAF. Building upon Northrop's earlier research into the idea of flying-wing designs for aircraft, they found that the flying-wing design has an inheritly low radar cross-section. Rather than a fuselage with wings, elevators and a tail, the flying-wing (hence the name) is basically a giant wing, where the fuselage is integrated within the wing. Some of Northrop's earlier designs like the N-9M and YB-35 and YB-49 utilized small tails for the usage of rudders. However, alongside taking cues from Lockheed's Nighthawk with it's faceted edges, the B-2 does not have tails, so the rudders are located on the far inner edges of the wing. With no elevators neither to control pitch, they are instead integrated into the alerons, which are called elevons, a portmandeau of the terms elevator and aleron.