China scientists have developed a light and thin material for aircrafts that makes planes hard to detect on radar systems.

Other radar-cloaking materials have been developed, but none is suitable for aircrafts because of their thickness. Chinese scientist Wenhua Xu from Huazhong University of Science and Technology said that the team has made a material that is 10 times thinner compared to traditional absorbers.

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Radar systems beam microwave energy and can detect anything that reflects it. The team believes that anything that absorbs the waves would succeed in being unnoticed.

A metal slab, which is on the top of the layer of the material, is made up of thin metal honeycomb. An active frequency selective surface (AFSS) is under the metal slab and is made up of a 0.04 mm layer of copper capacitors and resistors 5/18 or an inch thick that covers the aircraft much like a skin. Lots of absorption is possible by stretching the AFSS layer to be very thin on the aircrafts's surface, the researchers claim.

The military spent billions for the research and development of this new aircraft technology. The Pentagon uses this technology to protect spyplanes, nuclear bombers, and the entire next generation of fighters. It can be found primarily on modern aircrafts such as the B-2 Spirit bomber, the F-22 and F-35 fighters.

Its success in the battle is still not sufficient because of its material cannot tune itself to suit various detection frequencies like the color-changing wraps in the automotive industry. But it can protect against a large group of radar scans. The ultra-high-frequency (UHF) radar is one of its weaknesses - it can pick up traces of the plane that other radars miss.

Currently, there are two ways that airplanes hide their appearance from radar. Weird body geometry, on the one hand, reflects radio waves away from their receivers. On the other hand, there are materials that absorb the waves and turn it into heat instead of reflecting them back.

The details of the team's findings have been published this week in the Journal of Applied Physics.

China reportedly allowed the publishing of this research and the technique in order to find flaws in defences and to determine if anyone can break the stealth protection.

Tagschina scientist develops stealth fighter, stealth, stealth technology, stealth fighter, Radar