During WWII in the 1930's and 1940's, the use of radar technology became prevalent. In the war, many countries such as the United States and Germany used this technology to detect aircraft and to help navigate ships. Later on during the Vietnam War, radar was implemented into anti-aircraft defenses, posing a threat to its fleet of aircraft. This is one of the driving reasons behind why the United States needed a way for aircraft to evade radar. Their development lead to the creation of the F117A, and later the B-1 and B-2 bombers, the F-22, and the F-35[2]. The main components of a radar system are the transmitter, a receiver, an antenna, and a switch that is used to change between receiving and transmitting. The transmitter creates the pulse and sends it out using the antenna. The antenna is also used to receive the rebounding pulses and amplifies and visualizes them[1]. To understand radar, there are two …show more content…
Designers that want to make a stealth aircraft, for this reason, attempt to reduce the aircraft’s radar cross section[2][4]. The radar cross section of an object is, according to [Introduction to the Basic Technology of Stealth Aircraft Part 2—Illumination By the Enemy—(Active Considerations)], “The Radar Cross Section may be considered as the projected area of an equivalent reflector which has uniform properties in all directions. This equivalent reflector is a sphere which will return the same power per unit solid angle (steradian) as the aircraft.” Radar has applications for both civilian and military purposes. In the military, radar is used for many things such as guiding friendly aircraft, detecting enemy aircraft, to detect above-water vessels, increase the accuracy of anti-aircraft artillery, and to guide missiles. On the other hand, it can be used for domestic purposes such as in air traffic control towers and speed