Recreating the math behind the first stealth aircraft

Summary

how soviet math led to the first empirically stealth-optimized aircraft I would like to preface this by saying I'm not an expert in this field by any means; I'm an average software engineer with an above-average interest in aerospace and physics. All visualizations were drawn/generated by me and code can be found in this project's github repo black diamonds and bouncing photons 1752308995975_bzq2ct.png Ever since I first delved into engineering, I became entranced with arguably the most captivating aircraft ever created, the SR-71 Blackbird. The technology behind this aircraft alone is mind-boggling, and if unfamiliar I highly recommend Real Engineering's youtube video on the topic. The SR-71 was a stealthy aircraft, to be sure, but not in the current way we understand stealth. It had clever shaping and radar-absorbing paint, but its true defense was speed and altitude. Later aircraft, namely the F-117, however, strived to be completely invisible. To achieve this, it used a completely different technique, pioneered by physics rather than engineering. (p.s. also highly recommend the video for the nighthawk for some slightly more intuitive visualizations) The Soviet Paper In 1971, Pyotr Ufimtsev published a paper1 describing how electromagnetic waves scatter off edges. This idea was largely ignored by Western engineers, who focused on practical application more than diffraction theory. However, one Lockheed Skunk Works engineer, Denys Overholser, realized that this theory could be used to create a plane that was able to minimize its radar cross section (RCS), and this very concept led to the development of the F-117. 2 In this article, I will attempt to unpack the math of stealth just enough to be intuitive, to prepare for a code implementation in the next post. The Physics of Stealth To understand stealth, one must understand radar. RCS is informally the effective area that reflects radar signals back to a source. What does this mean? If you have a metallic sphere, a...