One of the tech areas that the military likes to focus on is survivability. That is making sure their troops, planes, ships, tanks, and even munitions can survive encounters with the enemy. Understand that different countries take different approached based upon preferred tactics, technology know how, manufacturing capabilities, etc. Some countries are even better at changing tactics based up their equipment, where other countries only work to improve their current tactics.
Armor
For a long time, they focused on better armor. In armies of old, they started with leather clothes which were harder to pierce with swords, then they upgraded to chain mail, plate armor. However, this got very heavy and with the advent of firearms, this technology was basically done away with, until products like kevlar and ballistic plates became a thing for troops. These are much lighter, and save a lot of lives in recent conflicts.
Of course, there are things like tanks, which are great of using armor to protect the troops inside. But even they have limits. Because of their weight, they tend to drive up the cost and make it hard to carry the weight. With aircraft, weight is very important as you need bigger and bigger engines for every pound you weigh. This causes issues with cost to operate, as well as manufacture.
Even ships have to be careful with how much weight they can support. Some ships like Battleships, Dreadnoughts, and Heavy Cruisers were well armored with a foot or more of steel in places. However smaller ships cannot support that weight and often have just a few inches, if that.
Speed
Being fast makes it harder for the enemy to hit you. Just look at a game like boxing or football. A fast competitor can pull away from an opposing player, or move in an unexpected way to protect themselves.
Likewise, it was determined during the Cold War, that speed meant you got to your target faster, so the enemy wasn’t as likely to have time to react and defend against you. Aircraft like the SR-71 was known for being able to outrun missiles, while the B-1, Mig-25, F-4, and others were designed to be fast to either catch fast enemies, or outrun them.
However, with speed there comes danger. Imagine traveling at 700-1000 mph. How far do you go when you blink? Could you run into another aircraft, or the ground?
Speed is also expensive as you need lots of fuel, special materials to handle the heat, and parts wear out faster. In the 70s we started to look for ways to improve our military without speed, and a lot of Air Forces started to slow down as a result.
However, not everyone has abandoned speed. China and Russia specifically are working on Hypersonic missiles and are years ahead of the United States in this area. This is because all countries have weapons to attempt to defeat missiles and bombs. These include other missiles, reactive armor, and even guns like the CIWS (called Sea Wiz).
Stealth
Stealth, in various forms have been around for many years. In a simple form, stealth means sneakiness. reference This could include being quiet, using camouflage, or other methods to not be seen.
Typically, in today’s modern era, it means the ability to not be detected by radar. There are a lot of myths around stealth, and one that is not covered in that video is what does it mean to be stealthy. While people will often throw around terms like radar cross section, saying that this aircraft looks a golfball (F-117) or a mosquito (F-22) on the radar, it doesn’t actually look like that. Instead the size correlates to how close it has to be for the radar to detect the aircraft.
Of course countries are improving their radars, so while you might be able to get within a few miles of the old radar, it might be only able to get within 20 miles of a new radar system.
The overall goal of stealth is to avoid systems that can detect and attack you, before you can launch your attack. This means if you have longer range missiles, you don’t need as good of stealth technology, where with good stealth tech, you can fly between radar systems, and avoid being picked up at all, because the more room that is used for fuel means less room for your warhead.
While we often think of stealth aircraft, stealth also is used in Navy Ships and motorcycles.
Generalities
In general, if you cannot be stealthy, you need either long range weapons, or you need to be faster so they can’t catch you. Some countries like China and Russia are focusing on speed and long range weapons, where the US is focusing on stealth and maneuverability. That doesn’t mean they focus solely on those goals, but they are the priority.
Civilian Uses
One of the big questions is, can this tech be used for civilian markets. In some ways, the answer is yes. So for example, stealth has no real purpose outside of military usage, and can even cause problems in the civilian world, where planes and cars need to be seen on radar to avoid collisions.
However, we’ve been constantly looking at how do we “shrink the world”. That is, to make it easier to get to other parts of the world. This means faster speeds, and hypersonic weapons are leading the way in materials science and engine design which can be used to travel the world. We are a ways off from being able to have travel from Europe to US in under an hour, but we have to start somewhere and work on progressing to get there.
https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/year-in-review/accelerating-toward-hypersonic-civilian-flight/
Military Tech – Stealth & Speed was originally found on Access 2 Learn
