There are a lot of misconceptions around Stealth what it is what it does and how it works ?
One of the main ones I've seen people saying is that self makes an object completely invisible and then on the opposite side saying that it is completely useless so which one is right?
I've seen countless people talk about stealth in terms of being invisible from people in the media to even the President of the United States when talking about the F-35
Basically all Stealth features do is make the object in this case an aircraft smaller in terms of its radar return, you could think about it in a similar sense to your vision after all light waves and radar waves are the exact same thing both are electromagnetic radiation only with different wavelengths, an automobile for example you can easily see at 300 meters or a 1000 feet however something much smaller say an ant you will not be able to see at that distance it is not until you are much closer until you are able to see it
The same is true with stealth aircraft a radar can still see or detect them however at much shorter ranges, so no Stealth does not make an object invisible, Stealth features on an object make that object smaller on radar by either reflecting away or absorbing as much of the radar waves as possible so that only a small amount is returned to the radar again similar to the ant returning a smaller amount of light than the automobile to the viewer
I won't get into the details of materials or techniques used to make an object stealthy but the objective of stealth features is to make the object have a smaller radar return the size of these returns is typically measured in square meters and called at radar cross section or RCS
A kit class destroyer a class of naval destroyers used before the newer arleigh burke-class is said to have an RCS of around 2,000 square meters when it is viewed from its side by comparison the newer stealthy Zumwalt-class destroyers despite being much larger in terms of size and displacement are said to have an RCS of only 20 square meters due to its stealthy design
In terms of aircraft a typical fourth-generation fighter say the F-15 has an RCS around 10 square meters where the stealthy fifth-generation F-22 is believed to have somewhere around one one thousandth of a square meter RCS now obviously the true figure is highly classified, now these numbers may sound like a lot or maybe they sound completely meaningless to you but there is some math you can do with these figures to calculate the radar detection ranges
If a hypothetical ground-based early warning radar can detect the F-15 at save 500 kilometers then with the F-22 with an RCS 10,000 times smaller than that of the F-15 would be detected at only 10% of the range or 50 kilometers, keep in mind that this example is only in reference to radar there are other methods of detection such as infrared or visual for which there are other stealth features to lessen the detection range of those methods you may hear people mentioning quote-unquote stealth busting radars that China and Russia are developing and those are real
There are many ways to make detecting stealth aircraft easier for example lower frequency radars can detect at a much further range and higher computing power can clean up the noise and detect an object that would otherwise be lost in the clutter by older radars but the basic principle still stands stealthy aircraft while maybe being detected at further ranges will still be detected at shorter ranges than a non stealthy aircraft and that is the whole point of stealth to give its user an advantage they're able to get much closer to the target before being detected than a non stealthy aircraft would
So in this case stealth is not useless if it were nearly every major military power like the US China Russia India and Japan and others would not be pouring massive amounts of money into developing their own stealth aircraft.
