Mauro Gilli Profile picture
Dec 3 20 tweets 8 min read
Given the attention to the B21, here I have listed some articles and books that I found useful when I wanted to understand #stealth technology (or "low observable", LO).
First and foremost, to understand stealth you need to have at least some general understanding of radar (and more generally, sensors). I wrote a thread some time ago with some references

A great place to start for stealth is this book by Richardson (they have different titles, but it's literally the same book, one just came out after the other) which provides a historical overview, and accessible explanations devoid of technical discussions.
Bill Sweetman wrote or co-wrote several books in the 1980s and 1990s on stealth aircraft. They are generally short and accessible, and add some technical details explained in very simple way.
Similarly accessible and with an eye to operational context is this report by the Mitchell Institute, which puts stealth in context.
This report gets a bit more technical, but it's again very short, and is overall accessible. Written by a physicist who worked on stealth technology and taught about it.
This biography of Ben Rich, the "father of Stealth" at Skunk Work, is also very interesting, in that it provides many anecdotes about the challenges of developing the stealth aircraft.
This recent book, by historian Westwick, provides the economic, social and strategic context behind the development of stealth technology.
The chapter by Kaminsky is also very interesting, and focuses more on the strategic contexts behind the development of stealth.
These two articles, respectively by Welch and Lepingwell, are interesting for many reasons, including the fact that they provide an idea of the public debate at the time the F-117 had been disclosed and the B-2 was about to be unveiled.
On the F-117 being disclosed, you might want to go and check this issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology.
Moving to more technical writings, this article in IEEE Explore provides a historical overview of stealth, with some technical details (ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/259548).
Aviation Week, a couple of years ago, had a series of 7 articles on Sstealth, if you do not have a physics or electronic engineering background, some parts might be a big demanding, but overall they are explained in a very simple way. here are 4 of 7
aviationweek.com/defense-space/…
This article by a Northrop Grumman engineer provides an introduction to assessing how stealth enhances survivability.
This volume by former Lockheed engineer is a must and treats both what stealth is and its implications in a much deeper and broader way than the other works listed. It gets quite technical, but it covers most of what you will need to know.
To understand the principles behind reductions in observability to radar, many books on radar engineering and electromagnetic scattering will have some useful discussions. If you have already such an understanding, these two books provide a deeper (more technical) dive.
These two articles discuss how evolving air defense technology erodes the advantage of stealth, which put the development of the B-21 in perspective.

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More from @Mauro_Gilli

Oct 17
Over the past months, air defense has received significant attention. In case you'd like to understand more about radar, jamming, decoys, surface-to-air missiles, and the like, here some sources I found very useful.
These are the works I have used for a lecture in a class I teach at @CSS_Zurich of @ETH_en with @alexbollfrass, @HerzogSM and @NinaSilove.
And that I have used for two lectures I gave last summer at Euro-Swamos organized by @Hertie_Security and @EISSnetwork with @Hg_Meijer and @mephenke.
Read 20 tweets
Sep 24
Il mite avvocato pugliese è uno che ha chiuso in casa gli italiani a colpi di DPCM, trasformando le FAQ del ministero dell'interno in fonte di legge, lasciando gli italiani in balia dell'arbitrarietà delle forze dell'ordine, mentendo circa le raccomandazioni del CTS,
per poi cercare di insabbiare il tutto secretando i verbali. Se ci fosse una nuova ondata di COVID e Meloni/Salvini facessero una frazione di queste cose, voi gridereste (giustamente) alla soppressione delle libertà costituzionali e della democrazia rappresentativa.
Che di fronte alla minaccia anti-democratica rappresentata da Meloni/Salvini, venga elevato l'unico leader politico tra quelli dei paesi occidentali che ha adottato il modello cinese per contenere la pandemia, fa davvero rabbrividire.
Read 5 tweets
Aug 16
Russia did not conduct suppression/destruction of enemy air defenses prior to launching the ground invasion of Ukraine (some say for doctrinal reasons, other say for capability limitations). Now on, the Ukrainians will be targeting Russian radars.
forbes.com/sites/davidaxe…
HARM (high-speed anti-radiation missiles) are missiles that lock on a radar wave and home towards its source, with the goal of destroying a radar. They are "high-speed" because their goal is to get to a radar outpost before it relocates.
The success of HARMS should not be counted in the number of radar outposts destroyed - as a key effect these missiles exert is to force radar operators to switch off their radars - that is, virtual attrition.
Read 5 tweets
Jul 17
The first edition of Euro-Summer Workshop on Military Operations and Strategy at @Hertie_Security is over, let me thank again @mephenke and @Hg_Meijer for all the work they put behind it and for having made it possible.
Our aim is to provide PhD students & recent PhDs based in🇪🇺with exposure to topics such as mil ops & strategy they have little opportunities to learn in their home institutions. So that they can contribute to Euro academic and policy debate on pressing defense and security issues
As the war in Ukraine has shown, defense and security are complex issues that cannot be left to conjectures, ideology or speculations. Ours is part of the broader aim of the @EISSnetwork's attempt to promote security studies in Europe.
Read 5 tweets
Jul 15
Italy has a debt to GDP ratio of 150%. This means that minor increases in interest rates entails massive increase in cost of debt financing (today interest rates are above 3.3%, which means that Italy will have to spend about 5% of its GDP for interest rates).
(to put in perspective, fiscal policies set by Maastricht agreements required countries to keep government deficit below 3% of GDP; with cost of debt at 5% of GDP, if government spending = government revenue, you are already at 5% deficit of GDP).
Now to the ECB. Its job is to fight inflation, but for ten years ECB kept interest rates artificially low to prevent 🇮🇹 to default. With unprecedented inflation, this policy is no longer possible - ie financing of 🇮🇹debt will be more expensive & potentially unsustainable.
Read 6 tweets
Sep 16, 2021
There seems to be some misunderstandings on submarines: nuclear-powered submarines are NOT quieter than diesel-electric. The opposite is true. A nuclear reactor cannot be shut down. Electric batteries can.
Moreover, electric batteries do not generate machinery noise; a nuclear reactor does. There are variations in machinery noise (US subs are quieter than Chinese one) but the point stays: 🇸🇪🇩🇪🇯🇵 AIP subs are the quietest in the world
(Important in this regard: machinery noise is independent of speed, while other source of noise such as flow noise and cavitation can be reduce by decreasing speed).
Read 6 tweets

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