To this day it seems that the Chinese government is determined to be a pioneer in any type and area of life. Due to this it is not surprising that practically every week we have to talk about some type of technical novelty that has just been presented. On this occasion, instead of surprising us with some kind of space madness or about how one of its multinationals becomes unmarked again, we have to talk about something that perhaps should concern us more and that is that China has decided to be the spearhead in the world of fighters.
Going into a little more detail, far from talking about the fact that the fighter is equipped with specific weapons, we will begin by dealing with an issue as important as the fact that the engineers who are in charge of carrying out the project have decided make use of known as metamaterials for its construction, something that can make the rest of the armies have the need to immediately evolve all their fighters due to the problems that this can bring them.
China presents its new J-20 fighter, an undetectable model
When we talk about fighters, surely your mind goes to those impressive F-22 or F-35 models, for some reasons or others, although in recent months another series of novelties has been presented such as the KJ-600, itself which has been promised to be the terror of all those stealth fighters precisely because of the impressive detection technology with which it has been gifted. Now it's time to see if this KJ-600 is capable of detecting models like the J-20 just presented by China, a model that has been precisely manufactured to be undetectable.
The main objective that Chinese engineers have set themselves has been precisely to design and manufacture an aircraft capable of not be detected by current systems and platforms available to the different armies. As you surely know, we are talking about cutting-edge technology that is not available to any citizen, technology that has been developed one and exclusively for the military field and that can make, as has been shown, a war finally won by a contender other.
What is a metamaterial? For what could it be used?
By now you will surely have heard, in one environment or another, talk about metamaterials, especially because they can be very interesting, thanks to their unique characteristics, to be used in the construction of micro-robots or nanorobots. Going into a little more detail, tell you that we are talking about materials that have been artificially created whose properties are not found in nature. At this point, it should be noted that materials have already been created that have properties as interesting as being able to compute or recognize simple patterns.
In the specific case of the new Chinese fighter, from what little we know, metamaterials have been used in a kind of composition of metals and plastics that have an artificial geometry to influence the wavelengths of both electromagnetic radiation and sounds and elastic waves. As a detail, tell you that this new material will also be used in the manufacture of antennas, which could result in the creation of more accurate radars with a much greater range.
Second, and this is where it seems that this type of material is interesting for the manufacture of a new generation of fighters, these metamaterials have been used for the manufacture of absorbents. The idea is that this new type of metamaterial can be used as a kind of 'trap'so that enemy radars cannot detect the fighter, taking advantage of the fact that this material can reach absorb certain wavelengths. Apparently and according to certain information, this material in parts of the aircraft, such as the horizontal stabilizers, the compartments for the weapons or the engine nozzles, which can reflect the radar waves.