Breakthrough in Plasma technology?

[Vivendi]

Hi,

From the Ares blog:

Now look at AGT's core technology: One Atmosphere Uniform Glow Discharge Plasma (OAUGDP). The key breakthrough is the ability to generate and sustain plasmas in air (not gas in a tube) at atmospheric pressures, with reasonable power consumption.

This may be about a lot more than UAV flight controls. But it also raises the question of why the technology wasn't better protected in the first place, if it was so sensitive; and that may in turn suggest that plasma stealth has been considered as a rival to conventional stealth - in which literally hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested - and has been ignored rather than being researched.

(h)ttp://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3a2ba4cc01-f3cf-41e6-9f05-bf326e93f36c


Looks rather interesting to a layperson like me... any experts that would like to comment?


V.

 

[Feanor]

The mentioning of plasma stealth immediately makes me want to disregard the whole thing. Plasma stealth is what I always see raving Sukhoi fanboys bragging about on internet forums. I tried to copy the link into a separate browser window, but it took me to the main page.

 

[Vivendi]

The mentioning of plasma stealth immediately makes me want to disregard the whole thing. Plasma stealth is what I always see raving Sukhoi fanboys bragging about on internet forums. I tried to copy the link into a separate browser window, but it took me to the main page.

You are right, there seems to be a problem with copy&paste of the link. Anyway here is the text:

Stealth Connection In Tennessee Case?
Posted by Bill Sweetman at 5/22/2008 7:32 AM CDT

Indicting a 70-year-old retired professor on charges of conspiring to export restricted data to China is not a trivial matter, but that's what's happened to J. Reece Roth, professor emeritus at the University of Tennessee and former director of the university's plasma laboratory. The indictment says that Roth, through a spin-off company called Atmospheric Glow Technologies (AGT) helped transfer data to China and failed to get proper permission before involving a Chinese graduate student, Xin Dai, in the work.

But what was AGT doing? The indictment mentions work on control actuators for UAVs, for which the company (now in Chapter 11) had a USAF contract, but it could go a long way beyond that.

It's been known for many years that plasmas - fields of ionized gas, like the glowing vapor in a neon tube or St Elmo's fire - have an interesting property: they stop radar waves dead in their tracks, concealing anything behind them from radar. The CIA sponsored Westinghouse to develop such a device in the early 1960s, under Project KEMPSTER, and it was tested in a Lockheed A-12 Blackbird. Although one CIA history states that the project was unsuccessful, another document said that the system "performed as planned".

The use of plasma stealth was considered part of the Chelomei design bureau's 3M25 Meteorit supersonic strategic cruise missile, tested in the 1980s. According to some accounts (confirmed to me in 2006 by a well informed Western source) Meteorit included a plasma stealth system known as Marabou.

More recently, the Institute for Theoretical and Applied Electromagnetics (ITAE) - one of Russia's leading centers of stealth expertise - has tested a plasma screen that is designed to be installed inside the radome of a Sukhoi Su-27-series fighter. The screen protects the radar antenna from detection, but can be switched off and on instantaneously when the radar needs to transmit.

The big, big drawback of plasmas, though, is that they can't be sustained with a reasonable level of power at standard atmospheric pressures and at high airspeeds. Meteorit and A-12 were both designed to operate above 75,000 feet; the ITAE antenna shield is inside a radome.

Now look at AGT's core technology: One Atmosphere Uniform Glow Discharge Plasma (OAUGDP). The key breakthrough is the ability to generate and sustain plasmas in air (not gas in a tube) at atmospheric pressures, with reasonable power consumption.

This may be about a lot more than UAV flight controls. But it also raises the question of why the technology wasn't better protected in the first place, if it was so sensitive; and that may in turn suggest that plasma stealth has been considered as a rival to conventional stealth - in which literally hundreds of billions of dollars have been invested - and has been ignored rather than being researched.


The link to the company: ttp://www.atmosphericglow.com/technology/OAUGDP.html

(add h to the link)


Cheers,


V.

 

[fro56]

Yes The Taliban can use this infomation to defeat those infidels Thankyou all very much

 

[Feanor]

So does the plasma stealth system of the Chelomei bureau actually work? It's been flight tested and has entered serial production?

 

[willur]

wouldnt the plane actually glow, produce heat and wasn't this a similar idea to the idea of using wave emitting diode as a daytime time camo on penetrator aircraft from the 90's
I don't mean glow like a fluro light, i thinking more like a squid.

 

[Misguided Fool]

Surely if this concept works, it could be miniturised to work on sensitive installations to disrupt radar guided missiles? Eg, a HARM being confused by a plasma installation that's working around say the HQ of an enemy.

I dunno if this is on topic, but i think that in the future radar jamming technology will be largely pointless, as i think in the future all identification will be done by extremely sensitive satellites looking down on the earth, being able to judge altitude, instead of people using radiation, and as this technology is only viable in the rather long term, why it's being invested into .

However, if this is implemented in the short term, the results could be fairly devastating to an unprepared enemy. However, plasma isn't going to stop a heat seaking missile shooting a plane down, and conventional stealth techniques and the associated "wasted billions" have focussed on reducing the IR signature of aircraft.