Recent Development in Stealth Considerations for Surface Warship Design

The past two decades have seen a significant shift in design process to incorporate stealth features to make naval ships invisible to an array of modern electronic warfare systems such as sonar and radar, combining ways that lower a platform's emissions and those which eliminate reflected radiation, thus reducing detection range and threat vulnerability. Surface warships today face a most formidable threat posed by radar homing anti-ship cruise missiles, which home on to the target based on its various signatures like radar cross section, acoustic emissions, thermal signature, infrared signature, magnetic signature, extreme low frequency electromagnetic emissions, under water electric potential etc. Stealth technology is a combination of technologies that attempt to reduce the distances at which a vehicle can be detected, mainly reducing these signatures. In naval ships, the hull shape, the coating materials, equipment mounting, the type and amount of radiations that is emitted etc are key factors affecting stealth properties. Delayed detection by adversaries, reduced Lock-On range of weapons, enhanced performance of own sensors, enhanced effectiveness of hard-kill & soft-kill measures, reduced vulnerability leading to increased survivability etc can be achieved by incorporating stealth features of a warship. This paper explores the latest technologies that helps the designer to incorporate stealth in surface ships so that a warship with a much reduced radar cross section, acoustic emissions, thermal signature, infrared signature etc can be developed to better execute various naval missions. Citation: Pooja C, Allwyn Sebastian M, Aldrin Benher, Abijith Shibu, Prof. (Dr.) Sunil Kumar P G. "Recent Development in Stealth Considerations for Surface Warship Design." Global Research and Development Journal For Engineering 4.2 (2019): 6 - 10.