After climbing a hundred meters, the two Silver Shuttles activated Optical Camouflage. Light and shadow rippled over them, and they abruptly vanished.
Nie Yun took out a pair of military binoculars and watched closely. Against the azure sky, he could make out only a transparent silhouette trailing a barely perceptible pale-blue exhaust plume as it slowly adjusted its flight attitude. Then it accelerated away at a tremendous rate, soon disappearing from his sight.
"Hmm, the visual deception works pretty well. Now let's see how the Silver Shuttles' radar stealth holds up!"
Although Mechanical Insects were a supermaterial, they still reflected radar waves and could not evade radar in their natural state. Ordinary civilian radar had detected them during the earlier Aquarius operation.
Stealth technology was practically the dividing line between fourth- and fifth-generation fighter jets.
Historically, the United States had first deployed stealth fighters in the Gulf War, rendering enemy radar and antiaircraft defenses almost useless. Calling it a one-sided beatdown was no exaggeration!
Even setting combat effectiveness aside, strategic concealment was a priority Nie Yun had to consider at this stage!
That was why he had put so much effort into developing a stealth device for the Mechanical Insects.
Unlike the United States, which used optimized aircraft shapes and stealth coatings, Nie Yun had chosen Plasma Stealth Shield technology, which was still at the theoretical research stage!
Plasma was a fourth form of matter after solids, liquids, and gases, and was therefore also known as the fourth state of matter.
Plasma enabled stealth because it refracted, reflected, and absorbed various beams. With the same radar cross section, it could reduce radar returns to less than one percent of their original level.
Its drawbacks, however, were enormous energy consumption and interference with aircraft communications while the plasma shield was active.