Russians began to use "Shahed" drones painted in black to make it more difficult to detect at night. (files.catbox.moe)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by LaFinlandia@sopuli.xyz to c/ukraine@sopuli.xyz

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[-] Followupquestion@lemm.ee 13 points 11 months ago

Years ago the US Air Force commissioned a study on what would be the stealthiest color for planes during daytime, visually obscuring them in an infinite sky as it were. Pink, it turns out, was likely the best color family to draw from. The US did not, to my understanding, go with pink. At night, however, black might not be the best color to use, as the night sky isn’t usually true black. Do you think the Russians are using trial and error or is there some department of the Russian MOD recreating research the US did decades ago and then ignoring the conclusions?

[-] user134450@feddit.de 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I think it went a bit further than just selecting the right paint.

I remember there was a program to enhance the stealth for relatively low flying surveillance aircraft (still mostly propeller aircraft at that time) and one of the most effective measures was painting the underside of the plane White and then illuminating it on purpose with a light that was matched to the sky. The light was usually bluish to match the sky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yehudi_lights

The reason why this was not simply done at night was of course that the surveillance equipment needed some light to work :)