# A pal says the Stealth Bomber is invisible to bats. Is it true or is he umm... batty? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 15, 2009, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397 "2009-01-15T06:26:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/21 "2009-01-15T16:24:05Z")
> [@aerodave](#): > > Besides, the story above about the bat flying into the _side_ of an F-117’s vertical tail almost proves that it’s not a matter of the bat being fooled by stealth technology. Planes like that are not designed to deflect much radar from the side. Radar returns to the front and rear are minimized at the expense of making the side sectors worse. If that bat couldn’t see what is almost literally the broad side of a barn, it was a victim of its own stupidity. The F-117 doesn’t have a vertical tail; it has a V-tail arrangement. ---
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/22 "2009-01-15T16:25:41Z")
I see no reason that sound waves wouldn’t reflect similarly to radio waves. Especially since the waves are apparently similar in wavelength. Are dead bats found around non-stealth aircraft? ---
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/23 "2009-01-15T16:42:34Z")
There’s something intuitively fishy about this story. Is it physically possible for stealth technology to hide an object that has such a large apparent size to the observer trying to detect it? Could you make a “stealth mountain” that airplanes would crash into because they can’t see it on radar? Edit: Or perhaps a better analogy would be a “stealth island” that submarines plow right into. This sounds like Romulan cloaking technology. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/24 "2009-01-15T16:53:20Z")
> [@WF\_Tomba](#): > > There’s something intuitively fishy about this story. Is it physically possible for stealth technology to hide an object that has such a large apparent size to the observer trying to detect it? Could you make a “stealth mountain” that airplanes would crash into because they can’t see it on radar? Presumably, the pilot of the airplane would (physically) _see_ Stealth Mountain, and thus avoid it. Stealth technology doesn’t make things disappear. It makes them appear smaller. Thus, an F-22 looks like a bird to radar (or even an insect). It won’t be totally _invisible_. ---
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/25 "2009-01-15T16:58:21Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Stealth technology doesn’t make things disappear. It makes them appear smaller. Thus, an F-22 looks like a bird to radar (or even an insect). It won’t be totally _invisible_. That’s more or less what I’m thinking, but taking it a step further, imagine the radar antenna is about ten feet away from the F-22. It wouldn’t look like a bird then, would it it? ---
**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/26 "2009-01-15T16:58:26Z")
The F-117 has a radar absorbing paint applied to it’s surface which contains tiny spheres coated with ferrite. Here, [wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_absorbent_material#Iron_ball_paint) explains it better than me > [@](#): > > Radar waves induce molecular oscillations from the alternating magnetic field in this paint.. I wonder if that could screw up a bat’s sound waves somehow. > [@Fubaya](#): > > Also, they exactly park them in [tents.](http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/systems/xldahs.htm) No one has brought it up, but I meant to say they **don’t** exactly park them in tents. ---
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/27 "2009-01-15T17:06:15Z")
> [@Fubaya](#): > > The F-117 has a radar absorbing paint applied to it’s surface which contains tiny spheres coated with ferrite. Here, [wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_absorbent_material#Iron_ball_paint) explains it better than meI wonder if that could screw up a bat’s sound waves somehow.No one has brought it up, but I meant to say they **don’t** exactly park them in tents. I don’t think the paint will have any effect on the bats sonar. The only reason that could be any plausibility to this, is because they are both waveforms. They might reflect similarly. Sonar will not induce anything in magnetic materials. ---
**Author:** ![RedSwinglineOne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a9adbd/32.png) [@RedSwinglineOne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedSwinglineOne)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/28 "2009-01-15T17:11:52Z")
The problem I have with this story is that the planes do reflect radar and sound waves, they just don’t send them back the original source. This is easy to do when the source is many miles away. I don’t believe this will work at a distance of a foot or two, which is the distance the bat would be. Even if we assume that the sound waves reflect perfectly off the faceted surfaces, and there is no sound “scattering”, there will always be a point on a flat panel that is perpendicular to the sound source. This point would definitely be visible to the bat. ---
**Author:** ![aerodave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f08c70/32.png) [@aerodave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aerodave)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/29 "2009-01-15T17:13:22Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > The F-117 doesn’t have a vertical tail; it has a V-tail arrangement. Of course. I was being lazy. When you talk about such things every day, you actually get _less_ pedantic. I’ve certainly been a part of technical discussions that made mention of the 117’s “vertical tail”, wherein none of the participants batted an eye. ---
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/30 "2009-01-15T17:15:10Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > There’s also the possibility that it’s a greedy bat thinking that he’s going after the insect of his life. No kidding. My wife killed a bat with a tennis ball just before the new year. The bat chased the ball in flight, only to find it wasn’t what he expected. In fact, I think we should ask whether bats actually use their echolocation to avoid large obstacles, or just to find prey. Maybe they use the echolocation for hunting and depend on vision to avoid hitting things. Edit: In other words, would a bat tend to crash into any large black object in a dark hangar? This could actually be tested by parking a black car in a bat-infested shed, though I personally wouldn’t want to kill a bunch of bats. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/31 "2009-01-15T17:26:17Z")
> [@aerodave](#): > > Of course. I was being lazy. When you talk about such things every day, you actually get _less_ pedantic. I’ve certainly been a part of technical discussions that made mention of the 117’s “vertical tail”, wherein none of the participants batted an eye. I figured. I pointed it out because I think it might be relevant vis-a-vis how easy it is for a bat to detect it in horizontal flight. ---
**Author:** ![puppygod](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@puppygod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puppygod)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/32 "2009-01-15T17:28:47Z")
But the plane don’t have to be totally invisible to bats echolocation. All you need is one of several dozens polygons that F-117 is made from not to deflect sound waves back to the bat from certain angle. “Ooh, it looks like opening to fly through” - thinks the bat - _Splat_. While radar echo of whole plane is non-zero, it’s certainly possible to make one or several parts of plane to have no echo at all - looking from certain angle. Hence my anechoic chamber analogy. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/33 "2009-01-15T17:29:57Z")
[QUOTE=WF Tomba] In fact, I think we should ask whether bats actually use their echolocation to avoid large obstacles, or just to find prey. Maybe they use the echolocation for hunting and depend on vision to avoid hitting things. [/QUOTE] IMO a very good question. Maybe a bat expert can see this and answer? Personally, I don’t find a couple of scattered anecdotes to be credible evidence, regardless of whatever Super Secret 11 Herbs and Spices go into a stealth plane (and this isn’t MIB-level stuff either; the planes have been around for some time. I’ve even got a piece of wing material at home from a stealth aircraft, given to me by a professor years ago). ---
**Author:** ![SCSimmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@SCSimmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCSimmons)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/34 "2009-01-15T18:46:43Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Stealth technology doesn’t make things disappear. It makes them appear smaller. Thus, an F-22 looks like a bird to radar (or even an insect). It won’t be totally _invisible_. Well, maybe that would explain how bats would ‘see’ a stealth plane, but still run headlong into it. “Mmmm, yummy bug! Time for some dinn–” SMACK! ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/35 "2009-01-15T20:37:47Z")
Stop all this insanity! The planes are NOT invisible to bats as a function of their stealth technology. The polygons, the paint etc are designed to deter detection by RF microwave frequencies not small mammals using ultrasound. Stealth composites and paints are not sound absorbing in the least. The only possible scenario of bats not “seeing” them is if they are painted dark/black in a dark hanger and the bats literally run into them because they can’t see them visually. As bats can use echolocation to get around fine in near pitch black caves this scenario seems highly implausible. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/36 "2009-01-15T20:41:21Z")
> [@WF\_Tomba](#): > > Edit: Or perhaps a better analogy would be a “stealth island” that submarines plow right into. This sounds like Romulan cloaking technology. Apparently, underwater seamounts are pretty stealthy: [http://www.news.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story\_id=18257](http://www.news.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=18257) 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/37 "2009-01-15T20:42:27Z")
> [@astro](#): > > The only possible scenario of bats not “seeing” them is if they are painted dark/black in a dark hanger and the bats literally run into them because they can’t see them visually. As bats can use echolocation to get around fine in near pitch black caves this scenario seems highly implausible. Let’s paint some cave walls with the same coating as on the planes and see what happens. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/38 "2009-01-15T20:46:38Z")
Someone should submit this to Mythbusters. ---
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/39 "2009-01-15T20:48:06Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > Let’s paint some cave walls with the same coating as on the planes and see what happens. An interesting idea, although it would not eliminate all the variables. The bats might be able to navigate their home cave better because it is more familiar to them than an aircraft hangar they bumble into. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397/40 "2009-01-15T23:02:58Z")
> [@RedSwinglineOne](#): > > The problem I have with this story is that the planes do reflect radar and sound waves, they just don’t send them back the original source. This is easy to do when the source is many miles away. I don’t believe this will work at a distance of a foot or two, which is the distance the bat would be. Even if we assume that the sound waves reflect perfectly off the faceted surfaces, and there is no sound “scattering”, there will always be a point on a flat panel that is perpendicular to the sound source. This point would definitely be visible to the bat. I agree with the distance thing. But it might actually make things WORSE for the bat. There is a nice flat panel or edge the bat is getting a good echo location from. He adjusts his directional vector so he WONT hit that panel. The problem is, there is another panel he is NOW headed towards that is one, not reflecting towards him, and two, perhaps its signal is being overwhelmed by that panel that IS reflecting well. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-pal-says-the-stealth-bomber-is-invisible-to-bats-is-it-true-or-is-he-umm-batty/481397.md?page=3)